Palestinian Liberation Art
Solidarity forever.
The world is watching as Israel carries out an ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and I am feeling incredibly low. I cannot believe the US funds this genocide with my tax dollars, and I feel completely powerless to stop it.
Sharing my opinion from the imperial core feels less significant than ever. I’ve thought deeply about whether it’s even possible to make a positive contribution from where I stand. I’m also worried that some of my readers might be grieving last week’s Hamas attack in Israel. I hope for a ceasefire and an end to the apartheid regime, in which Israeli civilians can also live in safety and freedom.
I’m writing today about Palestinian posters, which have helped me through many moments of personal despair. These images are about revolutionary hope, and now is the time to share them.
Before I saw Palestinian art, I had only seen images of Gaza in its darkest moments of suffering and indignity. Western news coverage of Palestine filled my head with a fuzzy carousel of indiscriminate violence and broken bodies of children. Even after I became a more active learner about Israel and its apartheid regime, I could only picture despair when I thought about Palestine.
I don’t remember exactly how I stumbled on the Palestine Poster Project, but I know it had a profound effect on me. On these posters, I saw Palestinian children alive. They carried armfuls of oranges, lifted doves to the sky, and proudly wore the Kaffiyeh. I saw Palestinians standing tall and smiling, powerful in their resistance.
Many of my favorite pieces in the archive are from Palestinian artist Abdel Rahman Al Muzain. I love his image of the Palestinian woman whose skirt and body transforms into a majestic landscape. As she reaches for the sky in her Tatreez-embroidered dress, she is the land—a common sentiment I had already known, I think, from reading and talking, but seeing the image transformed my understanding.
Of course, images of violence do appear in many Palestinian posters. There are hundreds of works over the historical span of the occupation, and not all of them are happy images. But even the darker, more grief-filled posters taught me about the people’s particular orientation toward suffering that never came through when I watched the US news.
Where there are bodies on Palestinian posters, there are living people too—a wave rising up from the martyr, like a phoenix. When a Palestinian is killed, she doesn’t die. Her image continues, and inspires the next generation of resistance.
These posters unfold across decades, movements, and resistance groups within the Palestinian struggle. In many cases, the artist’s revolutionary principles extended from the imagery to how it was made and reproduced. Palestinian artists formed unions in every city and village and shared their work widely across the population.
Palestinian-American artist Samia Halaby remembers in an interview: “the artists of the revolution wanted their work in every home and refugee tent. Thus they all made art posters for distribution.”
Seeing these posters actually gave me a vision for my own work. I wasn’t going to portray my own fears or feelings of despair. Instead, I realized I wanted to create an image of something to fight for.
In my own political context, as a working-class American, that meant visualizing an empowered labor movement. I started making images of the people around me living with dignity and self-determination: basically, a vision of the world I wanted to win.
Whose Streets, the rug I made immediately after studying Palestinian art, borrows imagery and style from the posters. It’s an image that glorifies solidarity, and attempts to illustrate the cycle of mass protest, organizing, and civil disobedience that accompanies a revolutionary people’s movement.
In college, my history professor Stephanie Sena took breaks from teaching Chris Harman’s A People’s History of the World to share stories with the class about her first trip to Israel. While studying in Tel Aviv in her early 20s, she witnessed firsthand the status of Palestinians as second-class citizens. Professor Sena made more visits to the West Bank, and eventually joined the board of Playgrounds for Palestine. She introduced our class to her friend, BDS activist Susan Abulhawa, and assigned Mornings in Jenin—a heartbreaking story of a Palestinian family who lost their home in the 1948 Nakba.
Sena is Jewish, herself; a difficult position that I didn’t fully understand when I was her student. Because I lived in Philadelphia, I would go on to meet a disproportionate number of Jewish people in my community. And, because so much of my social life stemmed from leftist organizing circles, most of the Jewish friends I made were committed Anti-Zionists.
Few of them had grown up with those politics. Like Sena, they’d had older generations in their families and communities who taught them a story about Zionism that seemed to make sense…until it didn’t. A shift in perspective—like that trip to Israel for Sena—led them to question their own indoctrination.
I’ve learned that Judaism is a beautiful faith and tradition that compels its people to pursue social justice. I do my best to receive what my friends and mentors have taught me through their orientation toward Zionism.
On Palestine, this much is clear: the occupation must end, and there is no moral ground for an apartheid regime in Israel.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
Labor Intensive Recommendations
Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund — help this fundraiser reach its $50K goal!
On Mourning and Statehood — Gabriel Winant writes for Dissent.
Tatreez & Tea — Resources on traditional Palestinian embroidery.
Mornings in Jenin — required reading by Susan Abulhawa.
Liberation Art of Palestine — collected works published by Palestinian artist Samia Halaby.
Solidarity Tabitha, thanks for a great post highlighting the resilience of the Palestinian ppl and how it's reflected just as strongly in their art
One of the most heartening things I've read in the past few days. Thank you for this, and thank you for the references.