Gallery 6: Arab Solidarity with Palestine

The concept of Arab solidarity with Palestine is an often-perplexing one for mainstream Americans: why, they wonder, do people living as far away from Palestine as Morocco to the west and Iraq to the east have such strong feelings for a country which is not their own? The answer, according to many scholars and historians, is that Palestine is central to the modern Arab sense of identity and the concept of the “Arab homeland,” which today includes twenty-two countries (as identified by the current membership roster of the League of Arab States): Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

The impulse that motivates Moroccans, Egyptians, and Jordanians to express their support for Palestine in their poster art is not unlike that which drove William Lloyd Garrison of Massachusetts to dedicate his newspaper, The Liberator, to the abolitionist movement and which impelled Harriet Beecher Stowe of Connecticut to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the years before the American Civil War (1861-1865). The citizens of the American north of 1861, faced with the potential fracturing of the Union, and the citizens of the Arab world in 1948, faced with the potential fracturing of the Arab homeland, responded in an almost identical fashion because their conclusions were identical: something sacred is at stake. This explains the willingness of both peoples, though separated by thousands of miles and more than a century’s time, to sacrifice similarly for a distant struggle.

The posters in this gallery are a graphic manifestation of the Arab sense of identification with Palestine. American viewers, of course, are not obliged to approve of the content or intent of any of these posters. But they may reasonably ask themselves why these posters have never been seen before in the U.S. and why there are not more linkages and exchanges of art between the U.S. and the Arab world.

An important note about availability
Most of the posters in this exhibit are limited editions, archival copies, or out of print. They are rare Palestinian historical documents and are not for sale. Liberation Graphics does not have any Palestine posters for sale and has no plans to establish a sales program. If you have a Palestine poster that you would like to donate, or if you would like to learn about our poster exchange program, please visit the Palestine Poster Project page for details.

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