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.”



Lebanese 'Orphaned of Their Land' as Israel Blows up Homes

Aita al-Shaab is just one south Lebanon village where homes have been demolished - AFP
Aita al-Shaab is just one south Lebanon village where homes have been demolished - AFP
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Lebanese 'Orphaned of Their Land' as Israel Blows up Homes

Aita al-Shaab is just one south Lebanon village where homes have been demolished - AFP
Aita al-Shaab is just one south Lebanon village where homes have been demolished - AFP

The news came by video. Law professor Ali Mourad discovered that Israel had dynamited his family's south Lebanon home only after footage of the operation was sent to his phone.

"A friend from the village sent me the video, telling me to make sure my dad doesn't see it," Mourad, 43, told AFP.

"But when he got the news, he stayed strong."

Mourad's home in Aitroun village, less than a kilometre from the border, is seen crumpling in a cloud of grey dust.

His father, an 83-year-old paediatrician, had his medical practice in the building. He had lived there with his family since shortly after Israel's 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon ended in 2000.

The family fled the region again after the Israel-Hezbollah war erupted on September 23 after a year of cross-border fire that began with the Gaza war.

South Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold, has since been pummelled by Israeli strikes.

Hezbollah says it is battling Israeli forces at close range in border villages after a ground invasion began last month.

For the first 20 years of his life, Mourad could not step foot in Aitroun because of the Israeli occupation.

He wants his two children to have "a connection to their land", but fears the war could upend any remaining ties.

"I fear my children will be orphaned of their land, as I was in the past," he said.

"Returning is my right, a duty in my ancestors' memory, and for the future of my children."

- 'Die a second time' -

According to Lebanon's official National News Agency, Israeli troops dynamited buildings in at least seven border villages last month.

Israel's Channel 12 broadcast footage appearing to show one of its presenters blow up a building while embedded with soldiers in the village of Aita al-Shaab.

On October 26, the NNA said Israel "blew up and destroyed houses... in the village of Odaisseh".

That day, Israel's military said 400 tonnes of explosives detonated in a Hezbollah tunnel, which it said was more than 1.5 kilometres (around a mile) long.

It is in Odaisseh that Lubnan Baalbaki fears he may have lost the mausoleum where his mother and father, the late painter Abdel-Hamid Baalbaki, are buried.

Their tomb is in the garden of their home, which was levelled in the blasts.

Baalbaki, 43, bought satellite images to keep an eye on the house which had been designed by his father, in polished white stone and clay tiles.

But videos circulating online later showed it had been blown up.

Lubnan has not yet found out whether the mausoleum was also damaged, adding that this was his "greatest fear".

It would be like his parents "dying for a second time", he said.

His Odaisseh home had a 2,000-book library and around 20 original artworks, including paintings by his father, he said.

His father had spent his life savings from his job as a university professor to build the home.

The family had preserved "his desk, his palettes, his brushes, just as he left them before he died", Baalbaki told AFP.

A painting he had been working on was still on an easel.

Losing the house filled him with "so much sadness" because "it was a project we'd grown up with since childhood that greatly influenced us, pushing us to embrace art and the love of beauty".

- 'War crime' -

Lebanon's National Human Rights Commission has said "the ongoing destruction campaign carried out by the Israeli army in southern Lebanon is a war crime".

Between October 2023 and October 2024, locations "were wantonly and systematically destroyed in at least eight Lebanese villages", it said, basing its findings on satellite images and videos shared on social media by Israeli soldiers.

Israel's military used "air strikes, bulldozers, and manually controlled explosions" to level entire neighbourhoods -- homes, schools, mosques, churches, shrines, and archaeological sites, the commission said.

Lebanese rights group Legal Agenda said blasts in Mhaibib "destroyed the bulk" of the hilltop village, "including at least 92 buildings of civilian homes and facilities".

"You can't blow up an entire village because you have a military target," said Hussein Chaabane, an investigative journalist with the group.

International law "prohibits attacking civilian objects", he said.

Should civilian objects be targeted, "the principle of proportionality should be respected, and here it is being violated".