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.”



Israel’s Path of Destruction in Southern Lebanon Raises Fears of an Attempt to Create a Buffer Zone

 This Oct. 24 2024, satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows the village of Ramyah in southern Lebanon. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
This Oct. 24 2024, satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows the village of Ramyah in southern Lebanon. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
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Israel’s Path of Destruction in Southern Lebanon Raises Fears of an Attempt to Create a Buffer Zone

 This Oct. 24 2024, satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows the village of Ramyah in southern Lebanon. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
This Oct. 24 2024, satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows the village of Ramyah in southern Lebanon. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)

Perched on a hilltop a short walk from the Israeli border, the tiny southern Lebanese village of Ramyah has almost been wiped off the map. In a neighboring village, satellite photos show a similar scene: a hill once covered with houses, now reduced to a gray smear of rubble.

Israeli warplanes and ground forces have blasted a trail of destruction through southern Lebanon the past month. The aim, Israel says, is to debilitate the Iran-backed Hezbollah armed group, push it away from the border and end more than a year of Hezbollah fire into northern Israel.

Even United Nations peacekeepers and Lebanese troops in the south have come under fire from Israeli forces, raising questions over whether they can remain in place.

More than 1 million people have fled bombardment, emptying much of the south. Some experts say Israel may be aiming to create a depopulated buffer zone, a strategy it has already deployed along its border with Gaza.

Some conditions for such a zone appear already in place, according to an Associated Press analysis of satellite imagery and data collected by mapping experts that show the breadth of destruction across 11 villages next to the border.

The Israeli military has said the bombardment is necessary to destroy Hezbollah tunnels and other infrastructure it says the group embedded within towns. The blasts have also destroyed homes, neighborhoods and sometimes entire villages, where families have lived for generations.

Israel says it aims to push Hezbollah far enough back that its citizens can return safely to homes in the north, but Israeli officials acknowledge they don’t have a concrete plan for ensuring Hezbollah stays away from the border long term. That is a key focus in attempts by the United States to broker a ceasefire.

Orna Mizrahi, a senior researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, said Israel's immediate aim is not to create a buffer zone — but that might change.

“Maybe we’ll have no other choice than staying there until we have an arrangement that promises us that Hezbollah will not come back to the zone,” she said.

A path of destruction

Troops pushed into southern Lebanon on Oct. 1, backed by heavy bombardment that has intensified since.

Using satellite images provided by Planet Labs PBC, AP identified a line of 11 villages — all within 4 miles (6.5 kilometers) of Lebanon's border with Israel — that have been severely damaged in the past month, either by strikes or detonations of explosives laid by Israeli soldiers.

Analysis found the most intense damage in the south came in villages closest to the border, with between 100 and 500 buildings likely destroyed or damaged in each, according to Corey Scher of CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Der Hoek of Oregon State University, experts in damage assessments.

In Ramyah, barely a single structure still stands on the village’s central hilltop, after a controlled detonation that Israeli soldiers showed themselves carrying out in videos posted on social media. In the next town over, Aita al-Shaab — a village with strong Hezbollah influence — bombardment turned the hilltop with the highest concentration of buildings into a gray wasteland of rubble.

In other villages, the damage is more selective. In some, bombardment tore scars through blocks of houses; in others, certain homes were crushed while their neighbors remained intact.

Another controlled detonation leveled much of the village of Odeissah, with an explosion so strong it set off earthquake alerts in Israel.

In videos of the blast, Lubnan Baalbaki, conductor of the Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra, watched in disbelief as his parents’ house — containing the art collection and a library his father had built up for years — was destroyed.

“This house was a project and a dream for both of my parents,” he told the AP. His parents’ graves in the garden are now lost.

When asked whether its intention was to create a buffer zone, Israel’s military said it was “conducting localized, limited, targeted raids based on precise intelligence" against Hezbollah targets. It said Hezbollah had “deliberately embedded” weapons in homes and villages.

Israeli journalist Danny Kushmaro even helped blow up a home that the military said was being used to store Hezbollah ammunition. In a television segment, Kushmaro and soldiers counted down before they pressed a button, setting off a massive explosion.

Videos posted online by Israel’s military and individual soldiers show Israeli troops planting flags on Lebanese soil. Still, Israel has not built any bases or managed to hold a permanent presence in southern Lebanon. Troops appear to move back and forth across the border, sometimes under heavy fire from Hezbollah.

October has been the deadliest month of 2024 for the Israeli military, with around 60 soldiers killed.

Attacks on UN peacekeeping troops and the Lebanese Army

The bombardment has been punctuated by Israeli attacks on UN troops and the Lebanese Army — forces which, under international law, are supposed to keep the peace in the area. Israel has long complained that their presence has not prevented Hezbollah from building up its infrastructure across the south.

Israel denies targeting either force.

The Lebanese military has said at least 11 of its soldiers were killed in eight Israeli strikes, either at their positions or while assisting evacuations.

The peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, said its forces and infrastructure have been harmed at least 30 times since late September, blaming Israeli military fire or actions for about 20 of them, “with seven being clearly deliberate.”

A rocket likely fired by Hezbollah or an allied group hit UNIFIL’s headquarters in Naqoura on Tuesday, causing some minor injuries, said UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti.

UNIFIL has refused to leave southern Lebanon, despite calls by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for them to go.

Experts warn that could change if peacekeepers come under greater fire.

“If you went from the UN taking casualties to the UN actually taking fatalities,” some nations contributing troops may “say ‘enough is enough,’ and you might see the mission start to crumble,” said Richard Gowan of the International Crisis Group.

The future of the territory is uncertain

International ceasefire efforts appear to be centered on implementing UN Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

It specified that Israeli forces would fully withdraw from Lebanon while the Lebanese army and UNIFIL — not Hezbollah — would be the exclusive armed presence in a zone about 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the border.

But the resolution was not fully implemented. Hezbollah never left the border zone, and Lebanon accuses Israel of continuing to occupy small areas of its land and carrying out frequent military overflights above its territory.

During a recent visit to Beirut, US envoy Amos Hochstein said a new agreement was needed to enforce Resolution 1701.

Israel could be trying to pressure an agreement into existence through the destruction wreaked in southern Lebanon.

Yossi Yehoshua, military correspondent for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, wrote that the military needs to “entrench further its operational achievements” to push Hezbollah, the Lebanese government and mediating countries “to accept an end (of the war) under conditions that are convenient for Israel.”

Some Lebanese fear that means an occupation of parts of the south, 25 years after Israel ended its occupation there.

Lebanese parliamentarian Mark Daou, a critic of both Hezbollah and of Israel’s military operations in Lebanon, said he believed Israel was trying to degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities and turn the Lebanese public “against the will to resist Israeli incursions.”

Gowan, of the International Crisis Group, said one aim of Resolution 1701 was to give the Lebanese army enough credibility that it, not Hezbollah, would be seen “as the legitimate defender” in the south.

“That evaporates if they become (Israel’s) gendarmerie of southern Lebanon,” he said.