Palestine National Day
Reclaiming IndigeneityClient / Palestine National Day
Industry / Grassroot Organising
Type / Community-Led Cultural Event
Location / Melbourne (Naarm), Australia
Year / 2025
The Palestinian and broader community in Victoria come together annually at Fed Square to commemorate Palestine National Day, marking the anniversary of the 1988 Declaration of Independence of the State of Palestine—authored by the poet Mahmoud Darwish and read by Yasser Arafat.
Melbourne's Palestine National Day has become the largest annual Palestinian cultural celebration in Australia and one of the most significant Palestinian National Day events outside Palestine. What began as a community gathering has evolved into a powerful expression of identity, culture, and resilience—uniting thousands of people from diverse backgrounds in a celebration of Palestine's heritage, music, art, food, and enduring struggle for freedom and justice.
The 2025 commemoration carries deeper meaning and renewed momentum, following Australia's official recognition of the State of Palestine in 21 September 2025. This step echoes the Palestinian people's rightful aspiration for self-determination and peace. Yet, this recognition takes place amid ongoing challenges of occupation, displacement, and humanitarian suffering, underscoring the enduring resilience of the Palestinian people in their quest for justice and dignity.
Against the backdrop of what the UN commission stated in their findings in 2025—an active genocide in Gaza—amplifying Palestinian culture becomes urgent work. The UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories framed Palestine as the litmus test of our generation. In this context, design that makes Palestinian culture visible challenges widespread misconceptions and has the potential to shift political discourse.
What began as solving practical digital problems for this event became a research journey into Palestinian tatreez traditions, specifically examining how the 8-pointed star pattern has been systematically appropriated in Western contexts. This work explores how traditional Palestinian textile patterns can inform contemporary design thinking without simply reproducing historical motifs—honouring tatreez construction principles and history while creating an identity suitable for today's digital-first world.
Palestinian embroidery artist and scholar Susan Muaddi Darraj describes the rage of seeing "her" star pattern—a traditional tatreez motif with centuries of Palestinian cultural significance—commodified as Christmas decorations in American department stores.2
The 8-pointed star circulates globally on Western retail products, marketed as generic 'snowflakes' or seasonal decoration, completely severed from its Palestinian origins. Even the name 'Bethlehem Star' represents appropriation—imposed by Western 'Holy Land' tourism through what scholars call 'Biblification,' a type of Orientalism where travel guides urged tourists to ignore the real identities of Indigenous people in favour of biblical caricature. 1 2
Cultural symbols become commercialised products. Palestinian voices remain marginalised and silenced.
Palestinian thobe with 8-pointed star tatreez from a village between al-Khalil and Yafa, Palestine, early 20th century.
© Wafa Ghnaim via The MET.
Knitted sweater marketed as “Christmas Ugly Sweater” with the same 8-pointed star sold for USD $33.98 at Walmart.
Palestinian tatreez (cross-stitch embroidery) carries centuries of cultural meaning through intricate patterns representing sophisticated textile traditions passed down through generations of Palestinian women. Among the most significant motifs is the 8-pointed star, which appears in regional variations across Palestine—called 'crushed sugar' in Bethlehem, 'stars' in Yaffa, 'moons' in Ramallah, and 'roses' in Gaza.2
The pattern itself spans over 3,000 years of continuous cultural practice. Ancient Mesopotamian artefacts from the 14th-8th centuries BCE show the motif on royal headdresses.1 Medieval evidence from 1283 CE confirms its persistence, with similar tatreez work found on dresses of eight female mummies in Qadisha Valley. The same motif appears across Indigenous cultures globally—in Palestinian embroidery, Lakota 'Morning Star' quilts, and Malay Songket 'lotus flowers'—demonstrating that Palestinians belong to a 3,000-year-old Indigenous network.2
Head of a female figure, Neo-Assyrian, 8th century BCE, Mesopotamia, Nimrud. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1954. Object No. 54.117.8.
Embroidered dress from Maronite mummy, Qadisha Valley, 1283 CE. Shows medieval continuity of tatreez patterns still used today. From Fadi Baroudi (ed.), Momies du Liban, Paris: Edifra, p. 67.
“Kain kepala” (detail): Nusantara, Sumatra; 19th century. Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection T-1720.
Thobe (detail) from a village between al-Khalil and Yaffa, early 20th century. Wafa Ghnaim, The Tatreez Institute Collection.
Almira Buffalo Bone Jackson, “Twirling Leaves” (1968- 1988). National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institute.
Palestinian women have long used tatreez as resistance. During the First Intifada, women responded to the Israeli occupation by embroidering explicitly nationalistic motifs onto their dresses using Palestinian flag colours—red, black, white, and green.1 Tatreez became a language of defiance, proving that Palestinian visual culture adapts while maintaining its resistant core. This tradition of combining traditional patterns with contemporary political expression established a precedent for using embroidery as an act of cultural sovereignty.
For Palestine National Day, the 8-pointed star offered both cultural depth and strategic advantages. Its overall geometric clarity also translates across scales better than more intricate tatreez patterns where individual stitches become illegible at small sizes. Its existing recognition—even divorced from proper attribution—creates an opportunity for re-education. And reclaiming this appropriated pattern through contemporary design honours the tradition of Palestinian women who transformed their tatreez into acts of resistance.
Intifada thobe featuring nationalistic motifs in Palestinian flag colors, late 20th century. Courtesy of the Textile Research Centre, Leiden.
The design strategy centres on three principles: recognition, sovereignty, and contemporary expression.
Recognition leverages the 8-pointed star's existing visibility—even in its appropriated form—as an entry point for re-education. People who encounter the pattern may sense familiarity without knowing its Palestinian origins. This creates an opportunity to restore proper cultural attribution through contemporary identity design.
Sovereignty means extracting the pattern from its commodified circulation and restoring it within authentic Palestinian visual language. The design doesn't reproduce the motif as decorative element but engages with tatreez methodology itself—the systematic, calculated construction where every stitch is counted and patterns emerge through angular, mathematical precision.
Contemporary expression translates traditional craft principles into forms that function across digital platforms and physical spaces. Rather than replicating tatreez stitch-by-stitch (which becomes illegible at small scales), the design distils the 8-pointed star into solid geometric forms that maintain pattern legibility at any scale—from social media icons to environmental applications.
The mark's foundation begins with basic geometric scaffolding, informed by tatreez methodological practice where every stitch is counted and patterns emerge through angular, mathematical precision.
The construction progresses through deliberate stages. A square establishes the foundation. The grid expands to create the cross-shaped scaffolding. Diagonal divisions generate the eight-pointed geometry. Each step builds systematically—creating complexity from simple elements while the grid ensures balanced proportions. This mirrors how tatreez itself works: calculated, building from foundation to complete pattern.
Palestinian flag colours—red, black, white, and green—activate the composition. These colours carry the legacy of the First Intifada, when Palestinian women embroidered them into their tatreez as acts of resistance. The geometry functions across all scales and contexts, from social media icons to larger applications, maintaining clarity and legibility while carrying the weight of cultural reclamation.
The typography integrates with the mark through the same geometric grid system. Clean, geometric sans-serif forms help the identity travel clearly across digital platforms with contemporary clarity.
Both English and Arabic typefaces share geometric foundations that align with the mark's precise angles. Aktiv Grotesk Expanded provides the English typography with its wide proportions and clean structure. For Arabic, DIN Arabic receives custom adjustments to letterform details and proportions to ensure optimal readability while maintaining systematic grid relationships and cultural respect.
The bilingual identity gives equal weight to both languages, reflecting Palestine National Day's commitment to accessibility for diverse audiences while centring Arabic as the primary cultural language.
The 8-pointed star began this journey stripped of meaning, sold as seasonal decoration. Through systematic engagement with tatreez methodology, it emerges as contemporary identity—precise, purposeful, and rooted in culture, history, and resistance.
In contexts of systematic cultural erasure, design that makes Palestinian identity visible becomes essential work. Palestinian narratives are too often reduced to suffering and conflict, with culture eclipsed by trauma. This identity intervenes in that limited representation—presenting Palestine through cultural richness, artistic heritage, and the steadfastness deeply rooted in the land.