When pro-Palestinian scholar protesters took over Hamilton Corridor at Columbia College final month and renamed it “Hind’s Corridor,” the banner they unfurled contained pictures of a cartoon character created over 50 years in the past that symbolizes the resilience of Palestinians.
On both facet of the textual content have been two pictures of a barefoot boy with tattered garments and spiky hair, his again turned to us.
The character is named Handala (variously transliterated as Hanzala or Handzala), a reputation derived from a local plant that’s deep-rooted, persistent and bears bitter fruit, and has turn into a potent image of the Palestinian wrestle. The picture was created by the Palestinian political cartoonist Naji Al-Ali in 1969, one of the vital broadly learn cartoonists within the Arab world, who was murdered in London in 1987. (The case stays unsolved.)
Handala is 10 years previous, the identical age that Ali was when he turned a refugee in 1948.
After the Arab-Israeli struggle of 1973, often known as the Yom Kippur Conflict, Ali completely depicted Handala together with his again turned, a gesture that remodeled him right into a silent witness of the horrors and outrages happening round him. The stance, in line with the cartoonist, represented a rejection of the political machinations of international nations when it got here to the destiny of bizarre Palestinians.
Margaret Olin, a spiritual research scholar on the Yale Divinity Faculty and co-author of “The Bitter Landscapes of Palestine,” has been photographing Handala’s look in murals and as graffiti throughout her visits to the Gaza Strip and the West Financial institution over the previous decade. “It’s turn into a logo of the entire Palestinian motion to return to their former houses,” she stated in a phone interview.
Handala, she defined, “has the resonance of Paul Klee’s ‘Angelus Novus,” which Walter Benjamin described because the angel of historical past. “He’s dealing with the ravages of time and catastrophe, however he’s rotated so that you simply see the disasters too.” She added that the character “additionally has a tinge of Günter Grass’s Oskar in ‘The Tin Drum,’ a toddler who additionally refused to develop whereas the disasters of Germany came about round him. He’s the kid as witness, the kid who’s caught witnessing, simply ready for the disasters to cross.”
The determine of Handala, she noticed, is “plastered on homes in East Jerusalem, the place residents are being pressured out by unlawful settlements. He’s carried into protests. He’s in all places.”
The picture has appeared in the USA — “my son’s in-laws are Iraqi, they usually have a bumper sticker on their automotive,” Olin added. “One of many causes the character is so ubiquitous is that Ali made him very straightforward to attract.” She stated that youngsters in West Financial institution refugee camps have drawn smiling faces on the again of Handala’s head once they encounter him in murals, turning his struggling into pleasure.
Ali was identified to be an equal alternative critic, as prone to take purpose on the failure of Arab nations within the area to assist Palestinians as Israel and the U.S. He even took purpose on the Palestine Liberation Group at instances in his Handala pictures.
Peace activists in Israel have additionally adopted the determine of Handala through the years, displaying him embracing one other cartoon boy — Srulik, created by the Israeli cartoonist Kariel Gardosh, which turned an embodiment of Israel. However Handala shouldn’t be frequent there. Nizan Shaked, a professor of cultural research at California State College at Lengthy Seashore, grew up in Haifa, Israel. She stated in an e-mail interview that she solely encountered the character in 1998, when she moved to the U.S.
The character has been re-embraced by activists and artists alike within the final seven months. The Freedom Flotilla Coalition, a grass roots solidarity motion that works “to finish the unlawful Israeli blockade of Gaza,” in line with its web site, has christened considered one of its ships Handala. A publishing home in Italy and an artist’s group in Japan have created posters during which the character has been reinterpreted for as we speak.
And Handala has even made it to Venice, in a solo exhibition not affiliated with the Biennale. On the Roberto Ferruzzi Gallery in Dorsoduro, the Palestinian artist Malak Mattar’s work are on view till June 14. The present options “No Phrases” (2024), which the artist describes on Instagram as “the biggest documentation of the unfolding genocide on Gaza.” The canvas, the biggest she has ever tried, at over 16 by 7 ft, is a nod to Palestinian mural tradition. Handala seems close to the highest of the portray, a wall. In contrast to Mattar’s earlier work, that are intensely colourful, this work is rendered in somber grey, black, white and brown.
Mattar, who was born and raised in Gaza Metropolis, was residing there till Oct. 5, when she left to pursue a grasp’s diploma in London, she stated in a phone interview. Her portray focuses on the individuals who have been pressured to evacuate to flee the Israeli navy bombings of Gaza, the place, she stated, a lot of her associates, relations and colleagues have been killed.
“After I was a lot youthful as an artist, Handala was very vital in my work,” Mattar stated. “Rising up in Gaza, he was a really emotional image — he’s a boy all of us associated to, he’s a boy that spoke for all of us and our emotions.”
“He’s a toddler who was displaced, who all the world failed.”
Final month, Hadi Eldebek, a Lebanese American musician and educator and member of Silkroad Ensemble, labored together with his collaborators within the Brooklyn Nomads to create a multimedia live performance at Roulette in Brooklyn devoted to Naji Al-Ali and his ubiquitous character of resistance. Musicians and dancers carried out whereas animations of Ali’s cartoons have been projected above them. “To me — as a Lebanese, as an Arab, as a Muslim, as a human being — Hanzala represents me,” Eldebek stated.
What appears to unite the artists who’re re-embracing Handala is a way of his enduring relevance.
“Some members of the viewers on the present requested me if we had commissioned a up to date cartoonist to make the pictures we confirmed, since they appeared to characterize all of the horrors we’ve seen on the information since Oct. 7,” Eldebek stated. “However they’re pictures made within the Seventies and Eighties, when Ali was trying again already on a long time of struggling.”
