In terms of the knitting itself, the flag is done in intarsia using cotton yarn of any gauge, and incorporates optional buttonholes for flag attachment. I stress here the use of natural fibers as something to aspire to for reasons having to do with sustaining the planet. A computer script I wrote calculates cast on for a flag based on the gauge of the yarn and the desired size, keeping in mind the proportions of the Palestinian flag, 1:2. It creates a guide as to placement of buttonholes that are used to attach the flag to a fence, pole, jacket, or other surface.

This design reflects time spent in 2020 sitting vigil waiting to hear from a friend who had returned to Gaza to visit his family and attend his sister’s wedding. Every night I would work on these, sleepless, waiting for morning in Palestine and to hear back that they had survived the night. In 2023, I hear his reports of extended family, neighbors, and innocent Palestinians martyred during the end phases of a century-old genocide, and I vigil knit once again.

This flag expresses resistance to the nakba, or catastrophe as it is known: the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their land that reached peak crisis 75 years ago and which now we can sadly speak of in the plural. This constant reality and process has now shifted into full-on genocidal intent and action. The Palestinian flag represents all revolutionary movements that settler-colonial and other colonizing nation-states have been on the wrong side of for 500+ years.

There are three things that helped me to understand much more deeply what is presently going on in Occupied Palestine. One is living in Beirut during the 33-day July War in 2006. The brutality unleashed against civilian populations and physical and economic infrastructures, as well as the passive world response, were incomprehensible and yet spoke to a bigger picture of politics and economics, and not the “religious wars” of nationalist Western mythologies.

The second is understanding the white supremacy and genocide that lie at the heart of settler-colonial societies. This moves past competitive sanctimony to social justice; and requires an understanding of historical context and current geo-politics. The ways in which original peoples are erased and communities destroyed is from a playbook as old as capitalism. Assata Shakur stated: “Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” Tawfiq Zayyad, in his poem, “The Disgraceful Case”, stated: “All you have done to our people/is registered in notebooks”.

The third is the history of colonialism/imperialism as extirpating marginalized populations. Europe and North America decided long ago that 4 ⁄ 5ths of the global population does not embody base humanity. This deserves no response; one doesn’t beg for recognition as human beings, nor should one perform victimhood for a bourgeoisie that revels in this class difference. Norman Finklestein defines efforts to fight such oppression as “valid resistance”.

Please consider downloading this pattern as a sign of solidarity.

Answering morcifer: The only libel is your filthy accusation, which you should delete. You erroneously conflate Judaism, an inherent aspect of the faiths, history, and culture of the region, with zionism, a racist and colonial ideology that is a function of your Europe, along with “blood libel”, anti-Semitism, as well as the Holocaust. The majority of world Jewry is not zionist, and the majority of zionists are not Jews. So I will thank you not to make disgusting accusations in an effort to assuage your own guilt. The Maghen Abraham Synagogue located in the Jewish district of Wadi Abu Jamil in Beirut has been restored to its former splendor and glory. After eight decades of aggression, war, and erasure all of Lebanon supported this restoration. We do not conflate Judaism with zionism; so ask yourself: Why do you?