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Mansoor Farooq Professor Lynda Haas Writing 37 13 November 2013 Cultural anxieties The world is mixed with so many different cultures and religions today that it is hard to keep track of all of them. World War Z, written by Maximillian Michael Brooks who is the son of director Mel Brook and actor Anne Bancroft talks about many of the cultures throughout the world. Brooks has written another novel relating to the zombie theme called The Zombie Survival Guide along with World War Z. World War Z features the narrator as an agent for the United Nations ten years after the apocalypse hit. He interviews more than forty fictional people and puts those interviews together in the novel. In the article World War Z: Monsters of this societys own making Christie Schaefer claims, Unlike much of the work in science fiction and horror genres today, Max Brooks (son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft) approaches his work with a straight facethere is not the expected and desired wink that would make it seem all right and less frightening. The straight face attitude is exactly what should be portrayed because the cultural anxieties that are mirrored are no laughing matter. One character that is interviewed in the book is Saladin Kader from Bethlehem, Palestine. His story relates to the tension between the Jews and Muslims in present day Israel. His situation is reflected into modern day cultural anxiety and how he comes to realization of who the Jews really are. The seeming inability to come to peace in Israel relates to the zombies in World War Z and how they keep attacking and taking over the territory when it is not their property. It mirrors the cultural anxiety that haunts the Palestinian Arabs because of what is happening in Israel today.

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The tension between the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs started in the late nineteenth century when the Jews declared Israel as a state on May 14, 1948 and started taking over the land. It is believed that the Jews came to win back their land because it was a holy state according to the Jewish bible but they were violently opposed by the Palestinian Arabs because of their Arab anti-Semitic views. According to the article An Overview of Relations Between Israel and Palestine it states, The Jews claim that Palestine is actually the site of the ancient land of Israel, which was, according to the Hebrew Bible, promised to the Jews by God. The true explanation is that the Jews came with an intention to get rid of the Arabs which was realized with the British military. In the article The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict the author states, What really happened was that the Zionist movement, from the beginning, looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the indigenous Arab population so that Israel could be a wholly Jewish state, or as much as was possible. Land bought by the Jewish National Fund was held in the name of the Jewish people and could never be sold or even leased back to Arabs (a situation which continues to the present). When the Jews started occupying the state, they were gaining complete control and started treating the Palestinians with such cruelty, while nobody opposed of this. It relates to how the zombies in the book are coming to the town and taking over by either destroying the area or turning the people into zombies. The civilians are like the Arabs who are helpless in the beginning and the zombies are the Jews who are coming in and taking over. Protests from the Palestinians started to increase and the Israeli army just destroyed Palestinian cities by dropping bombs. Saladin Kader starts off by telling his story of how he was watching the Al Jazeera broadcast and working at Starbucks when the apocalypse hit. He saw on the broadcast that the Israeli ambassador announced to the UN assembly that he was enacting a

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policy of voluntary quarantine for the disease known as African rabies. Of course Saladin did not believe him for saying such a foolish thing, especially because the Jews were his most hated enemies. Saladin hated the Jews because of what he had been thought and just followed it without questioning it. This shows that he was prejudice and brings up the topic of racism. He hates the Jews because they took over the land. In the novel he states, I didnt even hear the second part of that fat bastards speech (38) This proves that he is prejudice because he hates on the ambassador without having a reasonable excuse. The part he didnt notice as he was cussing at the ambassador was that there was an asylum being offered to a category of people, and he was in one of the four categories. The category was any Palestinian whose family once lived within the borders of Israel. His family had fled at the beginning of the 1967 war of Zionist aggression which he thought that his Egyptian and Syrian brothers had won so he could soon return to his home. Saladin had thought wrong because in reality, the Jews had defeated the Arab nations who fought in the war as stated in the article Milestones: 19611968, Between June 5 and June 10, Israel defeated Egypt, Jordan, and Syria and occupied the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. This proved that Israel was in control and they were not giving up any time soon which turned out to be true because the conflict lasts to this day. The part that Saladin did not notice about the asylum being offered, his father did notice. When his father told him that they were going to Israel, Saladin argued that he will join an antiZionist movement because of his racist views and that he will be rescuing the father from an internment camp next time they meet. It was the end of that conversation once his father slapped him, the problem was resolved and he was going to Israel with the rest of the family. Similar to how the Palestinian Arabs were provided resettlement camps in the Arab countries, Saladins

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family was taken to a resettlement camp to be inspected and then provided lodging and a job for the father. On their way to Beersheba, Saladin is awakened by the bus swerving out of control and hit on the side because the driver had been shot. He believes that the Palestinian liberation has begun. He is pulled in to a Starbucks coincidently and is being protected by a Jewish soldier. A grenade is thrown inside where the family is and the soldier tries to throw it out but it blows up in midair. The soldier dies and Saladin notices that he was a Jew. Saladin finally realizes what his father was fighting for. This is where cultural anxiety comes into play because in the real world, the Zionists are only a minimal group of the whole Jewish population just like not all Muslims are terrorists. His views change because a Jew gives up his life for his family. It is quoted, Suddenly I understood what my father had been trying to warn us about! What I couldnt understand was why the rest of the world wasnt listening. He finally learns to set aside his hatred toward the Jews after this happens right in front of him. The conflict between the Jews and the Arabs is a great source of cultural anxiety because it is going on right now in Israel. The unrest is just like the zombies who will not stop. It is also a representation of the racism that is involved throughout every country. The moral of Saladins part is the apocalypse created a situation where he learned to put aside his racism and realized that he needs to work together with the Jews. The final outcome of this situation is not known and may take years before there is a resolution because the rest of the population has not realized what Saladin has noticed. The novel does however give new ways to think about the situation and all the possibilities that can arise. Some might be for the better and some for the worse. In Saladins case, it was for the better.

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Works cited Brooks, Max. World War Z. London: Duckworth, 2007. Print. "Milestones: 19611968." Office of the Historian. N.p., 31 Oct. 2013. Web. 13 Nov. 2013. "The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict." If Americans Knew. Jews for Justice in the Middle East, 2001. Web. 13 Nov. 2013. "An Overview of Relations Between Israel and Palestine." Ebsco Host. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2013. Schaefer, Christie. "World War Z: Monsters of This Societys Own Making." World Socialist Web Site. International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), 25 Oct. 2007. Web. 13 Nov. 2013. .