jeej

I've only read the first volume of Hokuto no Ken (Fist of the North Star) but I find Golan to be absolutely fascinating. It is awesome that Kenshiro beats the shit out of nazis, but I'm more so intrigued by the historical context. The way they operate, in ritually severing ties with the past in exchange for privilege, is how European settlers in America became "white". There is also the nomenclature. Golan was often renamed in English translations due to the Golan Heights being a real region in the state of Israel. Except it isn't actually Israeli, it's Syrian. The Israeli state annexed the region in 1981, and it remains under military occupation to this day without any international recognition of the region as Israeli until 2019 when Donald Trump signed one on the USA's behalf in 2019, a move that's been internationally condemned. In tandem with Golan in the manga being a militia that claims to be God's chosen people working to create a religious ethnostate, they can be easily read as colonial Zionists, more akin to the state of Israel than to the Third Reich. Berets are prominently worn in the Israeli Defense Force (whom are currently committing genocide against the Palestinian people). And one more clarification, there is a clear fucking difference between the state of Israel and the Jewish people. Anti-Zionist Jews exist all over.