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decolonizepalestine/website/myth/palestinians-used-watermelons.txt

@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ There is one singular New York Times story from 1993 that mentions watermelon sl
 
 This detail was later retracted, due to insufficient evidence of this ever happening. You will notice that most stories covering the watermelon phenomenon today link back to this same article. Of course, Israel has been known to arrest Palestinians for the flimsiest of pretexts, so this is not entirely outside the realm of possibility. However, there is little to suggest it was a widespread practice.
 Additionally, we reached out to several members who were active in the popular committees of the Intifada regarding this issue, none of them could recollect anyone ever using watermelons as symbols of resistance.
-Naturally, we are open to any kind of correction, and if there is some mention in literature we missed or a reliable documented source, we are happy to update the article as necessary. However, if this practice was as widespread as claimed, we wouldn���t need to be searching this deeply for a mention of it, in both Arabic and English sources.Revolutionary movements tend to produce revolutionary iconography. These symbols can take a wide variety of forms ranging from art, to even the revolutionaries themselves becoming immortalized. However, there is also a danger inherent to the adoption of symbols, or rather what or who is chosen to be turned into a symbol.
+Naturally, we are open to any kind of correction, and if there is some mention in literature we missed or a reliable documented source, we are happy to update the article as necessary. However, if this practice was as widespread as claimed, we wouldn’t need to be searching this deeply for a mention of it, in both Arabic and English sources.Revolutionary movements tend to produce revolutionary iconography. These symbols can take a wide variety of forms ranging from art, to even the revolutionaries themselves becoming immortalized. However, there is also a danger inherent to the adoption of symbols, or rather what or who is chosen to be turned into a symbol.
 It goes without saying that adopting a symbol based on a myth leaves it open to attacks from Hasbara organizations and other pro-Israel groups. The go-to tactic of these groups is to cling to any factual inaccuracies -no matter how minuscule- in an attempt to discredit the entire movement. You need only browse a website like “NGO Monitor” to find a mountain of examples of sentences broken down, taken out of context, and twisted beyond recognition to frame them as antisemitic. Nevertheless, Palestinian content will be attacked regardless of how factual it is, with the legions of Nakba deniers attesting to this fact. Fear of defamation from pro-Israel advocates is not the main concern here, but rather something a bit more complicated that the pro-Palestine movement needs to reckon with.
 The adoption of something or someone as a symbol can often be the quickest way to diffuse it and empty it of its radical significance. Take the revolutionary legacy of Nelson Mandela for example. Upon his death, western media rushed to call him a “man of peace”, describing how his principled non-violence paved the way for the fall of Apartheid South Africa. What was conspicuously missing from these obituaries, is the fact that Nelson Mandela underwent military training, established the military wing of the ANC, and planned attacks against the Apartheid government. What was also missing, is the fact that at the time these newspapers called him a terrorist, and published opinion pieces on why Apartheid had “nuances”, and how equal voting rights was a “recipe for slaughter”.
 The revolution is taken out of the revolutionary, and they become a harmless icon, divorced from their radical politics and actions. They are declawed, and a distorted, tame version of their life is propagated and celebrated by the very forces they dedicated their lives to fighting. Unfortunately, such an occurrence is not unique to our present day, as Lenin so succinctly wrote more than a century ago: