Editorial cartoons have fulfilled a critical role in Palestinian media since al-Thawra,

expressing and reflecting public opinion, mediating Palestinian identity across boundaries of

class, gender, and geography, and extending the reach of Palestinian voices by expanding on the

audience of traditional media forms. In the mid twentieth century, in which print media was the

dominant media consumed in Palestine, editorial cartoons, which were often printed largely on

the first page of newspapers in Palestine, created a “resistance esthetic” within the broader

project of Palestinian opposition to Zionist colonization. The present paper examines the role of

cartoons in two distinct periods over the last century to demonstrate their function as such.

The first section considers the origins of editorial cartoons in Palestine at the outset of al-

Thawra in 1936. During this period, Filastin’s editor “Isa al-'Isa, who himself was going through

a transformation in political thought, borrowed on the western medium of the editorial cartoon,

which while a popular medium elsewhere in the Middle East for at least several decades prior, to

extend the reach of his Jaffa-based daily. The medium of the cartoon at this historical juncture

was essential for producing a revolutionary “text” that could be read by Palestine’s largely

illiterate population. Cartoons helped bridge the gap between the bourgeois-oriented national

movement directing the uprising and the fellahin class required to sustain it.

The second section examines the cartoons of Naji al-Ali, Palestine’s most widely-known

editorial cartoonist. Al-Ali produced his images in a transnational context as a member of the

Palestinian diaspora; however, the images he created as well as the broader Palestinian refugee

culture in which he participated and shaped left a profound impact on Palestinian identity within

the Occupied Territories. His child-character Handhala, who was himself a caricature of al-Ali

frozen at the time of his forced expulsion from Palestine as party of al-Nakba, embodies a

resistance aesthetic and carries the fragmented experience of Palestinian exile to an international

audience.

Taken together, the cartoons from Filastin and al-Ali demonstrate how cartoons

constitute a resistance aesthetic that is crucial to the project of Palestinian identity over the past

century and that harnesses the power of media to address the Palestinian plight. They

demonstrate the continuities and discontinuities of visual depictions of Palestinian resistance

throughout the middle of the twentieth century and across the “zero hours” of 1948 and 1967.

Cartoons in Filastin During al-Thawra

The 1936 revolt against British and Zionist colonialism in Palestine transformed the Palestinian

national movement into a movement grounded in resistance. Driving the first phase of this revolt,

a general strike by Arab workers in the Mandate, the Palestinian press “…performed an “agenda-

setting function” for the larger national movement…,”1 bridging the gap between political

institutions and the elite of society and the Palestinian workers who were necessary to maintain

the strike.2 Sulayman states that the press “…was the most efficient means of raising the

Palestinian people’s awareness of the dangers of Zionism and British imperialism”3 during the

revolt.

Nowhere is the Palestinian Press” agenda-setting function during the Great Strike more

evident than in the medium of editorial cartoons, one of the most prominent, yet least studied,

fixtures of the daily newspaper during this era. Cartoons in Filastin, the most widely circulated

1 Mark LeVine, “The Palestinian Press in Mandatory Jaffa: Advertising, Nationalism, and the Public Sphere,” in Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture, edited by Rebecca L. Stein and Ted Swedenburg. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 55-56.2 Mustafa Kabha, Writing up a Storm: The Palestinian Press as Shaper of Public Opinion (London: Valentine Mitchell, 2007), 1723 Muhammad Sulayman, Tarikh al-Sihafa al-Filastiniyah, 1876-1918 [The History of the Palestinian Press, 1876-1918], (Nicosia, CY: Mussasat Bisan, 1987), 184.

Arabic language daily in 1936,4 mediated discourses of “peoplehood”—the overlapping and

intersecting categories of identity—interrogating subjects such as gender, nation, and belonging

in the context of empire (British and Zionist) and an inchoate Palestinian nationalism. To date,

scholars have not fully taken into account the importance of cartoons in the Mandate-era press, in

spite of the critical role these images played in the press’s agenda-setting function during the

Great Strike. While several works reference cartoons in the Mandate-era press in Palestine in

passing (c.f. Kabha 2007; Khalidi 1997), Sufian is the only scholar to examine the images in any

depth. Her article examines cartoons in both the Arabic daily Filastin and Hebrew daily Davar to

demonstrate the use of physiognomic signifiers in the cartoons of both presses. Her work does an

excellent job dissecting the content of the cartoons and exploring how cartoons in both presses

interacted with and related to each other, yet does little to address the medium, production, or

intended audience of the cartoons.5

Extending Filastin’s Content to an Illiterate Audience

4 Citing the Peel Commission’s findings, Kabha estimates Filastin’s circulation in 1936 as c. 4,000-6,000, reaching perhaps double this figure when its chief rival, al-Difa”, was not published (such as when it was temporarily banned by British authorities) and during the strike (2007, 18). 5 Cartoons did reappear in Filastin following the revolt and for a brief period following World War II; however, their function differed markedly from revolt-era cartoons (Barnes 2015)

Figure 1 “A Dictated Policy,” Filastin, 15 July, 1936, 1.

The press occupied a liminal status in Palestine between the elite class that produced and

consumed its textual content and the largely illiterate fellahin class that accessed the daily news

through the public reading of newspapers in cafés and through the visual content, including

cartoons, displayed on Filastin’s pages.6 In this regard the political cartoon, “[a]s any form of

mass culture…has a status somewhere between cultural fast food and highly priced artistic

production,”7 constituting a medium of elite-production yet mass consumption. The Mandate-era

press in Palestine was edited, written, and read by elite families, and most papers were connected

with one of several bourgeois-dominated political parties (Filastin, for instance, was informally

affiliated with the Nashashibi-led Hizb al-Diffa” al-Watani [National Defense Party]). This

limited its ability as a political mouthpiece among Palestine’s largely illiterate population, which

created difficulty during the 1936 Strike. The participation of Palestine’s peasants was crucial for

sustaining the strike; therefore, papers like Filastin began to incorporate cartoons during the

6 LeVine, 52.7 Sune Haugbolle, “Naji al-Ali and the Iconography of Arab Secularism,” in Visual Culture in the Modern Middle East: Rhetoric of the Image, edited by Christiane Gruber and Sune Haugbolle. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013), 252.

height of the strike to extend the press” agenda-setting function to this group. Indeed, al-”Isa

developed the concepts behind Filastin’s cartoons (which were subsequently drawn by an

unknown woman of European origins) to translate bourgeois understandings of Palestine to the

fellaheen and to enlist fellaheen support for the elite-oriented Palestinian national movement’s

goals.

The tension between elite production and consumption of the press in Mandate era

Palestine and the role of the press in shaping local and international sentiment vis-à-vis the

Palestine question can be seen in the first cartoon considered,8 “A Dictated Policy”. The cartoon

features a caricature of then British High Commissioner for Palestine, Sir Arthur Grenfell

Wauchope, sitting on and surrounded by stacks of the Yishuv daily the Palestine Post. Sufian has

observed that cartoonists in the Jewish and Arab press used caricatures of well-known figures

such as Wauchope to represent groups of people associated with that individual.9 In this case

Wauchope represents the British colonial government in Palestine. He is reading a copy of the

Palestine Post, and the caption reveals why: “H. excellency [is] looking for more advice.” The

National Library of Israel’s Historical Jewish Press project maintains that the Palestine Post was

published in English as its “…intended audience was English readers in Palestine and nearby

regions—British Mandate officials, local Jews and Arabs, Jewish readers abroad, tourists, and

Christian pilgrims. Zionist institutions considered the newspaper one of the most effective means

of exerting influence on the British authorities.”10 In effect, then, the basic commentary of the

cartoon was correct: the Palestine Post was a powerful tool for influencing British and

international public opinion and for advancing the Zionist cause.

8

9 Sufian, 27.10 Historical Jewish Press. “Palestine Bulletin.” National Library of Israel.

“A Dictated Policy” forces Filastin’s audience to consider the form and purpose of news

media. Citing Hegel’s observation “…that newspapers serve modern man as a substitute for

morning prayers…”11 Anderson firmly establishes the press—and indeed the very act of reading

the daily newspaper—as central to the development of nationalism. While a member of a nation

may read a newspaper in private, he or she is aware that at the same time, countless others

participate in the same ritual, digesting the same product that relies on shared cultural signifiers.

Simultaneously, “…the newspaper reader, observing exact replicas of his own paper being

consumed by his subway, barbershop, or residential neighbours, is continually reassured that the

imagined world [i.e. the nation] is visibly rooted in everyday life.”12 Thus the simple event of

reading a newspaper becomes one of the primary means through which the nation is imagined.

Al-”Isa capitalized on this aspect of the press in a “A Dictated Policy,” drawing attention not

only to the role of the Jewish press in engendering international sympathy toward Zionism, but

focusing on the role of the press as creator of the nation itself. Thus when Wauchope,

representing the British colonial government, reads the Palestine Post, he becomes a participant

in the Jewish community, in many respects a member of the Jewish “nation” itself. Al-”Isa

therefore implicitly links British and Jewish nationalisms (and, by extension, colonization), and

portrays the emergence of a Jewish press in Palestine as troubling evidence of this linkage.

The placement and medium of “A Dictated Policy” evidence al-'Isa's intention to employ

cartoons as a means for extending Filastin’s reach. Images, including cartoons, constituted a

critical component of Filastin as a text, creating a visual lexicon that could be “read” by the

illiterate. LeVine has cogently observed that in Mandate-era Palestine “[n]ewspapers produced

meanings linguistically and visually at the same time, thereby reinforcing their power to

11 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. (London: Verso, 1983), 34.12 Ibid, 36.

demarcate the interiority and exteriority of the nation and making this imagination a more

powerful force.”13 A prominent café culture in Mandatory Palestine provided the means for the

illiterate to receive news. The most significant news stories from the more widely-distributed

Arab dailies, like Filastin, were often read aloud at gatherings in cafés to increase awareness of

global and parochial happenings and to encourage sustained participation in the strike.

Additionally, papers were often posted in cafés or other public spaces for the benefit of those

who were unable to afford a subscription (Khalidi 2006, 39). As most of these individuals would

also have been unable to read, the visual content in the press, including cartoons, was all they

could access through this means. As a result, Filastin frequently featured large images intended

to capture this audience on its first page, including cartoons. An illiterate Arab viewer would

have been able to decode the cartoon by “reading” its visual signifiers. In “A Dictated Policy,”

Wauchope provided a readily recognizable figure and the artist took great pains to draw the

copies of the Palestine Post in detail, rendering them easy to recognize as well. Linking British

and Jewish colonization in Palestine, al-”Isa thus employed “A Dictated Policy” as a readily

accessible means for engendering sustained fellaheen support for the strike and revolt.

Cartoons, Text, and Visual Signification

13 LeVine, 53.

Figure 2 “Another Sharp Weapon,” Filastin, 10 July, 1936, 1.

Further evidence that al-”Isa included cartoons in Filastin to expand the paper’s reach can be

seen in the degree to which he employed visual signification in his cartoons as a “text” that could

be “read” by an illiterate audience. While cartoons in general rely as much on visual signification

as they do text, the degree to which Filastin’s cartoons relied on visual as opposed to textual cues

for interpretation demonstrate al-'Isa's intentions. Each of Filastin’s cartoons was laden with

detail, and in turn each detail carried with it a portion of the image’s overall message. While

most of Filastin’s cartoons did contain text (both Arabic and English), the words often only

served to summarize what the images themselves displayed more powerfully.

The next two cartoons, “Another Sharp Weapon” and “The Man of the Two Wives,” rely

on gendered coding to convey meaning visually. Chatterjee has established that women often act

as signifiers of the nation in colonial and postcolonial contexts, noting that they represent the

authentic “spiritual” core of nationalism.14 This is true of both the actual women of the nation,

whose lives are regulated and bodies policed as part of the exercise of nationalism, as well as

images of women, who signify the core values of the nation. Additionally, women can also serve

to signify threats to the nation through employing the trope of woman as seductress.

In “Another Sharp Weapon,” a woman identified simply as Esther, a name that confirms

her Jewish identity, dines with colonial secretary William Ormsby-Gore. Ormsby-Gore states

that “I have done all I could for your people…” before listing off a litany of pro-Zionist policies

he has brought about in the British government. Esther replies by whispering an additional

request in his ear: “One more little favor darling! that [sic] the collective punishment should also

include the seizure of arab [sic] land…” Chaim Weizmann, who al-”Isa uses to represent the

Zionist movement, appears to be giving the woman instructions. The image employs the trope of

woman as threat to communicate the editor’s message. The woman represents Zionist efforts to

influence British policy, which al-”Isa perceives to have been successful. In this view, the British

are acting as stooges for the Zionist movement. In fact, many British officials did see Zionist and

British interests in Palestine as aligned and actively sought to foster ties with the Jewish

community in Palestine, making the general message of the cartoon correct. Here, as in

14 Partha Chatterjee. The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Hierarchies. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 3-13, 113-134.

numerous other cartoons in Filastin during the general strike, al-”Isa presents Jewish and British

colonial aims in Palestine as inseparable and a joint venture (see below).

The cartoon’s text also belies al-‘Isa’s interest in promoting his message to a wider

audience during the Great Strike. Compared with cartoons featured in Filastin after the Arab

Rebellion, which typically featured no or very little textual content, al-‘Isa incorporated dialogue

to a significantly greater extent during the revolt than after.15 The lengthy Arabic dialogue that

accompanied the cartoon (and others during the 1936 Strike) reveals that while these images

were primarily intended for a different audience than the textual content of the paper, al-‘Isa also

used cartoons to reinforce the editorial content of his paper among his traditional, literate

readership. However, the inclusion of just as lengthy of an English version of the dialogue

reveals that al-”Isa intended for his cartoons to reach rank-and-file British citizens serving in the

Mandate. A prominent image on the first page of the paper featuring both an English dialogue

and a readily-recognizable British figure such as Ormsby-Gore would certainly have caught the

attention of a soldier, low-ranking diplomat, business person, or missionary working in the

Mandate. While the British commissioner in Palestine had all local newspapers, including

Filastin, translated in order to censor their content (a fact that al-‘Isa certainly was aware of

when crafting the textual content of the paper (c.f. Kabha 2007), cartoons with English dialogue

allowed for a larger British “readership” of Filastin’s editorial views. In this specific image,

Al-‘Isa sought to inculcate in his British audience a sense of threat rising out of Great Britain’s

fraught relationship with the Zionist endeavor in Palestine. The image emasculates the mighty

British Empire, reducing it to a caricature of a man who has lost all control in the presence of a

licentious woman, in this case, Zionist propaganda. This claim is intended to shame and

15 Barnes, Jeffrey John. “Visualizing the Emerging Nation: Jewish and Arab Editorial Cartoons in Palestine, 1939-48.” In Postcolonial Comics: Texts, Events, Identities, edited by Binita Mehta and Pia Mukherji. (New York: Rutledge, 2015).

humiliate a British audience, and alert them to the fact that policy in Great Britain was being

controlled by outsiders. Thus cartoons permitted al-”Isa not only to reach illiterate Palestinians,

but also to extend his scathing critique of Zionism, and specifically British support for Zionism,

to a British audience.

Figure 3 “The Man of the Two Wives,” Filastin, 25 July, 1936, 1.

Al-‘Isa employed a similar strategy of employing gendered visual signifiers to reach an

illiterate Arab audience with the inclusion of English dialogue to reach a British audience in

“The Man of the Two Wives,” one of the last cartoons featured in Filastin during the 1936

Strike. The illustration depicts John Bull, the indelible caricature of the British Empire, standing

between two women before the archbishop. The dialogue reveals his dilemma. He declares that

he “…married first an Arab woman and then a Jewess…” which resulted in sixteen years of “…

no peace at home.” The cartoon plays on the history of British engagement with Palestine. The

1915 Hussein-McMahon correspondence promised the creation of an Arab state in the Arab

portions of Asia to Shariff Hussein of Mecca in exchange for his participation in a revolt against

the Ottoman Empire. Most Arabs understood historic Palestine as being included as part of this

promise. Two years later, however, the British government contradicted this with the infamous

Balfour Declaration, which declared that “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the

establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” These two agreements are

embodied in the images of the two women, and the sixteen year marriage represents the duration

of formal British control in Palestine under a League of Nations Mandate.

The cartoon’s English dialogue relied heavily on a knowledge of British engagement in

the Middle East during World War I and therefore offers evidence that al-‘Isa intended it at least

in part for a British audience. Additionally, the presence of the archbishop adds another layer of

meaning for this group. Great Britain prided itself on being a Christian nation, and the

missionary impulse was one of the chief motivations for British imperial expansion. The

archbishop signifies this discourse, and his condemnation of John Bull’s marriage to the Jewish

woman after his marrying the Arab woman directly challenges the moral claims of the British

Empire. Al-”Isa leads the reader to question the morality of Britain’s actions toward Palestinian

Arabs vis-à-vis the Jewish question. This comment is made possible through emphasizing the

vulnerability and purity of the woman signifying Palestine.

The depiction of the two women, in fact, is where the main meaning of the cartoon is

conveyed, and would have been especially salient for Filastin’s illiterate audience. Fleischmann

has observed that in Palestine during the 1920s and 1930s “…the Arabic press was a primary

vehicle through which growing alarm about gender was articulated.”16 Indeed the content of the

press during the Mandate “…reveal[ed] subliminal anxieties in Palestinian society that were

deeply implicated in the profound social and cultural changes extending beyond the specific

issues of the “woman question” on which much ink was expended.”17 In the case of “The Man of

the Two Wives,” anxieties about the national question and the fate of Palestine in the face of

Zionism were mapped onto women’s bodies, simultaneously expressing angst about global

changes in gender roles as well as parochial concerns about national sovereignty.

Difference in dress often served as a visual signifier of nationhood in the turn-of-the-

century Middle East, including in editorial cartoons.18 Al-‘Isa draws on this tradition, depicting

the Arab woman and Jewish woman in dramatically different clothing laden with meaning. The

cartoonist drew the Palestinian woman in traditional clothing, signifying purity, authenticity, and

tradition. This is intended to represent the Palestinian nation as a whole. In stark contrast, the

Jewish woman is dressed in European fashions emblematic of the “New Woman,” signifying

immorality, foreignness, and the threats of modernity. Additionally, the Palestinian woman holds

a bird, a symbol of peace and morality, whereas the Jewish woman holds a cigarette, a symbol of

vice. In “The Man of the Two Wives,” woman, as emblem of the nation, can be either

16 Fleischmann, Ellen L. The Nation and its ‘New’ Women: The Palestinian Women’s Movement, 1920-1948 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), 34.17 Ibid, 63.18 Palmira Brummett, “Dogs, Women, Cholera, and Other Menaces in the Streets: Cartoon Satire in the Ottoman Revolutionary Press, 1908-11.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27 (1995).

threatening or vulnerable. The Jewish woman, who, as in “Another Sharp Weapon,” represented

the Jewish nation as a whole, posed a threat to the Palestinian people, whereas the Arab woman,

representative of Palestinian Arabs, possessed a purity that needed to be guarded against outside

threats. The rich visual cues in the image would readily have conveyed this message to an

illiterate audience, even if they could not catch the allusion to the Hussein-McMahon

correspondence and Balfour Declaration that the dialogue points to.

Handhala and the Resistance Aesthetic

Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali’s work drew upon similar motifs and strategies as

Filastin’s. Further, the context in which al-Ali worked—Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee culture,

al-Ali’s political sympathies, and the Israeli and Arab censorship that frequently sought to

silence his voice—all had a tremendous impact on his cartoons. Artists living as refugees in

Beirut, like al-Ali, frequently communicated a dual narrative through their work: the inescapable

dislocation of their present surroundings, as well as the fractured past of their memories of home,

weaving together fragments of their own stories and disjointed memories of Palestine into a

broader cultural framework.19 His experience of dispossession led al-Ali to sympathize with the

political Left,20 yet while he “…belonged to a leftist Arab milieu in Kuwait, Beirut, and

London…,” he was never formally “…a member of a political movement, although he was close

to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.”21 Still, leftist themes are evident in much of

the cartoonist’s work. Censorship, from both the Israeli state as well as the myriad of Arab

regimes that became the targets of al-Ali’s frequently scathing criticism, also left an indelible

mark on al-Ali’s work.

19 Kamal Boullata, “Artists Re-Member Palestine in Beirut,” Journal of Palestine Studies (Summer 2003): 22.20 Joan Mandell, “Naji al-Ali Remembered,” MERIP Middle East Report (Nov./Dec. 1987): 27.21 Haugbolle, 236.

Sufian’s observation on the relationship between censorship and editorial cartoons, though

written about cartoons from an earlier era, apply well to al-Ali’s work: “Censorship increased the

usefulness of political cartoons because subversive messages could be shifted out of the text…

and into the image. Incendiary words could be reincarnated as caricatures, a form more likely to

pass censorship regulations.”22 Additionally, “[l]ike most artists living under repressive

circumstances, Naji relied heavily on symbolism, which he called ‘a secret language between me

and the readers.’”23 Thus al-Alias work emerged as a resistance vernacular, a mixture of poignant

symbols—including the images of Christ in the following cartoons—that readily challenged his

viewers, forcing “…them to confront their own predicament vis-à-vis the Palestinian

experience,”24 pulling Palestinian refugees out of their subaltern status through giving them a

voice of their own in his images.

Drawing on a fractured past, one that has been disjointed through dislocation, occupation,

and suffering, al-Ali draws together the fragments of the Palestinian past, absorbing the pain of

the Palestinian experience in the twentieth century, and creates an alternate narrative to the

present that embodies strength through resistance. Through understanding al-Ali’s cartoons

scholars gain a glimpse into the period of Palestinian history in which the shocked resignation of

the Nakba and Naksa gave way to resistance and resiliency, paving the way for a reimagining of

what it means to be Palestinian and the transformation of victimhood discourse in Palestine into

a narrative of strength. In al-Ali’s work, the process of translating memory of Palestine’s past

into present action is vividly displayed.

The child-character Handhala is a product of al-Ali’s experience of dispossession, a

product of graphic re-membering, and a representation of the young artist forced from his home

22 S. Sufian, 27.23 Mandell, 27.24 Boullata, “Artists Re-Member,” 29.

in al-Shajara by Israeli soldiers, who became a shoeless refugee child in Lebanon.25 Handhala,

like al-Ali, bears witness to the suffering of the Palestinian people, reclaiming their historical

narrative, and joins in their resistance to the Occupation. Handhala politicizes the past in the

present, threatening the Zionist narrative that dominated coverage of the Palestine conflict over

the previous century, embodying Berger’s observation that:

A people or a class which is cut off from its own past is far less free to choose and to act

as a people or class than one that has been able to situate itself in history. This is why—

and this is the only reason why—the entire art of the past has now become a political

issue.26

Handhala forces Palestine into the annals of history, refusing to let the land of his birth, the land

to which he longs to return, be claimed as part of the historical narrative of any outside group.

Every detail of Handhala conveys meaning. His face is never visible, “…either obscured

or deliberately turned away from viewers…” while “…his hands are clasped behind his back as a

sign of rejection of hypocrisy and defiance.”27 Preserving the moment in which al-Ali himself

was uprooted from Palestine, Handhala “…represents the just struggle for the right of return and

ensured his cartoons would never normalize the predicament of refugees,”28 keeping the memory

of the Nakba and Naksa alive as a tactic of resistance. Najjar recounts that “Naji Al-Ali

explained that his character Handala is partial to the poor,” and that al-Ali used Handhala “…to

draw social conditions and attitudes instead of leaders and bosses.”29 Combining these features,

25 Nur Masalha, “Civil Liberation Theology in Palestine: Indigenous, Secular-Humanist, and Post-Colonial Perspectives,” in Theologies of Liberation in Palestine and Israel, edited by Nur Masalha and Lisa Isherwood (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2014): 207-208.26 John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 1972), 33.27 Masalha, 208.28 Marcy Jane Knopf-Newman, The Politics of Teaching Palestine to Americans: Addressing Pedagogical Strategies, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 12529 Orayb Aref Najjar, “Cartoons as a Site for the Construction of Palestinian Refugee Identity: An Exploratory Study of Cartoonist Naji al-Ali,” Journal of Communication Inquiry: 256.

“[t]he ordinary figurative character of Handhala as a martyr/witness is the quintessence of

resistance by a people determined to overcome exile and transcend history and look for a better

future.”30 Indeed, Handhala has continued to represent the Palestinian people well past the death

of his creator,31 becoming an icon of resistance to the Occupation through appearing in

contemporary graffiti, on t-shirts, and countless representations in social media.32 Finally, the

power of Handhala lies in al-Ali’s reliance on visual cues, rather than text, to communicate his

message. Indeed, few of al-Ali’s cartoons contain more than a brief fragment of text, opting

instead to employ the figure of Handhala to unsettle the viewer by drawing her gaze past her own

world and into the Palestinian experience.33

Images of Resistance in the Cartoons of Naji al-Ali

Al-Ali joined Handhala, the child-shahid who bore witness to Palestine’s past, with the figure of

Christ, a symbol of both liberation and suffering, to produce some of his most memorable and

powerful cartoons.34 The first two of these images transgress normative depictions of Christ on

the cross as a motif of redemptive suffering by depicting the crucified Messiah as actively

resisting his persecution. In this image, Christ’s face—like Handhala’s—is obscured from the

viewers” gaze. Qumsiyeh has observed that in all of al-Ali’s cartoons, “Handhala is looking back

“to Palestine,” at the absurdity of the scenarios that al-Ali drew as a form of resistance—a way of

30 Masalha, 209.31 Ami Elad-Bouskila, Modern Palestinian Literature and Culture (London: Frank Cass, 1999), 94-95.32 Haugbolle, 230.33 Writing on the visual, rather than textual, power of the cartoon, Navasky remarks that “…political cartoons, perhaps because they contain a condensed argument either along with the image or incarnated in it, provide the power of the image plus—a one-two punch, if you will. They have what one observer calls “pre-oedipal access to the observer’s emotions,” an inescapable immediacy; and although cartoons often include a caption or label, at their best—unlike, say, modern poetry—they don’t require nuanced interpretations. (And like all good poetry, they resist paraphrase).” Victor S. Navasky, The Art of Controversy: Political Cartoons and their Enduring Power (New York: Knopf, 2013), 18.34 All images referenced in this paper can be found in A Child in Palestine: The Cartoons of Naji al-Ali (London: Verso, 2009). For quick reference, most images are also available at <http://www.handala.org>.

reclaiming the dignity of our humanity,”35 an action shared in this cartoon by Christ. A crown of

thorns—the archetypical signifier of Christ as an unjust sufferer—graces the Messiah’s head,

representing the sufferings of the Palestinians at the hands of their Israeli Occupiers. In al-Ali’s

image, however, Christ refuses to passively accept his suffering. Predating the First Intifada by

five years, and thus well-before stone-throwing became a dominant signifier of resistance in the

Palestinian and international imaginary,36 the Messiah joins the refugee-child Handhala in

throwing a stone back at those who persecute him without cause. Notably, the hand from which

Christ has thrown the stone has come off the cross, though the nail still remains firmly in it.

Appreciating al-Ali’s full message in this cartoon requires more than a passing glance.

Several observations merit comment at the outset. Firstly is the cartoonist’s use of Christ in these

images. While al-Ali’s generation of Palestinian artists frequently used religion as “…one among

many components of national culture, and sometimes even a signifier of reactionary thought and

conservative social structures,”37 one of their primary focuses was to “…tell the story of

Palestine and the Palestinians through easily understood symbols.”38 In this context, therefore,

Christ becomes a universally recognizable subject who serves to translate Handhala's experience

of Nakba and Naksa to a broader global audience that otherwise may have refused to listen to

Palestinian voices. Specifically, al-Ali “…makes use of religious symbols like the crucifix to tell

the story of social injustice.”39 However, at the same time al-Ali “…effectively secularizes

[Christ]. Jesus becomes another stranger, hit by the condition of strangeness and exile (ghurba)

that runs through all of Al-Ali’s work.”40 Thus in al-Ali’s work Christ was meant to evoke

35 Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, Popular Resistance in Palestine: A History of Hope and Empowerment (London: Pluto Press, 2011), 133.36 Knopf-Newman, 126.37 Haugbolle, 223.38 Samih K. Farsoun, Culture and Customs of the Palestinians (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), 110.39 Haugbolle, 239.40 Ibid, 239.

international empathy with the Palestinian cause, not to necessarily present a Christian

perspective on the conflict or to appeal to Christians as such.41 Finally, the situation of Christ on

the cross mirrors the Palestinian experience of hope in suffering through resistance, a motif Al-

Ali draws on for this image. The crucified Messiah is a signifier of present struggle and

suffering, yet contains within it the hope of a coming glory through resurrection, rebirth, and a

future more magnificent than the past. Perhaps no other image embodies Palestine’s longing for

and imagining a different reality while walking through the present valley of the shadow of

death.

Secondly, in this image (and, again, with those that follow), Christ mirrors Handhala as

the consummate Palestinian shahid, the witness/martyr to the deleterious effects of Israeli

Occupation on Palestinians individually and collectively. Handhala’s posture, with his ever-

turned-away face, draws the viewer’s gaze to Christ, while the sufferings of the Palestinian

people are mapped on the body of the crucified Messiah. Handhala refuses to look away, and in

doing so calls those outside of Palestine to join him in his act of witnessing. However, this is

more than a passive glance. As Handhala and Christ both throw a stone back at their oppressors,

their witnessing of the Palestinian plight turns into resistance, embodying the discourse of sumud

—resiliency—that has come to dominate post-Naksa Palestinian identity. Christ and Handhala

must resist Occupation and oppression, regardless of the efficacy of that resistance (seen in the

cartoon through Christ’s failure to achieve his complete removal from his cross), for if they fail

in that endeavor an essential aspect of their identity will be lost.

41 During the late 1970s and early 1980s, evangelical Christians in the west began to embrace the Zionist cause, effectively joining Christ to Zionism. Palestinian Christians, who equally opposed the Israeli occupation along with their Muslim counterparts, sought to wrest control of this narrative by appealing to western Christians on theological grounds. Al-Ali’s work was not a part of this discourse. Additionally, al-Ali’s use of Christ was not a reflection of emerging Palestinian Liberation theology, although it is at least possible that these images were influenced by liberationist readings of Christianity.

Finally, a full understanding of this cartoon—as well as those that follow—demands a

consideration of both what audience al-Ali intended it for as well as what message he sought to

communicate to that audience. As previously mentioned, Handhala is a product of the artist’s

own experience of being made a refugee and thus is intended to carry that narrative to the

cartoonist’s audience. In spite of his leftist leanings, al-Ali “…consciously chose to publish in

mainstream dailies.”42 Living in the diaspora, al-Ali’s cartoons reached a wide-ranging audience

in the Arab world, publishing cartoons in the Beirut daily al-Safir and the Kuwaiti dailies al-

Syasa and al-Qabas.43 Thus al-Ali’s work reached a Palestinian audience (both Lebanese

refugees as well as Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and Israel via smuggled newspapers),

a broader Arab audience, and a global, multinational audience, and his cartoons must be read

with these groups in mind. For his Palestinian audience, the image of Christ throwing a rock

from the cross encouraged resistance, questioning demands for non-violent resistance that the

international community placed on Palestinians, and encouraged participation in resistance

across all segments of society, including children (signified by Handhala’s joining Christ in

throwing a rock). Christ and Handhala’s gaze invites al-Ali’s audience throughout the Arab

world to join the Palestinians in their fight against Occupation and ethnic cleansing and draws

his global audience into the Palestinian refugee narrative, forcing them to witness Occupation

through the lens of a Palestinian child for perhaps the first time. Including Christ as part of this

reorienting vision only further universalizes al-Ali's message, opening up the possibility for

greater sympathy from viewers in the west.

A second cartoon, “The Intifada of the West Bank and Gaza,” also incorporates the theme

of Christ as resister. As in the previous image, al-Ali includes Handhala and a crucified Christ

42 Mandell, 27.43 Boullata, Palestinian Art, 138.

within the same frame, allowing each character to display the Palestinian condition. Here again,

Christ actively resists his unjust suffering on the cross, kicking not a Roman soldier, but a

member of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The incorporation of an Israeli soldier into the

crucifixion narrative allows al-Ali to highlight two crucial points. Firstly, Christ, a symbol of

morality, participates in resistance against the Israeli Occupation, signifying that resistance on

the part of Palestinians is a moral endeavor. Secondly, the image conveys the idea of unjust

suffering as a necessary impetus for resistance, suggesting that Israel’s military actions against

Palestine can be equated with the Romans” unjust execution of Christ.

Several aspects of this cartoon merit comparison with the previous cartoon. Firstly, it is

important to notice that, just as in al-Ali’s depiction of Christ throwing a stone from the cross,

“The Intifada of the West Bank and Gaza” portrays Christ as actively resisting his suffering, yet

unequivocally shows that resistance does not remove him from the cross. In other words,

resistance, especially of one who remains powerless when faced with the well-armed IDF

soldier, is not necessarily a comprehensive solution to the situation at hand. Faced with

overwhelming international support for Israel in the 1980s (or, at the very best, international

apathy toward the Palestine conflict), the prospects of an effective Palestinian resistance

resulting in tangible change seamed slim at best. Rather, resistance and resiliency formed a core

aspect of Palestinian identity that allowed Palestinians their dignity and humanity in the face of

overwhelming persecution. Unlike the previous cartoon, however, Christ’s face is not obscured,

yet it still does not meet the viewer’s gaze. This hints that, while al-Ali intended Handhala’s

outward gaze to draw viewers into witnessing the horrors being perpetrated against the

Palestinian people, Palestinians were also looking out, eager to see how the world would respond

to their situation. Also contrasting with the previous cartoon, Handhala does not joint Christ in

his resistance. He simply remains a passive and quiet witness, calling viewers to see

Palestinians” humanity. His hands remain firmly clasped behind his back, as al-Ali frequently

drew them.44

“The Intifada of the West Bank and Gaza” also introduces a theme that shows up in many

of al-Ali’s christological cartoons and one that bears in-depth consideration. Situated above the

resisting Messiah’s cross is a crescent moon, an unmistakable symbol of Islam. While Christians

represent a significant minority of Palestine’s population, a majority of Palestinians have been

and are Muslim. The inclusion of the crescent moon is intended at least in part to signal to

viewers that al-Ali is using Christ as a motif in his images and not for theological considerations.

Yet it also adds several other depths of analysis to this image. Firstly, the joining of Christian

and Muslim imagery in al-Ali’s cartoons demonstrates that “…poor Christians and Muslims

suffer alongside each other…”45 in Palestine. The 1980s witnessed a sharp rise in sectarian

conflict in the Middle East, seen perhaps most sharply in neighboring Lebanon,46 yet in Palestine

religious allegiances were frequently subsumed under national identity and belonging in the

context of the Occupation. Al-Ali signals this unity born out of mutual suffering throughout his

cartoons.

Secondly, al-Ali’s joining of Christian and Muslim imagery is intended to foment a

deeper discourse within Palestinian society, what Nur Masalha has termed “a civil liberation

theology.”47 Masalha maintains that in this populist discourse, “…which goes far beyond any

44 In fact, al-Ali’s portrayal of Handhala throwing a rock along with Christ was one of the remarkably few images in which the cartoonist depicts Handhala without his hands clasped behind his back.45 Haugbolle, 239.46 The history of sectarianism in the Middle East is complex and requires a nuanced understanding of the historical contours of the region over the past decade. For more information on the historical rise of sectarianism in Lebanon, see Ussama Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press, 2000). For more information on relations between Christians and Muslims in Palestine, see Daphne Tsimhoni, Christian Communities in Jerusalem and the West Bank Since 1948: An Historical, Social, and Political Study (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993).47 Masalha, 208.

denominational Christian or Muslim theology,”48 is nevertheless “…rooted in a multi-layered

identity and pluralistic context of the region.”49 In this context, “Handhala defined the liberating

resistance and symbolized the sacrifices and martyrdom of ordinary people.”50 Haugbolle largely

agrees, stating that “[i]n Naji al-Ali’s time it was possible, indeed natural, to use religious

symbols to denote the national struggle…Religion in Naji al-Ali’s work is part of the historical

ballast of stories and identity markers that make up the Arab cultural realm as identified from a

secular Arab nationalist viewpoint.”51 Thus Handhala, symbol of both the suffering and

resistance of the Palestinian people, stands as a new “religious” identity for the Palestinian

people, subsuming previous sectarian alignments, and embodied the secular-oriented pan-Arabist

discourse of the day.

The Madonna and Child: Christ as Sufferer

In addition to using imagery of Christ as resister, al-Ali included christological images to

mediate the Palestinian experience of suffering, a central theme in his cartoons.52 In doing so, he

relies on gendered coding, mapping the twin experiences of exile and Occupation onto women’s

bodies. Chatterjee has observed that women signify the central, “spiritual” aspects of nationalist

discourse, representing what is pure and authentic in the nationalist imaginary.53 Yaqub applies

this to al-Ali’s work, perspicaciously remarking that “…al-Ali locates the idea of Palestine

squarely in the private sphere, in women’s roles in biological and social reproduction. Because

the idea is intact, women are able to perform their roles even in states of extreme violence and

dispossession.”54 For al-Ali, women are both nurturers of Palestinian society as well as the ones

48 Ibid, 209.49 Ibid, 208.50 Ibid, 208.51 Haugbolle, 256.52 Najjar, 271.53 Chatterjee, 3-13, 113-134.54 Nadia Yaqub, “Gendering the Palestinian Political Cartoon,” Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication (2009): 201.

who mourn for those who die resisting. Like Christ and Handhala they are emblematic of

Palestinian suffering and resilience in the fact of suffering. In this respect al-Ali’s work was once

again prescient, anticipating the large role women would play in the first Intifada, both as active

members of the resistance to Israeli Occupation, but also as symbols of Palestine and Palestinian

resistance itself.55

Borrowing on these notions, one of al-Ali’s most indelible cartoons features the imagery

of the Madonna and child, depicting a forlorn, Mary-like figure weeping over a refugee child

wrapped in a kuffiyeh. A single tear falls down the mother’s cheek as she holds this hopeless

child of Palestine. In the background is the word “Palestine,” with a crucifix replacing the letter

“t”. Here, Christ is not resisting; he remains firmly nailed to the cross, while the mother and child

weep. The image projected is that of abject suffering, a continual process of mourning and

despair over what appears to be an irreversible situation. Resting next to the cross is a Muslim

crescent, calling to mind the civil liberation discourse discussed in the previous cartoon.

Handhala stands in the foreground, almost blending into the woman’s cloak. As always, his face

remains obscured, which contrasts with the child in the woman’s arms, whose face is

intentionally visible, as he performs his silent vigil, serving as a witness to the gross, unjust

suffering of the Palestinian people.

The focus of the cartoon is gendered suffering that serves to signify the Palestinian nation

as a whole. In contrast to the previous two cartoons that rely on christological images to

construct Palestinian identity vis-à-vis resistance, the image of the Madonna and child al-Ali

employs dictates that the Palestinian experience post-Nakba and post-Naksa is that of perpetual

suffering, embodied in the tears of a woman weeping over the fate of her child. The cross and

55 Penny Johnson and Eileen Kuttab, “Where have all the Women (and Men) Gone? Reflections on Gender and the Second Palestinian Intifada,” Feminist Review (Winter, 2001).

crescent in the background of the image project suffering across all elements of modern

Palestinian society. The two symbols are dwarfed by the woman and child, signifying the

comprehensive nature of suffering as a constitutive element of twentieth century Palestinian

identity.

Yet suffering and resistance do not constitute mutually exclusive categories of Palestinian

identity. Embedded in the gendered construct of Palestinian suffering as it is mapped onto the

bodies of female mourners is the implicit notion that tears, the human recognition of pain and

loss, bear witness to the gross injustices inflicted on the Palestinian people. The tears of

Palestine’s mothers—like the child shahid Handhala—refuse to let the world forget the horrors

of the Palestinian experience. Al-Ali himself recognized this link in his cartoons, the content of

which show that “…the struggle is not only fought by moustachioed men, but by strong,

liberated women who use their tears for ammunition.”56 While al-Ali primarily draws the woman

to signify the Palestinian nation, the resistance-nature of her suffering reflects the increased role

of women in the Palestinian resistance in the 1970s and 1980s. 57 This role was made possible

through

an occupying regime that viewed women’s political activity as less threatening than male

activity. As a result, men in the territories were more likely than women to be removed

from the political scene (through deportation, imprisonment, or being in hiding), giving

women relatively more political latitude and organizational staying power than men… 58

56 Abdul Hadi Ayyad, A Child in Palestine: The Cartoons of Naji al-Ali (London: Verso, 2009), 98.57 It is important to remember that depictions of women in nationalist discourse are often not reflective of reality. Hasso has argued that, while it is crucial to consider how men have made used of representations of women in the process of crafting nationalist discourse, we need to acknowledge the actual role women themselves have played in constructing the nation on their own terms: “In sum, a more accurate assessment of women’s nationalist involvement should situate them simultaneously as actors, symbols, and authors—using, being used by, and constructing nationalism on their own terms.” Frances S. Hasso, “The “Women’s Front”: Nationalism, Feminism, and Modernity in Palestine,” Gender and Society (August 1998). 58 Frances S. Hasso, Resistance, Repression, and Gender Politics in Occupied Palestine and Jordan (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2005), 94.

In Palestine, however, such women were lauded, and frequently became emblems of the nation

itself. Women as symbols of Palestinian resistance, especially resistance through resiliency in

suffering, became a key element of Palestinian political discourse during this period and can be

seen not just in this particular image, but throughout al-Ali’s work.