Litrature review

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Journal of Communication Inquiry

Volume 31 Number 3 July 2007 255-285

© 2007 Sage Publications 10.1177/0196859907302455

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Cartoons as a Site for the Construction of Palestinian Refugee Identity An Exploratory Study of Cartoonist Naji al-Ali

Orayb Aref Najjar Northern Illinois University

This study suggests that cartoons are important sites for the construction of the identity of the self and other. Using techniques culled from social psychology, cognition, and anthropology, in conjunction with the cartoon code, this study examines the way car- toonist Naji al-Ali constructed Palestinian refugee and Arab identity. This study illus- trates the power of the cartoon as a mode of political expression in the Arab world and discusses the ways cartoons have been utilized in the Middle East and abroad. This study argues that because cartoons provide a stream of social and political commentary and yet are artistic works, they demand a layered interpretation that gets at the sym- bolism that may lurk in the artistry of the image, in the captions, or in the relationship between the cartoonist and his or her interpretive community.

Keywords: Palestinian refugees; Naji al-Ali; political cartoons; symbols; visual rhetoric; interpretive community

For the audience, says Charles Press (1981), the joy in a political cartoon derives from thejoy of sticking pins into fools and villains or watching others doing it. Furthermore, car- toons provide important data for the students of politics because

the cartoonist is part of that linking process which connects the general public to its polit- ical leaders—a give-and-take rough and tumble out of which comes what the pollsters call public opinion. (Press, 1981, p. 11)

There was a time when poetry was used as an important medium of political expression in the Arab world. Barbara Harlow credits the first use of the expression “Resistance Literature” to a Palestinian writer, Ghassan Kanafani, who used it in his analysis of the poetry responding to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 (Harlow, 1987, p. 2). Between 1948 and 1967, the main themes of both Arab and Palestinian poetry centered on refugees and their longing to return to Palestine

Author’s Note: I would like to thank the family of the late Mr. Naji al-Ali for their kind permission to use his cartoons in this study.

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(Sulaiman, 1984). Whereas poetry continues to be important, political speech has migrated to cartoons. Ironically, it was the novelist-journalist Kanafani who discov- ered Naji al-Ali’s cartoons on a visit to his refugee camp and published them in al- Hurriya (Freedom) magazine. Naji al-Ali drew the downtrodden refugees as his main characters (al-Ali et al., 1997). The totality of his work illustrates how politi- cal events morphed Palestinians from refugees to revolutionaries (Figure 1).

Naji al-Ali explained that his character Handala (Figure 2) is partial to the poor. Because al-Ali himself saw the world through a class analysis, he preferred to draw “social conditions and attitudes instead of leaders and bosses” (al-Ali et al., 1997, p. 10). All Palestinian cartoonists featured on Arabic Media Internet Network have been influenced by al-Ali’s style and choice of characters. In fact, the cartoonists belong to a society called “The Naji al-Ali Plastic Arts Society” (Joha, n.d.a). Naji al-Ali traveled to Kuwait in the early 1960s to work on at-Tali’a al-Kuwaitiya (The Kuwaiti Forward), whose owners were associated with the Arab Nationalist Movement. Although the character Handala was officially born on July 13, 1969, in al-Siyassah newspaper of Kuwait, one could see the beginnings of Handala, the character that made al-Ali famous, in numerous cartoons published in at-Tali’a (K. al-Ali, personal communication, January 30, 2007).

The child Handala appears in every cartoon and is Naji’s signature. Naji al-Ali wrote, Handala “has promised the people that he will remain true to himself . . . . Handala . . . is . . . an ‘icon’ that protects me from making mistakes” (al-Ali et al., 1997, p. 10). He is

Figure 1 From Meek Refugees to Activist Revolutionaries1

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the Palestinian conscience (Ibrahim, 1988). Naji al-Ali noted that cartoons were drawn for the elites, but that he drew his for the poor (al-Ali et al., 1997). Handala is watchful, is sarcastic, and appears to be recording events. Handala is a radar that daily records the most sensitive fluctuations of the feelings of ordinary Palestinians. His hands behind his back denote refusal to allow anyone to hurt the Palestinian cause (Ibrahim, 1988). Initially, al-Ali introduced Handala as a Palestinian child, but later wrote that “when his consciousness developed, he acquired a national [Arab] horizon, then a global and human horizon” (al-Ali et al., 1997, p. 10). Naji al-Ali was born in Ash Shajara between Tiberius and Nazareth in what is now Israel “probably in 1936” (K. al-Ali, personal com- munication, January 30, 2007). His family left historic Palestine in 1948 when he was 10 years old and settled in Ein-Al Hilweh refugee camp in South Lebanon. Life for Naji al-Ali stopped when he became a refugee at 10, and that is the age of Handala, who is barefoot like other refugee children (al-Ali et al., 1997).

Naji al-Ali’s family origin, as well as the collective Palestinian experience of refugeehood, led him to develop the refugee character in his cartoons. His fierce defense of the Palestinian identity was also affected by the specific arguments some Zionists made negating Palestinian claims. There was a general feeling among some Zionists that the Palestinian identity “is a shallow political veneer that developed in response to Zionism, that it serves today as a hostile tool kept sharpened for use against Israel, and that Palestinian Arab culture is, at most, a ‘dialect’ of a larger Arab

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Figure 2 Handala: The Figure al-Ali Created as His Conscience,

Performs Different Functions2

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culture” (Margolis, 2006, p. 1). Naji al-Ali decided early on to reclaim the Palestinian experience and the pain caused when Israel displaced the Palestinians in 1948.

This study describes the various threads with which Naji al-Ali constructs Palestinian refugee and Arab identity using his cartoon characters. It posits that because cartoons have replaced poetry as the site for the construction of Palestinian identity, it is important to describe what cartoons do and how they do it. After pro- viding some context for al-Ali’s cartoons and their significance in Palestinian life, I describe the theoretical framework that guides the study. I later describe how indi- vidual cartoons select different threads of the Palestinian personality from which to weave a coherent Palestinian refugee and Arab identity. I use some analytic tools pioneered by visual sociologists, cognitive psychologists, and anthropologists, as well as analysts of cartoon art, and develop a model to facilitate cartoon analysis, acknowledging that interpretation is subjective even when collective symbols are used to evoke a hoped-for collective response.

The Political Context of Naji al-Ali’s Cartoons

Palestinian cartoonist al-Ali was not part of what Hess and Kaplan (1968) would call a “tickle-them-to-death” school of cartoonists (p. 18). Naji al-Ali’s cartoons grappled with Palestinian Diaspora identity politics and refugee status and claims, no laughing matters. The cartoonist was instrumental in constructing the refugee narrative that transformed the image of Palestinian refugees from helpless destitute people, who lived in tents and shacks and depended on United Nations rations for survival, into revolutionaries who took their fate into their own hands.

Naji al-Ali’s pen spared no one: dictatorial Arab regimes, “Petrodollar-Arabs,” Iranian leader Khomeini, the PLO bureaucracy that had grown inefficient, Yasser Arafat’s official biographer, Palestinian upper-class pretensions, Arab Americans he considered soft on American Middle East policy, the U.S. government’s thirst for oil and its uncritical support of Israeli excesses, and of course, the Israeli occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s and of the West Bank and Gaza. The cartoonist had received numerous death threats over the years. He was shot on July 22, 1987, and passed away on August 29, 1987, after a long coma at a London hospital (K. al-Ali, personal communication, January 30, 2007).

Scotland Yard and MI5 could not find his killer. A documentary film that won sev- eral awards wondered who murdered al-Ali, “the [Israeli] Mossad or the PLO?” (Abid, 2000). No one knows, but there is a general agreement among the writers and artists who published a book commemorating the 10th anniversary of his death that he refused to betray his principles to keep rulers or editors happy, and that he was “[t]he one who said ‘no’ in the age of ‘yes,’” as the poet Izeddin al-Manasrah put it (al-Ali et al., 1997, p. 47). Widad al-Ali told an interviewer that her husband

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steadfastly refused to compromise his convictions—even at the cost of death. “My death,” he often said, “would be to draw something I don’t believe in. Or to draw what they [the establishment] want me to draw. Or to start to see the world the same way they see it” (Jensen, 2000, p. 2).

Naji al-Ali’s work was published in Kuwait, Lebanon, Sharjah (United Arab Emirates), and London (K. al-Ali, personal communication, January 30, 2007). It was reprinted in books, newspapers, and exhibits all over the Arab world. In the sum- mer of 2004, T-shirts of al-Ali’s signature, Handala, competed with the images of Yasser Arafat, Hamas leaders, as well as Che Guevara in downtown Ramallah, occu- pied West Bank (Figure 3). On the Internet, one can find key chains, T-shirts, and posters with Handala as the main character. Western scholars or artists link their work to his on the Internet as part of the “Art for Change” sensibility (Vallen, n.d.).

Theoretical Framework

Glenn Bowman assumes that attributing an identity to something or someone is constitutive. Such an act “does not simply rely on an already existing character but posits a character for that object or person” (1999, p. 53). “In other words,” says

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Figure 3 Naji al-Ali’s T-Shirts Hold Their Own Against Che Guevara T-shirts, and Against Scarfs of Yasser Arafat and Hamas’s Sheikh Ahmad Yassin (left)3

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Bowman, “one constructs a being through representation, and such construction assumes a use to which that entity will be put or a relationship which might be estab- lished with that entity” (Bowman, 2002, p. 448). This construction of self, by neces- sity, is selective about which threads to use out of the whole range available for that construction. When one articulates an identity, says Bowman, one “is already fetishizing, . . . pulling out of that dense fabric of interwoven elements certain figures, symbols, activities or entities that will serve as vehicles for saying ‘this is who we are’” (Bowman, 2002, p. 449).

Bowman (1999) finds that “antagonism is fundamental to the process of fetishiza- tion which underlines identity” (p. 54). Bowman (2002) argues

that persons and communities which perceive themselves as displaced construct their ‘authentic’ identities in terms not of some sort of originary culture but with defensive reference to experiences in exile which they consider antagonistic. ‘Identity’ is a mobi- lization of some elements of a cultural repertoire against a threatening other and that antagonism—although nominally to be purged when the full identity it impedes is realized—remains fundamental to identity (Bowman, 2002, p. 447).

The purpose of this study, then, is to identify those various threads that the car- toonist pulled out to construct the identity of the refugee in exile whose identity was disallowed—threads that unite and divide the Palestinian community and identify friend and foe. Because a cartoonist uses all types of techniques to make his or her case, I use a multilayered model to do justice to the various levels at which cartoons touch us: the cognitive, normative, affective, and artistic. At the same time, I do not neglect the issue of interpretation.

Three Layers of Analysis

To facilitate analysis, I constructed a model (Figure 4) to examine the cognitive, normative, affective, and artistic facets of the cartoon without neglecting the question of how cartoons are read. Layer 1 uses the classic work of Charles Press (1981) to examine the cartoons because it is the best work on how and why cartoon art works. Press suggests that cartoonists have three tricks up their sleeves: cognitive, normative, and affective devices that make cartoons effective. First, they try to present an element of reality, which they sell to the reader as “the essence of truth” in which they are showing what is happening to their “cherished community.” Second, they suggest through their artistry what we should do on behalf of “the deserving,” and third, they create a mood that tells us “how we should be feeling about what is happening” (p. 62).

To examine the cognitive strategies of cartoons that Press had presented, the model includes an examination of the setting because it situates the characters in their social and political contexts. The cognitive category also includes a description of charac- ters and their costumes because the way characters look provides information about

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their thought process. At the same time, costumes provide information on class and status and place the characters within their interpretive community (Fish, 1989). The model also examines the situation portrayed to get at the nature of the problem being explored.

Normative aspects of each cartoon are examined in the model to determine how artists convey what we should do on behalf of the deserving. The model determines whether a given artist uses the “they say, I say” formula that Press (1981) had iden- tified. The formula can be summed up as “they say this, but I don’t buy it,” to describe the difference between a cartoonist’s belief or perception of how the situa- tion should be and what it actually is.

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The Question of Interpretation The importance of the “Interpretive community” in the reading process (Fish 1989)

Ball and Smith’s socially recognized material and abstract phenomena as well as emotions and memories (1992) that go into interpretation.

Other suggested by what any reader brings to the interpretive process.

Leveling , Sharpening, Symbolism, Analogy, Exaggeration/caricature

Cognitive, Normative and Affective Devices (Press, 1981, and Coupe, 1969). Cognitive descriptive aspects of each cartoon

a) How artists use the setting to place the characters in their social and political contexts

b) How artists use costume to convey information on class c) How artists examine the situation portrayed to get at the nature of the problem being addressed

Normative aspects of each cartoon a) How artists convey that they think we should do on behalf of the deserving. b) How artists use the “they say—I say” formula to compare the situation as described, to the way things really are.

Affective aspects of each cartoon

a) How we should feel about the situation of the “cherished community.”

Artistic Analysis According to Harrison (2002-2003) and Library of Congress (n.d.)

Figure 4 Layered Model for the Analysis of How al-Ali Constructed

Palestinian Refugee and Arab Identity

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Historian W. A. Coupe (1969) isolated the general classes of political cartoons that fall under the descriptive, laughing satirical, and destructive satirical; these categories are used in the model to examine how artists want us to feel about the situation of the cherished community. Artists “may criticize in a humorous [sic] and playful way, or in a way that projects hatred and loathing” (Press, 1981, p. 75). The model includes cate- gories that examine whether the mood is descriptive (merely describes a state of affairs), laughing satirical (describes it by ridiculing it without being overly harsh), or destruc- tive (ridicules it mercilessly; Coupe, 1969).

The various devices that the cartoonists use tell us clearly how they think we should feel about the object of the cartoon. The artists project this mood through their choice of imagery, setting, characters, costumes, and the situation portrayed. They also communicate the mood their characters project. The model is designed to identify the interplay among those devices.

Because cartoons are artistic works, for the second layer of analysis included in the model, I sought guidance from the art world in the form of what cartoonists call “the cartoon code.” Harrison (2002-2003) suggested that “an understanding of the impact of cartoons rests in part on an appreciation of the cartoon code, how and why it works the way it does” (p. 1). Cartoonists manipulate a handful of basic techniques to create a symbolic world of make-believe. These techniques are leveling, sharpen- ing, exaggeration or caricature, symbolism, and analogy (Harrison, 2002-2003, and Library of Congress, n.d.).

Leveling is the process that simplifies visual communication. Three-dimensional objects are reduced to two-dimensional art; the outline of the figure is retained with only a hint of its former texture, shade, and shape. The cartoonist will not use two lines when one will express his or her idea. Sharpening is the process in which some items are strategically eliminated to highlight the remaining features. Wrinkles are deleted, but the size of the head and the movements of the mouth and eyebrows may be exaggerated. Other examples involve making figures stand out from the back- ground. Exaggeration or caricature is the process of overstating an aspect of a prob- lem or exaggerating a person’s physical features (Harrison, 2002-2003). Cartoonists also use symbolism when using a picture to stand for a more abstract concept. Analogy involves comparing two things; directly or indirectly comparing a situation or event with a historical or fictional event (Library of Congress, n.d.).

The artistry in the cartoons constructs and animates aspects of the Palestinian identity that cartoonist Naji al-Ali finds relevant. He creates characters and defines their roles, and through them, offers a running commentary on Palestinian, Arab, and global politics.

To understand identity, one needs to understand “such processes of abstraction and reduction” (Bowman, 1999, p. 54). Cartooning depends on abstraction and reduction, which makes it a useful tool for the hyperritualization of identity, as Goffman (1969) would put it. The very nature of cartoons, their regular appearance, and their depen- dence on a staple of characters enhance their role as arbiters of political opinions in any given interpretive community. Fish (1989) defined interpretive communities as

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a point of view or way of organizing experience that shared individuals in the sense that its assumed distinctions, categories of understanding, and stipulations of relevance and irrelevance were the content of the consciousness of community members who were no longer individuals . . . . Community-constituted interpreters would, in their turn, consti- tute, more or less in agreement, the same text, although the sameness would not be attributable to the self-identity of the text, but to the communal nature of the interpretive act. (p. 141).

The third level of analysis in the model has to do with interpretation. I suggest that Palestinian readers, simply by processing cartoons according to the norms of their interpretive community, draw on Palestinian and Arab secular and religious rit- ual, folklore, and national symbols as well as the Arabic language to construct roles, events, and situations that are the essence of identity formation and an attempt to preserve it in the face of what negates it.

A native’s cultural competence assumes that to communicate within a culture, people must categorize the world in much the same way (Ball & Smith, 1992, p. 57). Ball and Smith (1992) were analytically concerned, not just with visual experience that includes “socially recognized material phenomena, but also with abstract phe- nomena, emotions and memories” (p. 55). Both of those factors make various char- acters or objects used in the cartoons powerful symbols that may be read by the culturally competent interpretive community, among others. Naji al-Ali uses the Handala icon (Figure 2) either as a somber observer of events (Figure 3), or as an active participant (Figure 8). He uses the key (Figure 6) as a powerful symbol for the concept of the refugees returning to their homeland. And finally, the last category included in the model is Other to cover what the interpreter brings to the cartoon while in the process of interpretation.

Literature Review on the Use of Cartoons in the Arab–Israeli Conflict

Almost every Israeli–Arab conflict has been depicted in cartoons. Images of the enemy have become so important in political negotiations that politicians regularly bring them up. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish group, greeted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak with a booklet of what it considered to be anti- Semitic cartoons while he was on a visit to New York in 1999. Mubarak responded by producing an identical booklet containing what he considered to be anti-Arab car- toons published by the Israeli press (Kallaugher, 1999; U.S. Department of State, 1999). The biography of the Lebanese cartoonist Kahil notes “during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, some of his best drawings were exhibited to great acclaim” (Kahil & Trometer, 2003).

Political groups, Arab Americans, Jewish Americans, Palestinians, and Israelis have used the cartoon as a barometer to measure the attitude of Americans toward

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the Arab–Israeli conflict. For example, to learn about how American cartoonists depicted the first year of the December 1987 Intifada (Uprising), the American- Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) issued The Uprising in Cartoons (ADC, 2003).

The ADL examined 73 editorial cartoons it chose randomly to determine the atti- tude of the press toward the second Uprising, which had just erupted (ADL, 2000). In the same vein, Palestine Media Watch (PMWATCH), a Palestinian group, exam- ined 44 cartoons by nationally syndicated cartoonist Tony Auth that were published by the Philadelphia Inquirer between October 3, 2000, and August 20, 2003 (PMWATCH, 2003). Neither side was content with the way its people were being portrayed. A Jerusalem Post editorial attacked Auth for publishing a cartoon that depicted the wall Israel built in the West Bank “in the form of a concentration camp shaped like a Star of David. Inside each segment of the star were pathetic Palestinian Arabs imprisoned by the Jewish symbol” (Tobin, 2003, p. 1). Auth was attacked in his own office at the Philadelphia Inquirer for a cartoon he drew about Israel (Szabo, n.d.). Szabo noted that such incidents of extreme reactions to cartoons suggest that cartoons “are perhaps the only medium that successfully competes with television, at least when it comes to effective communication and the intellectual provocation of the mind” (Szabo, n.d., para 9). The sometimes violent demonstrations by Muslims from several countries after a Danish paper published cartoons of Prophet Mohammad also suggest that cartoons are taken very seriously in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Political cartooning is a special genre of political editorials that represents an excel- lent setting for the accumulation of commonly held and dominant views. In a study of cartoons published after the Twin-Towers attack of 2001, Tomás Várnagy argued that the U.S. political cartoons played a significant role in reinforcing predetermined views and stereotypes. It also highlighted some crucial aspects of the aftermath of the attacks (Várnagy, 2005). Similarly, the attitudes of the Arab world to the United States post–September 11 were reflected in political cartoons (Diamond, 2002).

Israelis and their supporters track the use of potent Palestinian symbols in the Palestinian press via an organization they call Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). Images that particularly bother them are maps of historic Palestine (what is today Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza; PMW, 2000) and the key that Palestinians brandish in demonstrations or depict in cartoons to denote the loss of their homes (PMW, 2005). Cartoonist Omayya Joha told The Christian Science Monitor that Israelis have censored cartoons in which she used the key symbol in the print edition published in East Jerusalem and so keys appear only in the Internet edition of al-Quds Palestinian daily (Lynfield, 2001, para 14). Israelis object to the map of historic Palestine depicted on walls of a Palestinian couple’s home in a cartoon, even though Israeli offi- cial maps incorporate the occupied West Bank as well as historic Palestine. Among the censored cartoons of Naji al-Ali, one finds keys strung over barbed wire as well as a map of Palestine made of the kufiyyah (Palestinian headdress).

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After describing the method of the study, I illustrate how Naji al-Ali constructs Palestinian refugee identity through his cartoons.

Method

Naji al-Ali drew about 12,000 cartoons (K. al-Ali, personal communication, January 30, 2007). Most cartoons were done before newspapers went online and so are available as collected works in books and from various national and international sites on the Internet. The cartoons now in circulation on the Internet have achieved iconic status and are used in lectures at academic institutions such as Georgetown University (Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, 2004) among others.

Ellen Giarelli and Lorraine Tulman (2003) found cartoon images a useful source of data for the study of public discourse surrounding phenomenon of interest, such as public health. At the same time, they recognized that sample selection, data col- lection, and the analysis of constructed images “differ from other kinds of data because cartoonists may intend to stimulate multiple interpretations among readers” (p. 945). Therefore, finding a methodology that uncovers these interpretations is essential to understanding public discourse of the chosen topic (Giarelli & Tulman, 2003). The layered model for analysis (Figure 4) is designed to explore those multi- ple readings by drawing the attention of the reader to the political and psychological as well as the artistic attributes of the cartoons.

In this study, I use ideas developed in Goffman’s (1979) classic study of Gender Advertisements to establish categories that facilitate the examination of cartoons. Goffman examined photos for gender behavior he classified in six categories in advertisements: relative size of male versus female, the feminine touch, function ranking (who gets to be boss), the family, the ritualization of subordination, and licensed withdrawal. He examined 500 photos to see how they depicted those six cat- egories. He then illustrated how images used by advertisers produce gender relations even as they purport to describe them.

Goffman was aware that advertisers do not create the ritualized expressions they employ, but draw on the same ritual idiom we use when we participate in social situations to render “the glimpsed action readable. If anything, advertisers conven- tionalize our conventions, stylize what is already a stylization. . . . Their hype is hyper-ritualization” (Goffman, 1979, p. 84). Cartoons do much of the same thing, only by using line instead of continuous tone.

Taking its cue from Goffman, who viewed people as sign vehicles whose body idiom conveys information about themselves and their social relationships (Manning, 2003, p. 8), the model presents a series of strategies for the reading of cartoons. It invites readers to examine each cartoon the same way Goffman examined photos, by estab- lishing categories, then applying them to the cartoons. Viewers are invited to look at the attributes of the characters, their artistry, their setting, their costumes, and their

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moods to analyze the relationship of al-Ali characters to others as a way of estab- lishing their identity. The model ensures that all cartoons are examined in the same manner.

The uniformity I seek, however, is in the methodology, rather than in the reading of meaning. Despite the communal nature of the interpretive act (Fish, 1989), dif- ferent viewers may have different interpretations because of the elusive nature of the interpretive act. Abstract, mostly nonverbal, art is simple in that it provides “no qual- ifiers to modify the claim.” Because of that, it invites intense and varied reactions (Campbell, 1982, p. 299). Even among Palestinians, al-Ali had his detractors over his refusal to entertain the thought that peace negotiations with Israel could lead any- where (al-Ali et al., 1997). After all, says Campbell, “nonverbal channels communi- cate emotional material” (p. 300) that carries some ambiguity, and such visual rhetoric is more effective for those who already share the artist’s views.

While delving into this visual rhetoric, this study is not interested in the frequency of mentions of various themes, but in identifying the visual rhetoric, strategies, and powerful symbols the cartoonist uses to reach the Palestinian interpretive community (Fish, 1989), as well as its supporters and detractors. This type of analysis is similar to analyzing selected edits in movies to understand the art of a film editor, or in exam- ining a part of a painting to understand what is special about an artist’s brush strokes.

Cartoon Analysis

Employing the various strategies described in Figure 4, this section discusses the various devices Naji al-Ali utilizes to construct Palestinian refugee identity. Cartoon characters illustrate what it means for a Palestinian to be without a passport, what it means to be a poor farmer rather than a Diaspora Palestinian or a rich Arab, what it means to suffer the way Christ did, what it means to be disadvantaged by the strength of the Israeli–American relationship, and what it means to have oil that others covet.

Construction of the Refugee Identity Through the Use of the Identity Card

The construction of self is selective about which threads to pull out of that dense fabric of interwoven elements or symbols that are available for that construction (Bowman, 1999). The refugee status of Palestinians, especially in the early years after 1948, was highlighted in popular culture as the essence of the Palestinian iden- tity. Anthropologist Rosemary Sayigh wrote that

the Palestinian intellectuals who made the figure of the refugee central to their work— Isma`il Shammout through his early paintings, Edward Said and Jean Mohr in Beyond the Last Sky, Fawaz Turki’s The Disinherited, and above all Ghassan Kanafani’s Men

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In The Sun, which raised the Palestinian refugee to a universal symbol—belonged to a generation that shared refugeehood. For them, the refugees were the central human expression of the Palestinian crisis. (Sayigh, 1998, p. 5)

A Canadian refugee research center estimates the worldwide Palestinian popula- tion at over 8 million. In June 2004, United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) data showed some 4,186,711 registered refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon (Interuniversity Consortium, 2006). Under UNRWA’s operational definition, “Palestine refugees are persons whose normal place of resi- dence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict” (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2006, para 4). While refugees in Jordan have Jordanian passports, refugees in Syria and Lebanon are given temporary documents on a case-by-case basis. The absence of a passport is tantamount to negation of the existence of that refugee. That is why the identity card is a useful symbol for the con- struction of identity in cartoons. The situation continues to be the same as when al- Ali described it: After 350,000 Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait during the first Gulf War, 12 families were forced to live in the Cairo Airport for over five months; Libya’s bad relations with the Palestinian Authority stranded 1,000 Gazans on the Libyan-Egyptian borders for 16 months (Sayigh, 1998, p. 2); thousands of Gazans were stranded on the border of Egypt when they were visiting relatives or seeking medical treatment in Egypt during the summer of 2006. When Israel refused them reentry to Gaza from Egypt, gunmen blew a hole in the wall separating Egypt from Gaza and about 1,000 Palestinians used it to reenter Gaza (“Gaza Border Crossing Opened,” 2006). In the next section, I examine the cartoons informed by the categories listed in the model (Figure 4) developed in the method section by looking at the cognitive, normative, affective, and artistic levels.

At the cognitive level, the identity card cartoon distills the essence of the plight of the cherished community of refugees by recognizing that their most important source of oppression is the absence of travel documents, which sets them up for dis- crimination. The poet Mahmoud Darwish complained that “we [Palestinians] travel like other people, but we return to nowhere” (as cited in Bowman, 1994, p. 138). As shown in the cartoon in Figure 5, size is used to identify the level of importance of the travel documents. The identity card is drawn much larger than the little figure of Handala because the passport issue looms large for every stateless refugee. Handala’s darned clothing and bare feet spell poverty.

At the normative level, al-Ali uses parody as a device to comment on conditions Palestinians face during their travel. By depending on Arab readers’ familiarity with the text of a real travel document, the artist keeps the format of the original but adds some text and art that turn the document into subversive powerful commentary on Arab rulers’ practices. Instead of a passport photo, the Palestinian gets a photo draped in black the way a dead person’s photo is displayed at a funeral, as if suggesting that the

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bearer travel at his peril. There is a date of birth, to be sure, but just below it, a space for the date of extermination. The changes in wording introduce the “they say, but I say” formula. They say that, as Arabs, we are united, but in reality, borders restrict refugees and prevent them from making a living. They say we are making political progress, but we say we are still prisoners in our own larger Arab homeland. Below is an example of how parody is used to describe the perils of Palestinian travel.

Text of the real passport: The representatives of the government here and abroad are directed to help the carrier of this passport in his travels. Parody document: The representatives of the government here and abroad are directed to help the carrier to be transported to God’s mercy and may we live long (referring to Arab regimes’ wishes). Text of real passport: All Arab Countries: The bearer of this passport is allowed residence. Cartoon parody: The bearer of this document is allowed residence under administrative detention and is not allowed to work or breathe.

At the affective level, this cartoon is simply descriptive. The cartoon does not directly suggest what we should do on behalf of the deserving, but by describing

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Figure 5 The Identity Card: Parody of the Real Document4

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refugee travel conditions, it hopes to influence people by encouraging them to iden- tify with the condition described. The sense of recognition makes the cartoon power- ful for any Palestinian who had been stopped at a border. For emphasis, the passport page on the right is signed by the Minister of Interior and General Cemeteries. The cartoonist was a dissident who saw the role of the political cartoon as

agitation … isn’t it our duty to say no to a repressive Sultan? Cartoons have to tell the truth . . . and the Sultans are many. Cartoons always put dirty laundry out in the fresh air . . . they grab life wherever they find it and transport it to the rooftops of the world where there is no opportunity to fix the holes or cover the defects . . . . The task of the cartoon is to announce hope, revolution, and the birth of a new person (al-Ali et al., 1997, p. 11).

Establishing Identity Through Secular Folkloric Symbols

Anthropologist Bowman suggested that people in exile mobilize “some elements of a cultural repertoire against a threatening other and that antagonism . . . remains fundamental to identity” (Bowman, 2002, p. 447). At the cognitive descriptive level described in Level 1 of the model, the author distills the reality of the refugee con- dition through the setting and the characters. Here, he dips into a repertoire of a number of secular cultural folkloric artifacts, or objects standing for other objects or concepts, to express the couple’s longing for their homeland and resentment at its loss. Figure 6 shows Fatima in the foreground in her national embroidered dress. Fatima is everywoman. Naji al-Ali uses the recognizable role of the Palestinian farmer to tap into shared cultural folkloric information about her role and dress. Ibrahim (1988) noted that she was modeled after Naji al-Ali’s aunt Hanifah who rep- resents the land and his belonging to it. Fatima is the wise woman; she has a wisdom that wells from the depth of a beaten-down woman. She is a universal figure that rep- resents peasant goodness.

Fatima carries around her neck the key to an actual house in what used to be called Palestine in 1948. But the key also has symbolic significance because it artic- ulates a major refugee claim: that “The Right of Return” has not been abandoned. Figuratively, it is also the key to ending the conflict. The key is a seminal choice all Palestinians recognize, so much so, that Palestinian Americans have enshrined it in a glass case at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Palestinian cartoonist Omayya Joha uses the key as part of her signature as well as in her cartoons (Joha, n.d.b). At the level of interpretation described in Layer 3 of the model, Ball and Smith (1992) suggested that in analyzing visual ideas, there are socially recognized material and abstract phenomena as well as emotions and mem- ories one has to contend with (p. 55). The key is the ultimate Palestinian symbol of longing for a homeland. It is a material object whose possession is loaded with mem- ory and hope; it is a symbol instantly recognized by the Palestinian interpretive com- munity. It is a symbol that Israelis recognize as antagonistic because it rejects their claims to the same homeland.

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The costume the woman is wearing also has symbolic and real dimensions. Each area of historic Palestine has a different type of dress, distinguished by the unique embroidered fauna and flora it carries. Women from areas with cypress trees, for example, embroider cypresses in rows on the side panels and back of the dress. Particular flowers or birds may be seen in the costume of certain areas, but not in others. City women, who do not work in agriculture, have open long exotic sleeves that extend well beyond their wrists, while farm women like Fatima have shorter and nar- rower sleeves more practical for work. Thus, from her dress, the Palestinian interpre- tive community (Fish, 1989) knows Fatima is a hardworking farmer from a specific geographic area of Palestine, suggesting that the place still exists in their memories despite the Israeli destruction of Palestinian villages in 1948 (Abu-Sitta, 2004).

Az-Zalama (the man, in Palestinian dialect) appears to be everyman. He is depicted as a poor refugee who reacts to what happens around him with the help of his wife Fatima and Handala. Evidence of minor things that shed light on his status in life may be seen in his darned clothes and his bare feet. The dark, desolate, and desert-like background sharpens (Harrison, 2002-2003) the rendition of the scene, and there is nothing but waiting in the horizon, achieved artistically through repeti- tion of the same figure of the archetypal man/refugee. Figure 6 of Fatima and her

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Figure 6 Fatima in the Palestinian National Dress With Her Key5

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husband falls under Coupe’s (1969) descriptive level. Naji al-Ali is describing a familiar situation—waiting to go home—and hopes that his readers will have an affective response to it.

Establishing Identity Through the Use of Christian Religious Symbols 1

It is not unusual for Palestinians to use Christian symbols (Bowman, 2000). A recurrent theme in al-Ali’s work is Palestinian suffering; thus the figure of Christ is sometimes drawn with a checkered kufiyyah around his neck (Activities Committee, n.d., p. 122), or shown in commando dress carrying a cross on his back, and wading into the Mediterranean when Palestinians were forced to evacuate Lebanon to Tunisia after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 (al-Ali et al., 1997, p. 172). Modern Palestinian Christians also see themselves in terms of the suffering of Christ. After watching Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ in Damascus with Palestinian Christian refugees, Strindberg, an academic and a journalist specializing in Mideast politics, wrote that the movie had a symbolic meaning for Palestinians “not easily perceived in the West: not only is it a depiction of the trial, scourging, and death of Jesus, it is also a symbolic depiction of the fate of the Palestinian people” (Strindberg, 2004, p. 1). Zaki, a 27-year-old Palestinian Christian whose family hails from Haifa, told Strindberg that it was the way Palestinians felt. “We take beating after beating at the hands of the world, they crucify our people, they insult us, but we refuse to surrender” (Strindberg, 2004, p. 1). That part of the Palestinian identity can be seen in many of Naji al-Ali’s cartoons.

The setting of the cartoon in Figure 7 is the Crucifixion without a cross. Like Fatima, the Palestinian Christ has the key of a Palestinian home hanging around his neck with barbed wire. He is thinking of his occupied town, Bethlehem. The artistic method used in the Christ cartoon is that of analogy, comparing a situation with an historical event, and mixing secular symbols, like the key and barbed wire, with reli- gious symbols like the crown of thorns and the cross. The persona of Christ as some- one who “has died for us” and his willingness to sacrifice is used to discuss Palestinian suffering as part of the refugee experience. Most artists “exhibit a ten- dency to harmonize drawing techniques with content” (Press, 1981, p. 74). This is the case with al-Ali who uses the black background panels to advantage to illustrate the bleakness of the situation. “The combination of imagery and artistic technique,” says Press, “creates an emotional mood that gives a cartoonist’s message its real impact and power” (Press, 1981, p. 75). The dark panel, found in many cartoons, may also be understood by Christians familiar with the Bible as “from the sixth hour there was darkness upon the land until the ninth hour” during the Crucifixion (Matthew 27:45, RSV). Thus, the figure in the photo may be understood either as Christ himself, or as a symbolic Palestinian.

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Establishing Identity Through the Use of Christian Religious Symbols 2

The artistic device used in Figure 8 renders the crown of thorns on Christ’s head as modern-day barbed wire that Palestinians face everywhere. Press’s “[t]hey say— I say formula” may be applied here: They say Christ is a man of peace, but I say con- ditions are so bad under Israeli occupation that even a Christ-like figure would lose his patience with oppression against Palestinians and throw stones. By making Handala throw stones, al-Ali is suggesting the need for action even by pacifists and children.

Whereas the Christ cartoons in Figures 7 and 8 draw on the interpretive commu- nity’s understanding of the suffering of Christ to draw a parallel with the suffering Palestinians, Figure 9 depends on the shared Muslim symbols understood by the Muslim and local Christian interpretive community (Fish, 1989). The cartoon draws on the stylized and highly symbolic role of the Muslim haj (pilgrim) in the pilgrim- age to Mecca.

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Figure 7 The Palestinian Jesus Christ, With the Key of His Home,

Pines for Bethlehem6

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Figure 8 Pacifist Christ Is Incensed Enough to Throw Stones7

Figure 9 Naji al-Ali Characters Go to the Pilgrimage in Mecca8

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Establishing Identity Through the Use of Muslim Religious Symbols

All of the men in Figure 9 are supposed to be wearing the white untailored piece of cloth required for pilgrimage to Mecca to indicate equality before God of all classes and races and to make the rich indistinguishable from the poor. Naji al-Ali demon- strates his rejection of that interpretation. The cloth az-Zalama (the man/refugee/ pilgrim) wears is black for mourning. Whereas all other pilgrims are wearing the type of sandals worn in the Gulf region, az-Zalama is barefoot. The clothes little Handala is wearing are darned. The Palestinian man knows he is not equal to other fat rich Arabs on the same pilgrimage, and through his cartoon, subverts the notion of equal- ity. To make matters worse, others are regarding him with suspicion. Here, the car- toonist uses the “they say, I say” formula. They say we are all equal, but my black cloth of mourning says I have other cares and concerns. They say we are all equal, but my emaciated body tells another story. Artistically, al-Ali uses the exaggerated size of the fat Arab as a sharpening device to draw the distinction with the thin Palestinian. He uses the black cloth to describe his sadness and dissatisfaction.

Construction of Refugee Identity Through the Critique of Diaspora Palestinians

Unlike in established nations, said Bowman (1994), unrealized nations have few mechanisms that translate their longing into a global battle for nationhood. Different groups within the polity may even fail to see other similar groups as Palestinian. Naji al-Ali’s art fits that description, and yet his cartoons, while critical of rich Palestinians and Arabs, provided Palestinians with a baseline of what it means to be one: refugeehood. In any given polity, major social groups or classes are assumed to be known to readers as part of their culturally shared knowledge (Van Dijk, 1988). Thus, the characteristics of the Diaspora Arabs are known to readers from their vis- its to various Arab countries to see relatives or conduct business transactions, and the cartoonist draws on those stereotypes to express his opinions of people who assimi- lated elsewhere but may constitute a threat to the poor refugees’ claims for restitu- tion. This attitude stems from the fact that refugees, who were considered to be the focal point of the Palestinian issue in 1948, were later marginalized. Palestinian American academic Lena Jayyusi, interviewed by Toine van Teeffelen (as cited in Sayigh, 1998), explains, “Our narrative of dispossession, so fundamental to our moral condition, and to our national and collective claims, and to the possibility of genuine restitution, still needs to be spoken and insisted upon” (p. 6), and that is pre- cisely what the cartoonist was doing.

At the cognitive descriptive level explained in the layered model for analysis (Figure 4), al-Ali creatively employs the most recognizable Palestinian symbol, the kufiyyah checkered headdress, to comment on the level of commitment of Diaspora

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Palestinians versus people in refugee camps. As seen in Figure 10, al-Ali contrasts the businessman’s suit and his attaché case with the commando’s battle fatigues and gun, thus sharpening the differences between them. In one print version of the car- toon exhibited by the Activities Committee (n.d.), Birzeit Workers Union (p. 17), the attaché case is inscribed with the slogan “Petro-dollar Commando,” words not in al- Ali’s original version. The fact that Palestinians participate in the cartoon construc- tion by inscribing their own understanding of them is significant. The cartoonist also uses analogy by comparing the tie and bowler hat associated with the pomposity of British imperialism with the Palestinian kufiyyah on the head of the fighter. To al- Ali, the bowler hat and tie appear to be the westernized Arabs’ version of their Palestinian identity—imperfect in his eyes. The new role he creates for this Diaspora Arab is a businessman about to spin his real condition even as he distances himself from refugee concerns. The mood or civility level created here falls under what Coupe (1969) would characterize as destructive.

Constructing Refugee Identity by Critiquing Arab Regimes

Arab regimes are always depicted as befuddled, not knowing which way to turn politically. Arrows in their heads point in all directions, and it takes little Handala to point the way to historic Palestine (symbolically depicted in kufiyyah

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Figure 10 A Westernized Palestinian Businessman Spins His Palestinian Identity9

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pattern, Figure 11). It is not surprising that Israelis want to control the maps that appear in cartoons. Maps have always been tied to identity and are the site of strug- gle between opposing sides. In an original article on Renaissance cartography and the question of Palestine, Nabil Matar (1999) noted that maps are no longer viewed as “value-free images” but as “acts loaded with propositions, questions, and projects, and armed with the ‘weapons of imperialisms’ ” (p. 139). Thus, the question of Palestine was posed in Europe cartographically long before it was posed politically or colonially. A map made by Dutch cartographer Abraham Ortelius in 1570 exerted tremendous influence. It portrayed Palestine as a land with no inhabitants. German cartographer Tilemann Stella (1525-1589) drew a map that purported to depict the route of the exodus on which the historical claims of the map rest (Matar, 1999). But, “there was no itinerary, either in the book of Exodus nor in archaeology, of the exo- dus route, nor the supposed 41 stops on the route” (Matar, 1999, p. 142). Matar stressed the symbolic value of maps, which were used as “visual documents about authority, jurisdiction, and spheres of influence that were definitive, codified and exclusive” (Matar, 1999, p. 144). “Mapmaking,” says Meron Benvenisti (2000), is “a means of providing a basis for the mapmaker’s claims and for his social and sym- bolic values” (p. 13). Maps function the same way in Palestinian cartoons in staking claims, and in this case, broaching a topic that Palestinian leaders had glorified

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Figure 11 Arab Regimes With No Feet to Stand on Are Depicted as Clueless10

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rhetorically, but buried under the rug politically: refugee rights. So when al-Ali and other cartoonists display maps that delegitimize the state of Israel, they are trans- mitting questions by their interpretive community (Fish, 1989) to the leaders who have made promises of return to the former Palestinian homeland, but have done little about them.

Constructing the Arab World Through Its Relations With the United States

In numerous cartoons that often got him into trouble, al-Ali criticized the role of Arab leaders and their ties to the United States government whose only interest in them in his cartoons appears to be oil. At the cognitive descriptive level, the cartoon in Figure 12 distills the essence of the reality of the cherished community whose identity is Arab, by using artistic leveling that reduces the Arab to his essence: naked with nothing to offer but an oil barrel or an albatross around his neck. As al-Ali

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Figure 12 The Arab Appears to Be Cursed by His Possession of Oil11

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noted, his characters started as Palestinian, but later stressed their Arab and progres- sive international identities.

The affective level in Figure 12 is purely descriptive. Handala is just standing with his hands behind his back observing the situation. The prone figure, rare in his cartoons, suggests helplessness. The oil or blood trickling from his mouth draws attention to his predicament and to the violence he sees lurking in the acquisition of oil.

Constructing Arab Identity Through the Israeli–American Alliance

Naji al-Ali drew several cartoons that suggested that Israel and the United States viewed the Iraqi–Iranian war with glee and were actively promoting it. Here, the artist plays with the words “oil drum” and “drums of war” verbally, and visually. As seen in Figure 13, he makes the oil drum look like a real drum, while composing a headline for the newspaper the Arab is reading: “War drums.” In this cartoon, his Middle Eastern identity is being highlighted against those who do not wish Arabs or Iranians well. But because of al-Ali’s concern with the type of peace process that was being considered, one that ignored refugee rights, his most critical cartoons were reserved for the Israeli–American relationship and its effect on the peace process.

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Figure 13 Both the United States and Israel Are Banging the Drums of War12

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Constructing an Identity That Is Oppositional to the American– Israeli Consensus

In Figure 14, the Arab players on the American team (e.g., Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and pro-American Palestinians) are under the illusion that they can hit their goal under American sponsorship of UN Resolution 242, which calls for the “with- drawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict” and the termination “of all claims of belligerency” (Resolution 242, 1947, p. 8). The car- toonist suggests in Figure 14 that such a goal was literally blocked by Israel. The

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Figure 14 Arab Players Sponsored by the United States Are Blocked by

Israel From Reaching Their Goal Through the Use of UN Security Council Resolution 24213

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cherished community has no hope of ever achieving its goals. The artistic device used here is that of analogy, in which a game of soccer stands for politics with its players and goals. Bowman (1999) found that fetishization happens because that identity “is founded precisely on the anticipation of its disallowal” (p. 57) and is con- stituted defensively when it is threatened. The identity as victim of Israeli designs on the Middle East, aided and abetted by the United States, lies at the heart of Figure 14, as does a definition of who is friend or foe.

Deconstructing U.S. Claims of Enlightenment: Censorship of Arab Opinion

In Figure 15, Arab regimes with no legs to stand on allow the U.S. government, which appears in the shape of a zipper, to censor or prevent them from telling American officials what Arabs think of U.S. pro-Israel foreign policy. Here the situ- ation pits those regimes against Handala, a witness to their silence. The cartoon deconstructs U.S. claims about its identity (a lover of freedom of expression) by depicting its role in the Middle East as a censor of legitimate dissent: a role no dif- ferent from the role of Arab regimes that have no popular legitimacy.

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Figure 15 Arab Regimes Unable to Tell the United States What

They Think of Its Foreign Policy14

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Conclusion

As researchers tell us, construction of self and identity, by necessity, are selective of which threads to include from the wealth of available threads and symbols. That is why this article developed a model with three layers of analysis seeking the mean- ing that may lurk in the words or feelings used or evoked by the cartoon figures, in the artistry of the image with its well-developed cartoon code, or in the visual rhetoric used to encourage the communal interpretation of a political event. Naji al- Ali first constructed his identity as a Palestinian and a refugee and fetishized it and hyperritualized it to say who Palestinians are, first by using the identity card to shed light on Palestinian refugee status, then by using the characters he created and their setting to illustrate what they have lost. He then employed secular and religious sym- bols the Palestinian interpretive community identifies with to set the mood of each cartoon, and told readers how they should feel about it. The cartoonist also illustrated his pain through the suffering of Christ and his irreverence toward the equality myths of the Muslim pilgrimage as he experienced it. He used Christian and Muslim reli- gious experience as a vehicle for describing Palestinian suffering, both in terms of class, as well as deprivation of a homeland under harsh conditions. Naji al-Ali also used his characters to describe who is friend and foe, and to out what he considered to be false claims (i.e., that Arab regimes care about Palestinian refugee rights, and that the U.S. government supports freedom of expression).

By using a series of comparisons and contrasts, al-Ali hyperritualized various facets of the Palestinian identity to resist its disallowal. He located that identity in specific people, the refugees of the camps, rather than rich Palestinians of the Diaspora. He hyperritualized Palestinian cherished symbols, the kufiyyah and the key, to stress Palestinian belonging to the land they had lost. And finally, he com- municated the pain of the Palestinian experience through a farmer’s embroidered dress that most farm women can no longer afford. He fixed the map of Palestine by using the most internationally recognized Palestinian symbol: the kufiyyah pattern on the map of Palestine. While doing so, he introduced the class analysis he had vowed to adopt in his writings about his cartoons.

Naji al-Ali constructed the Arab identity through leveling and reducing the Arab to his essence in the West: an oil barrel. The barrel appears in two cartoons (Figures 12 and 14). In the latter, the refugee is sitting on top of an empty barrel, which is another comment on refugee poverty. Naji al-Ali’s cartoons were Arab nationalist in spirit because they rejected the confessionalism and sectarianism he witnessed in the Lebanon of the 1970s and 1980s. And finally, he identified friend and foe by being critical of the Israeli–American relationship. Through comparisons and contrasts, al- Ali wove the various threads of refugee and Palestinian identity of his cherished community. The cartoonist chose to stress the aspects that challenge the marginal- ization and disallowal of Palestinian identity through a combination of description and resistance to the conditions at hand.

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Perhaps the best testament to al-Ali’s connection to his audience was an anony- mous note left in a visitors’ notebook at an exhibit of al-Ali’s cartoons at Hussein Refugee Camp in Amman, Jordan. The writer, referring to the little figure Handala whose back is always turned to the readers, wrote, “When I held you from behind and turned your face, I saw my homeland” (al-Ali et al., 1997, p. 67). The anony- mous writer was attesting to the fact that a little figure in a cartoon has succeeded in standing for and constituting Palestinian identity for his interpretive community, just as al-Ali had intended.

Even though al-Ali died in 1987, his cartoons are still being utilized by Arabs and others to comment on current affairs. A Syrian blogger who included Figure 16 on his Web site on February 22, 2006, dipped into al-Ali’s art to express his disgust with attempts to fracture Iraq and Lebanon into a mosaic of confessional identities (The.Damascene.Blog, 2006, p. 1). Harvard University students exhibited 50 al-Ali cartoons in Harvard Square in July 2006 (BootCAT News Blog, 2006). The fact that several Western artists who see art as a vehicle for change still link their Web sites to Naji al-Ali sites (Vallen, n.d.; Wallner, 2004) suggests that the artist, whose con- sciousness had become global over time, has succeeded in casting himself as a world citizen, a voice for the voiceless even as he narrowed the definition of real Palestinians to the destitute refugees among them.

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Figure 16 “Are you Muslim or Christian, Sunni or Shiite, Druze or Alawite, Coptic or

Maronite, Roman Orthodox or Roman . . . I am an Arab, Jackass!!”15

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Notes

1. From as-Safir newspaper, August 4, 1982. Reprinted with permission of the cartoonist’s son. 2. Courtesy of al-Ali family. 3. Source: Photo taken by the author, West Bank, Summer 2004. 4. From al-Qabas newspaper, June 23, 1986. Reprinted with permission of the cartoonist’s son. 5. From al-Qabas, February 13, 1986. Reprinted with permission of the cartoonist’s son. 6. From as-Safir, April 11, 1982. Reprinted with permission of the cartoonist’s son. 7. From as-Safir, April 2, 1982. Reprinted with permission of the cartoonist’s son. 8. From al-Qabas, September 19, 1983. Reprinted with permission of the cartoonist’s son. 9. From al-Qabas, April 21, 1984. Reprinted with permission of the cartoonist’s son.

10. From al-Qabas, August 12, 1986. Reprinted with permission of the cartoonist’s son. 11. From Naji al-Ali’s Cartoons, p. 122. Copyright 1985. Reprinted with permission of the cartoonist’s son. 12. From al-Qabas, August 12, 1984. Reprinted with permission of the cartoonist’s son. 13. From al-Qabas, September 5, 1983. Reprinted with permission of the cartoonist’s son. 14. From al-Qabas, November 8, 1985. Reprinted with permission of the cartoonist’s son. 15. From al-Qabas, February 21, 1987. Reprinted with permission of the cartoonist’s son.

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Orayb Aref Najjar is associate professor in the Department of Communication at Northern Illinois University, where she teaches international communication, digital photography, and graphics. Her research interests center on media law in the Middle East and on new technology. Her most recent publication are “New Palestinian Media and Democratization from Below,” in New Media and the New Middle East, edited by Philip Seib, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007 , and “Media Law in Jordan and Egypt: An Overview of Post-9/11 Continuities and Changes,” in Arab Media Handbook, edited by Walter Armbrust and Kai Hafez, New York: Continuum Publishers.

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