In this episode of MUM, host Ellen Wong engages in an open-hearted discussion with death laborer and author meital yaniv. The conversation centers around their book, 'Bloodlines,' which explores the impact of the Israeli apartheid regime through the lens of meital’s personal experiences and ancestral history. Topics include the deep-seated trauma and unaddressed grief carried by generations, the indoctrination within Israeli society, and meital’s own life experience as an ex-israeli/ex-zionist. Ellen and meital emphasize the importance of compassion, the practice of grief, and the global implications of dismantling militarized identities for collective healing.
About Guest: meital yaniv (b. 1984, Tel-Aviv, occupied Palestine) is learning how to be in a human form. they do things with words, with moving and still images, with threads, with bodies in front of bodies, with the Earth. They are a death laborer tending to a prayer for the liberation of the land of Palestine and the lands of our bodies. they keep Fires and submerge themselves in Ocean and Sea Water often. yaniv is learning to listen to the Waters, birdsongs, caretakers, and ancestors as they walk as a guest on the home and gathering place of the Cahuilla-ʔívil̃uwenetem Meytémak, Tongva-Kizh Nation, Luiseño-Payómkawichum, and Serrano-Yuhaaviatam/Maarenga'yam. yaniv is the author of bloodlines. They make offerings through true name collective.
About the book “Bloodlines”: Bloodlines is an epic and intimate dive into the israeli apartheid regime from the perspective of an ex-israeli/ex-zionist soldier. Born into a sephardic and ashkenazi lineage of in/famous war heroes and pillars for the state of israel, meital yaniv traces their paternal family narrative from surviving the Holocaust of the second world war to migrating to Palestine and their subsequent indoctrination as zionist colonizers and defenders of the state of israel. yaniv directs our attention to the cycles of history and how genocide not only repeats but grows monstrously in the crevices of state belonging. Through a bold and radical poetics that unsettles language and definition, they foreground vulnerability while traversing the nuance of voice and inner forms of address. yaniv unravels the coordinates of belonging to write in the fissures of israeli identity. bloodlines is an invitation to contemporary israelis to unstitch the military uniform from their bodies and to reckon with their atrocities against generations of Palestinian lives and livelihoods. It is also a demand that the ongoing catastrophes in Palestine end now. With uncompromising courage and in lucid manifestation, yaniv urges israelis to join them in drowning in the wounds of their ancestors as well as the wounds they've inflicted, and in so doing, bring the state of israel and israeli identity to "a loving and caring death.”
The prayer of bloodlines is to bring the israeli identity and state to a loving and caring death.
Meital’s Links & Offerings:
IG: @bloodlines_book
One-on-one Energy and Death work offerings through:
https://www.truenamecollective.com
Upcoming gatherings
October 11-13 Yom Kippur in Ukiah, CA
October 18-20 Writing workshop and grief circle at Mendocino Art Center, CA
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