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.”
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. They make offerings through true name collective.
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This is a paperback book, 418 pages, 5 x 8 inches
Published in 2023, Communities of Memory
