Israeli independence day posters
April 25th, 2008I’m sitting in Ben-Gurion airport waiting for a flight. In the long hallway that leads down to the duty-free shops there’s an exhibition of almost every one of the Israeli independence day posters dating back to 1949.
I haven’t found images online for now, but they’re an interesting potted history of the mood and ethos of the state. Some of the early posters are very socialist-realist in their design, especially the first one. Many over the next 20 years are rather folkloric, drawing on traditional Jewish motifs or handicraft-style patterns, and quite a lot of images of people: kibbutzniks and women in headscarves feature prominently.
In 1968, the first independence day after the 1967 war, the image is predictably of a united Jerusalem. In the years that follow the posters reflect self-confidence in times of peace or jingoism and embattlement in times of war. There’s a tribute to “heroism” in the form of what might be a war memorial and might be a tree in 1983, after the Lebanon invasion started. In the 1990s there are several optimistic and forward-looking posters talking about equality and social justice (”Different but Equal” is the title of one of them).
That all-embracing vision disappears after the start of the second intifada. One is a tribute to the army; the next is a tribute to sporting heroes; two years later there’s one about developing the Negev and the Galilee, two areas mostly inhabited by Arab-Israelis (so “developing” them, ie, putting more Jews there, has all sorts of political connotations). Last year’s again celebrates the Jerusalem’s “unification” (though the city in practice remains more divided than ever) 40 years on. There’s a return to almost socialist, and strongly nationalist emblems in some of these posters.
Finally, this year’s poster is about children, which to me reads as a sort of desperate plea. When you’re celebrating your 60th anniversary and the thing you’re proudest of is your children, it sends a message that you find little to celebrate in the present and can only hope that the future, your children’s future, will be better.