"This Land Is Mine"

Look Where This Exodus Song Has Delivered Us!

I seek to tell the story of a song and its relationship to an ongoing historical movement. That movement has to do with the founding and building up of Israel. This founding of Israel in the aftermath of the Second World War was part of a rush of new laws and institutions, many of which coalesced in and around the United Nations.

The creation of a blueprint and an operating manual for Israel was a top priority in the early days of the UN. The UN Charter was formulated and ratified in San Francisco in 1945.

My early years began with my birth in Toronto in 1951. As I came alive to the world around me, I noticed that Israel was often featured on television and in the movies, usually in the most flattering of terms. I was nine years old when one of these productions, Exodus, first appeared in movie theatres.

As depicted in the film starring Paul Newman, the Exodus drama was concocted to publicize in 1947 the restrictions placed on the migration of Jews from Europe to Palestine while this land was still under the mandatory rule of Great Britain. The Mandate to govern Palestine was delivered to the British imperial government by the League of Nations after WWI.

Woven throughout the sound track of the motion picture, Exodus, is the melody of its theme song, “This Land Is Mine.”

In the video below are many clips from this inspirational movie. These clips brought tears to my eyes when I watched the video featuring Andy William’s beautiful rendition of “This Land Is Mine.” The images rekindled my boyhood memories when I was trying to figure what all the fuss was about concerning the matter of getting Israel up and running in the global community.

I had a rush of recollections concerning the hopes aroused in me by the early media depictions I saw of Israel as the land where Jewish people were being resurrected from Hitler’s horrors. The way the country was first explained to me, I could picture it becoming the pride of humankind. I came to think of it as a land pointing the way towards justice and enlightenment. I pictured this holy place as home where religious sages could thrive and lead the journey to a better tomorrow.

Now in September of 2024 I see the images of the huge mounds of Gaza rubble. I see pictures of maimed and mutilated people crowded in puddles of blood on the floors of overwhelmed hospitals.

Poof, the universities are made to explode into thin air. Poof, hundreds of journalists and humanitarian care workers are killed by Israeli soldiers. I see proof after proof after proof that Israel had nothing to do with qualities that I had long ago attributed to it in the trusting naiveté of my youth.

The Glory and the Grandeur Clash with the Truth

I was surprised to learn that the writer of many dozens of famous American pop tunes, Pat Boone, came up to with the lyrics of “This Land Is Mine.” On his own Boone added words to the musical chorus written by Ernest Gold and voila… a unique musical statement.

The Exodus Song (This Land Is Mine) Lyrics

This land is mine, God gave this land to me
This brave and ancient land to me
And when the morning sun reveals her hills and plain
Then I see a land where children can run free

So take my hand and walk this land with me
And walk this lovely land with me
Though I am just a man, when you are by my side
With the help of God, I know I can be strong

Though I am just a man, when you are by my side
With the help of God, I know I can be strong

To make this land our home
If I must fight, I'll fight to make this land our own
Until I die, this land is mine

Gaza and the West Bank are tragically not lands where children can run free.

I wonder what Pat Boone might today think of the line he wrote, “I’ll fight to make this land our own.”

I much prefer Andy William’s rendition of “This Land Is Mine” over that of Pat Boone. Here is Boone’s version.

The video below is an item preserved by the Spielberg Jewish Film Archive beginning with the Exodus episode of 1947 and then flashing forward to 1967. In Six Day War of 1967, the land set aside by the UN in 1947 for a Palestinian State, including Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, were illegally conquered and seized by the Israel Defence Force.

The IDF can be pictured as an imperial force emerging from the Anglo-American Empire. The Six Day War was not an anti-colonial struggle like many of the uprisings in that era by Indigenous peoples seeking liberation in Africa and Indo-China. Not surprisingly, this classic propaganda film from the Spielberg archives omits the story of the genocide of Palestinians that began in 1948 and whose whose pace has dramatically accelerated during this tumultuous year.

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous