How Watermelon Imagery, a Symbol of Solidarity with Palestinians, Spread Around the Planet 

People shout slogans in front of the German embassy during a pro-Palestinian gathering in Belgrade, Serbia, Sunday, Nov. 12, 2023. (AP)
People shout slogans in front of the German embassy during a pro-Palestinian gathering in Belgrade, Serbia, Sunday, Nov. 12, 2023. (AP)
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How Watermelon Imagery, a Symbol of Solidarity with Palestinians, Spread Around the Planet 

People shout slogans in front of the German embassy during a pro-Palestinian gathering in Belgrade, Serbia, Sunday, Nov. 12, 2023. (AP)
People shout slogans in front of the German embassy during a pro-Palestinian gathering in Belgrade, Serbia, Sunday, Nov. 12, 2023. (AP)

Over the past three months, on banners and T-shirts and balloons and social media posts, one piece of imagery has emerged around the world in protests against the Israel-Hamas war: the watermelon.

The colors of sliced watermelon — with red pulp, green-white rind and black seeds — are the same as those on the Palestinian flag. From New York and Tel Aviv to Dubai and Belgrade, the fruit has become a symbol of solidarity, drawing together activists who don't speak the same language or belong to the same culture but share a common cause.

To avoid repressive censorship, Chinese dissidents once pioneered “algospeak,” or creative shorthands that bypass content moderation. People around the world began using algospeak to subvert algorithmic biases on TikTok, Instagram and other platforms.

The internet is now teeming with pictorial signs — pixelated images, emoji and other typographical codes — that signal political dissent. The watermelon emoji is the latest example.

Here's how the watermelon went from being a symbol of protest in the West Bank and Gaza to a global sign of solidarity with Palestinians online.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT After the 1967 Mideast war, the Israeli government cracked down on displays of the Palestinian flag in Gaza and the West Bank. In Ramallah in 1980, the military shut down a gallery run by three artists because they showed political art and works in the colors of the Palestinian flag — red, green, black and white.

The trio was later summoned by an Israeli officer. According to artist and exhibit organizer Sliman Mansour, an Israeli officer told him, “It is forbidden to organize an exhibition without permission from the military, and secondly, it is forbidden to paint in the colors of the Palestinian flag.” The officer mentioned a watermelon as one example of art that would violate the army's rules, Mansour told The Associated Press last week.

In protest, people began to wave the fruit in public.

“There are stories of young men who defiantly walked the streets with slices of the fruit, risking arrest from Israeli soldiers,” Jerusalem-born author Mahdi Sabbagh wrote. “When I see a watermelon, I think of the unbreakable spirit of our people.”

From the mid-90s, when Israelis and Palestinians reached interim peace deals, until the current nationalist Israeli government took office a year ago, raising the Palestinian flag receded as a major issue. Three decades later, “it became a national symbol” again, Mansour said.

A year ago, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir banned Palestinian flags in public places. This effort was met with fervent opposition. In response, Zazim, an activist group of Arab and Jewish Israelis, plastered taxis in Tel Aviv with large watermelon stickers that read: “This is not a Palestinian flag.”

“Our message to the government is clear,” the organization said in a written statement. “We’ll always find a way to bypass any absurd ban and we won’t stop struggling for freedom of expression and democracy — whether this involves the Pride flag or the Palestinian flag.”

For some, embracing the colors of the flag is about striving for freedom and equality rather than necessarily statehood.

“I’ve never cared for flags or nationalism,” says Mayssoun Sukarieh, an expert in Middle Eastern studies at King’s College London. “But when it comes to Palestine, it’s a flag of a colonized people who never saw independence. And because it has been banned, it becomes more of a symbol of resistance than it is of nationalism.”

WATERMELON EMOJI Watermelons have long been a staple of food in the region, with some dishes, like a popular salad in southern Gaza, originating with Bedouin Arab tribes.

Increasingly, young activists have adopted the watermelon emoji in calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Emojis may confuse algorithms that advocates say tech companies deploy to suppress posts with keywords like “Gaza” and even just “Palestinian.”

“With the watermelon (emoji), I think this is actually really the first time where I’ve seen it widely used as a stand-in. And that to me marks a notable uptick in censorship of Palestinian content,” says Jillian York, the director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The Berlin-based York has analyzed Meta’s policies. While “shadow banning,” or the limited visibility of certain posts, can be difficult to discern, advocacy and nonprofit organizations studying digital rights in the Middle East say they have tracked stark biases, especially on the Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram. Meta hasn't said much directly about this but cites a statement it released in October.

“Censorship is somewhat obvious” on Instagram, York said. In mid-October, people began to notice that if one’s Instagram bio said “Palestinian” in English alongside the Palestinian flag emoji and “Praise be to God” in Arabic, the app translated the text to “Terrorist.” Meta released a public apology.

Watermelons are not the only symbol to catch on with activists. Other signs of global Palestinian solidarity include keys, spoons, olives, doves, poppies and the keffiyeh scarf. In November, to connect with the peaceful message of Armistice Day, when many Brits traditionally wear red poppy pins, protesters this year passed out white poppy pins, to commemorate victims of all wars. On the holiday, scores of protesters wearing poppy pins marched across London calling for an end to the war in Gaza.

In the United States, Jewish Voice for Peace amplified watermelon imagery in calling for a ceasefire in Gaza last month. The group held signs in New York in the colors of the Palestinian flag and with triangular watermelons, leveraging the triangle symbol of ACT UP, the historic AIDS activist group.

Jason Rosenberg, a member of both organizations, said, “Our reinvented image shows that our fight for liberation and fight to end the epidemic is intrinsically connected to the Palestinian struggle."

SEED IMAGERY Another reason the watermelon might resonate: It has seeds. There is a saying, often attributed to the Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos, that is popular among activists: “They wanted to bury us; they didn’t know we were seeds.”

“You might be able to smash a watermelon. You might be able to destroy a fruit, but the seed is a little harder to crush,” says Shawn Escarciga, an artist who created the coalition's design. “It’s really powerful that life can come out of something so small and something so resilient — and that it can be spread so, so easily.”

The image of a watermelon punctuated by bold, triangular seeds was held up at the groups' protest at Manhattan's Lincoln Center, and has since proliferated online. That often happens — art emerges from protest movements and then enters the mainstream.

“Artists have always been at the forefront of revolution, resistance, politics, in varying degrees,” Escarciga says.

Israel’s air, ground and sea assault in Gaza has killed more than 24,000 people, some 70% of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

Throughout, activists around the world have continued to call for peace and a permanent ceasefire. Israel says ending the war now, before Hamas is crushed, would give a victory to the militants who attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7 and killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostage.

“We’re seeing Palestinian flags being banned, even the emoji online being flagged — and, you know, the word ‘Palestine’ being censored online,” Escarciga said. “But having this image that transcends language, that transcends culture, that transcends algorithms — can really reach people.”



The US Election by Numbers

Clark County Election Workers inspect mail-in ballots for the 2024 Election at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 02 November 2024. (EPA)
Clark County Election Workers inspect mail-in ballots for the 2024 Election at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 02 November 2024. (EPA)
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The US Election by Numbers

Clark County Election Workers inspect mail-in ballots for the 2024 Election at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 02 November 2024. (EPA)
Clark County Election Workers inspect mail-in ballots for the 2024 Election at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 02 November 2024. (EPA)

Swing states, electoral college votes, candidates up and down the ballot, and millions of potential voters: Here is the US election, broken down by numbers.

- Two -

Several independents ran -- and at least one, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, stumbled into a number of eyebrow-raising headlines.

But in the end, the presidential race comes down to a binary choice, with the two candidates from the major parties -- Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump -- seeking to lead a polarized America.

- Five -

November 5 -- Election Day, traditionally held on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November.

- Seven -

The number of swing states -- those which don't clearly favor one party over the other, meaning they are up for grabs.

Harris and Trump are courting voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, concentrating their campaign efforts there in a push to ensure victory.

In a razor-tight election, just a handful of votes in any of those states could decide the outcome.

- 34 and 435 -

Voters won't just decide the White House occupant on Election Day -- they will also hit refresh on the US Congress.

Thirty-four Senate seats and all 435 spots in the House of Representatives are up for grabs.

In the House, members serve a two-year term. Republicans currently have the majority, and Harris's Democrats will be hoping for a turnaround.

In the Senate, 34 seats out of 100 are available, for a six-year term. Republicans are hoping to overturn the narrow Democratic majority.

- 538 -

Welcome to the Electoral College, the indirect system of universal suffrage that governs presidential elections in the United States.

Each state has a different number of electors -- calculated by adding the number of their elected representatives in the House, which varies according to population, to the number of senators (two per state).

Rural Vermont, for example, has just three electoral votes. Giant California, meanwhile, has 54.

There are 538 electors in total scattered across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. To take the White House, a candidate must win 270 votes.

- 774,000 -

The number of poll workers who made sure the 2020 election ran smoothly, according to the Pew Research Center.

There are three types of election staff in the United States.

The majority are poll workers -- recruited to do things like greet voters, help with languages, set up voting equipment, and verify voter IDs and registrations.

Election officials are elected, hired or appointed to carry out more specialized duties such as training poll workers, according to Pew.

Poll watchers are usually appointed by political parties to observe the ballot count -- expected to be particularly contentious this year, thanks to Trump's refusal to agree to unconditionally accept the result.

Many election workers have already spoken to AFP about the pressure and threats they are receiving ahead of the November 5 vote.

- 75 million -

As of November 2, more than 75 million Americans had voted early, according to a University of Florida database.

Most US states permit in-person voting or mail-in voting to allow people to deal with scheduling conflicts or an inability to cast their ballots on election day itself on November 5.

- 244 million -

The number of Americans who will be eligible to vote in 2024, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

How many of those will actually cast their ballot remains to be seen, of course. But the Pew Research Center says that the midterm elections of 2018 and 2022, and the presidential vote of 2020, produced three of the highest turnouts of their kind seen in the United States in decades.

"About two-thirds (66 percent) of the voting-eligible population turned out for the 2020 presidential election -- the highest rate for any national election since 1900," Pew says on its website.

That translated to nearly 155 million voters, according to the Census Bureau.