The erasure of Palestinian authorship from the 8-pointed star pattern occurred through specific colonial mechanisms. This systematic extraction was enabled by the colonial infrastructure, not by accidental diffusion or organic cultural exchange.
The commercial framework for appropriating “Middle Eastern” patterns was established through centuries of colonial trade. From the 17th century onwards, European textile mills copied patterns from imported “Middle Eastern” textiles, immediately reproducing them in England and France.³ ⁴ The British Mandate (1920-1948) intensified this extraction by granting unprecedented access to Palestinian material culture. An average of 80,000 tourists per year visited Palestine between 1926 and 1945, including British Anglicans, Zionist travellers, and Christian and Muslim pilgrims. Many British tourists, described as “tourist-pilgrims,” sought material connection to biblical narratives rather than engagement with contemporary Palestinian life.⁵
This surge in "Holy Land" tourism systematically commodified Palestinian cultural objects: textiles were sold, looted, and resold as souvenirs.¹ When these objects reached Western museums, institutions systematically mislabelled them as "biblical styles," completely erasing Palestinian authorship.¹ Travel guides facilitated this erasure by urging tourists to ignore Indigenous identities in favour of biblical caricature.¹