The Curious Case of the Palestinian People

The movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the perfect analogy to the Palestinian people – because they were also born very old and under unusual circumstances. With the help of a friend I created two posters for the fake movie The Curious Case of the Palestinian People and coupled them with jokes and other memes. Feel free to copy, share, or even create a video trailer for the movie if you know how.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button came out fifteen years ago this week. It’s quite famous, but just in case you haven’t heard about this movie, it tells the story of a man “born under unusual circumstances”, which somehow cause him to age in reverse. In the beginning of the movie, he is born old and sickly (but with the mind of a child), and he grows younger and younger as time progresses and his mind matures.

I watched the movie around the time it came out and even though I found the basic premise very intriguing, it didn’t manage to captivate me. To be fair, this might have had something to do with the fact I watched on DVD in China, so perhaps I couldn’t fully appreciate it, though I seem to recall that the things I enjoyed the most were the performances and the special effects (which also won an Oscar for the movie), so maybe that wasn’t it.

Regardless, this movie has stuck with me for a different reason. I found the concept of being born old to be the perfect analogy for the people who identify themselves as Palestinians, because their identity is exactly the same – born in the middle of the 20th century, yet somehow considered to be thousands of years old.

For years this analogy served me very well when I discussed the Middle East conflict with both friends and less friendly people. Not only did it help me to make my point about the innate paradox of the Palestinian identity is a clear and swift manner, but it also usually brought a little smile to the face of the person with whom I was discussing the topic.

The Palestinian Adaptations

In the aftermath of the horrible events of October 7th, I decided to step up my game in sharing my perspective and voicing my opinion about this topic. I reached out to a friend of mine, who is a professional graphic designer, and asked her to help me with creating movie posters based on the original posters of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but with the message and information I wish convey. I am happy to say she said yes, and after some more copywriting we came up with not one, but two posters!

Poster 1

The first poster we made is based on the poster most associated with that movie, with the faces of the actors in the lead role on each side. We decide to cast Yasser Arafat for the male leading role and Queen Rania of Jordan to star next to him.

The lovely girl with the curly hair between them in the supporting role is Ahed Tamimi. She is a famous Palestinian activist known for her “bravery” and provocations against IDF soldiers from a very young age. After the events of October 7th, she got arrested for posting threats against Jews living in the West Bank which said: “we will slaughter you until you say what Hitler did to you was a joke, we will drink you blood and eat your skulls, come on we are waiting for you”. She was later released from prison as part of the deal with Hamas.

The Curious Case of Ahed Tamimi

Personally, I am very thankful for Ahed Tamini and her rise to fame. That’s because it gave us the following photo from a court hearing she had during one of her previous arrests. Care to guess why I like it so much? (hint: it’s mostly because of all the other people in the photo and not her).

The reason I like this photo is the fact it disproves a very common misconception about Jews, held by many people in the West, and the US in particular. That misconception is that Jews are white colonizers that are not indigenous to the Middle East like the Palestinian. But the whitest person in this photo is Ahed Tamimi, and she is surrounded by Jews of Arab and African descent with much darker complexion than hers.

In the West Bank (among other places), people refer to these “Ashkenazi” Palestinians like Ahed Tamimi as Bushnack – a descendant of Bosnian Muslims who immigrated the region in the late 1800s and early 20th century. They are as white as they come, and in Ahed Tamimi’s case, she is also so loud, entitled, demanding, and obnoxious – she might as well be called Karen Tamimi.

Poster 2

The second poster is of the two characters riding a motorcycle. Here we again replaced the faces of the main characters to Yasser Arafat and Queen Rania, but also added a little something behind the motorcycle to add some dark Middle Eastern vibes.

By the way, the joke about Yasser Arafat’s previous movie “The Pyro from Cairo” refers to the fact that the so-called father of the Palestinian Nation was born and raised in Egypt. And speaking of “fun” facts about the stars, did you know that Queen Rania’s father-in-law – King Hussain, killed over 3,000 Palestinians and injured about 20,000 more during the events of Black September in 1970? Everybody seems to have forgotten about that for some reason. And finally, notice also the Muslim Bros logo on the bottom right – we are particularly proud of that…

Two more memes

Other than these two posters, I also made a couple of other memes since all hell broke loose from Gaza on October 7th. The first one is based on a brilliant moment from my all-time favorite sitcom Seinfeld:

The second one is about colonialism, and it employs a brilliant moment from my favorite movie as a Child – The Princess Bride:

I was too young to understand and didn’t know it back then, but I think this scene was the first time I got exposed to the idea of semantics and the importance of definitions. The second time was probably in The Hobbit with the Bilbo and Gandalf’s “good morning” small talk.