Design in Arabic: a safe space for Palestinian-Israelis

When Israel’s right-wing leaders discover what The Israel Museum is showing in Jerusalem, they may want to ban it.

It’s not that the Design in Arabic exhibit, bringing together the works of five young designers from the minority that makes up a fifth of Israel’s population, is particularly radical – but it is threatening to ignorance, prejudice and stereotypes. 

The exhibit offers a safe space for exploring and expressing identity questions and self-criticism among Palestinian-Israelis, whose views the government and large segments of the Jewish public appear to be trying to suppress in the aftermath of October 7.

Curator Rami Tareef says the exhibit “swims against the current” that has been prevalent in Israel both before and during the Gaza war. It launched last summer and will run until the end of June.

For some Arabs, the months since the war have brought a curtailment of freedom of speech and accentuated their feelings of being second-class citizens. For the most right wing coalition in Israeli history, a tougher stance against alleged incitement is required because Israel is in a struggle for survival against Arab enemies.

Somehow, The Israel Museum has been able to offer a calm environment within this maelstrom. "It’s freer in the visual and artistic realms to say what you think than on social media," Tareef added.

A fresh sign of censoring the Arab minority came last week when a Palestinian-Israeli teacher, Sabrin Masarwa, was suspended because she joined a march commemorating the displacement of Palestinians from their villages in 1948 as part of the Nakba. First parents complained about her, and then the education ministry backed them up.