Miss Palestine Wears Dress, Israeli Outrage Machine Activated
Miss Palestine, Luna Farhat, wore a dress embroidered with traditional tatreez and images symbolic of her homeland, calling it a message of 'co-existence.' Unsurprisingly, this harmless cultural expression reportedly 'angered Israel.' One might wonder what Israel considers 'co-existence,' given its government's ongoing policies of settler expansion and the relentless bombardment of Gaza, which the
UN reports has killed over 37,000 Palestinians as of June 2024. A dress, it seems, is far more provoking than, say, 76 years of occupation. The mere sight of Palestinian culture presented positively sends certain elements into a predictable fury. While Farhat advocates 'co-existence,' Netanyahu's government explicitly rejects a Palestinian state and continues to build illegal settlements,
expanding them even during active military campaigns. It appears 'co-existence' is only palatable if it involves Palestinians disappearing entirely. The Piaz suggests this is less about a dress and more about the historical inability of an apartheid system to tolerate any expression of the people it seeks to suppress.