Published: 29 June 2024
Last updated: 14 August 2024
It will never cease to amaze me that when two people look at an object, they can experience two radically different associations. That’s because it’s not just beauty that’s in the eye of the beholder, it’s also context and lived experience.
To someone who came to Australia fleeing persecution and found safety and comfort, the Australian flag might represent hope, new beginnings and a fair go.
However, to many Aboriginal people, the Australian flag represents colonisation, violence, disenfranchisement and a country that allows the sovereign owners of the land on which they live to die on average almost a decade sooner than the non-Aboriginal population.
In the early days of the current war in the Middle East, I saw a social media post by someone who had walked into a bookshop and demanded the owner remove the Palestinian flag displayed in the front window, because it was “antisemitic”.
By the same token, I know people who have been abused for wearing a Star of David in public because it apparently denotes their commitment to the genocide and murder of babies. It’s the same with the Israeli flag; to show pride or stand under an Israeli flag means you are not just a murder apologist, but an active, enthusiastic participant.
What we have here is more than a fundamental inability for people on both sides to really listen. We are also seeing deliberate attempts on both sides to police the identity – and the way that identity is expressed – of the other, instead of asking questions that might enlighten or inform them.
The keffiyeh came to prominence during the 1936-39 Palestinian uprising, though its history in the region goes back much further. Different versions of the keffiyeh have different cultural associations, but the black and white keffiyeh was made famous by Yasser Arafat and is now a symbol of Palestinian nationalism and pride. For the vast majority of Palestinian people and their allies, the keffiyeh is a symbol of Palestinian pride, culture and the dream of true, meaningful Palestinian statehood.
