The "Palestinian Haruhi" Photo And Dehumanization via Culture
With the genocide of Palestinians by the israeli government flaring up, I saw japanese speakers online rediscovering the “Palestinian Haruhi” photo. Most notably after Bunshun published an article about the photo in November 2023, explaining to non otaku/younger folks how gargantuan the Haruhi anime was (with a focus on Goto Yuko's biography), and how bad the occupation and ethnic cleansing by israel is. Seeing this, I was reminded of the reactions to the photo I saw this last Decade. In particular, I remembered the reactions that went "This is definitely photoshopped and it never happened", or in other words: “It’s impossible that non caucasians, muslims, people in gobal south, in the middle east, etc, are also human beings who vibe with stuff I vibe with”. So I decided to write my own article on the photo.
The "パレスチナのハルヒ/ Palestinian Haruhi” photo is a December 2006 photo taken by international french news outlet Agence France Presse (AFP) while covering a protest in the Gaza Strip. The outlet explained the demonstration was in response to the tensions between Fatah and Hamas at the time, and how 3 children were assassinated on december 11. Testimonies gathered by AFP explain the people feared a civil war, and how the deceased children’ classmates were even more shocked than usual, because their friends were not killed by israel as “usual”, but by other Palestinians. Either way, we should always look at the big picture and how none of this would happen without 70+ years of genocide, occupation and blockade by the israeli goverments and their international allies.
On the photo, a little girl is seen holding a sign with a black and white printed key visual of the Haruhi anime, the one where Haruhi is directly looking and pointing at the viewer. I can’t read it, but the French AFP article mentioned the sign reads "don’t kill children".
The original AFP article disappeared over the years, but you can find some matome sites etc with screenshots of the original french version and the Japanese version of the article. AFP collaborated with Le Monde for the article, and their own coverage is still online, but without photos.
I first saw the photo in 2010 or something. There are so many people in Gaza and the West Bank who are killed by the israeli army and settlers every year that I'd be surprised if all the people in the photo are still alive and well in 2024.
First aired in April 2006, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya quickly became one of the most popular anime of all time. Like a lot of series airing at the time, Haruhi was fansubbed in english relatively weekly, with the episodes available via torrents and IRC. So it quickly spread across the internet. It’s one of my (many) favorite series ever and I wish I was paid to write about it in detail. But long story short:
You had terrific animation by Kyoto Animation, with the cheering in the OP and especially the dancing in the ED “Hare Hare Yukai“ going viral. Ten years later in 2016 there were still people dancing it at france’s anime cons.
The episodes were aired in “disorder“, triggering even more discussion around the series. Using brackets for “disorder” as it actually all fits together perfectly. The fact that the episodes are not in chronological order is also referenced by the characters in each next episode preview through skits.
The parody style used by the series, mixing blunt references with subtlety.
The characters and their incredible voice acting, most notably Hirano Aya’s singing in the Live Alive episode.
There are many other reasons why the series is a masterpiece, and why it got so popular. Like how Ouran High School Host Club’s anime adaptation was airing at the same time, also had a protagonist named Haruhi (Fujioka), and how the initial episodes of both series would leave you with a big impression, spurring even more discussion.
Suzumiya Haruhi was so influential that some people watching it now find it boring because they've already seen many series inspired by it.
If you're not caucasian, and/or if you're a muslim, it's common to witness people being surprised at you doing anything: "Woah they play video games?? Some of them read manga in Japanese? Wait what, they’re actual human beings????? There's even trans people?! I heard they pushed them all off roofs tho?!”.
I know it can be fascinating to witness how a cultural thing got so popular that it ended up in another place entirely. But there are some people who dehumanize others so much, most notably Palestinians, that they just go "impossible lol" and simple hypotheses won't even cross their mind: it's unlikely the girl knows much about Haruhi. She probably just found a cute confident anime girl she vibed with. And since Haruhi’s pose is perfect to convey a message, she got it printed with probably one of the sole PCs and printers of her neighborhood. The sea, air, land embargo on Gaza limits internet access and makes it extremely difficult for anything to get in there. And this is back in 2006, when smartphones etc weren't mainstream.
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Culture plays a big part in dehumanization and shapes how we perceive the world. Characters in fiction are caucasian by default. Armored Core 6 characters don't have portraits but most players see them as caucasian and that's reflected in fan works. (It's impressive that FromSoftware games are so mainstream now that "外しはしない / I won't miss" is now associated in both languages with AC6 Rusty. Even though many other mecha pilots and ranged-weapons users have been saying it for decades in similarly cool moments."I won't miss" is now the Genshin of anime one-liners).
Think for a second how insane it is that so many people don't know Issa (Jesus’ name in Islam) is a Palestinian and how Christian Palestinians exist and existed first. Years of Blue Eyes White Jesus in culture caused this. (I am a huge Xenosaga fan going through Xenosaga for the first time and after hearing for decades « Jesus is in the series » I will be very disappointed if his Palestinian origins are not mentioned. Hopefully I'll make a post about Xenosaga 1 soon).
Next example, the way people believe the Middle East is some cultural monolith filled with nothing but brown-skinned people who are all muslims, all mysoginists, all queerphobic, and all potential terrorists. The “«Africa is a country» Mentality“ as I like to call it. I’m also a fan of the “Arabistan” appellation.
People fail to realize that even in a single country you have many ethnicities, religions and cultures blended in together. Needless to say this is one issue that aggravated in mid 2000s, when popular series like Call of Duty started a career as US army recruiter and spokeperson.
Now for a more personal example. When I started working as an underpaid game journalist in September 2018, a handful of comments would immaditely assume I'm from the States. That's fine as I was writing in English. However, it was pretty annoying when people assumed I was caucasian, especially since I focus on covering Japanese games news. They believed there's no way a black person was actually speaking Japanese and translating stuff.
Yet another example is the representation of Muslims failing to represent how diverse the religion is. In france, one of the sole places I see OSCAAAAAAR/Lunlun levels of stereotypically looking french people is at mosques. (There's a Tencent-produced Hana no Ko Lunlun chinese remake that got announced in August 2023. Maybe I'll check it out one day after rewatching the original, though I won’t understand the dialogues. I didn't know that Lunlun was incredibly popular in the Chinese regions it aired in. Apparently it’s one of the first ever anime aired there and is still beloved by older generations nowadays. That’s so cool and fascinating, hoping to learn more one day. You should check out the Lunlun french OP too btw).
In a sense, there's less of this eurocentrism nowadays as anime and webtoons are now part of mainstream culture too. But that won't give us a boost in diverse representation. Right now we're in the “every Black character looks like Killmonger” phase. We aren't getting out of it soon seeing it takes companies years to make a game (but only 25 days to lay off 5600 people). It took us years to get out of the “every Black character looks like Bob from Tenjou Tenge AND is called Bob” phase. (I need to read the manga one day). And that phase was preceded by the “every Black character looks like Gerald from Hey Arnold” phase.
I'm arguably happy about characters like Kamala Khan or Black Ariel. But we can't forget they're only trying to make more money out of us. If companies like Disney, Microsoft or Tencent wanted to hire me to help them make Black Muslim characters in some Call of Duty, I’d refuse. We’d just be changing phases again, while we need more than Phase Shifts. All of this is only another result of our current society, built on white supremacy. With the invention of race to justify the dehumanization of non caucasians, to justify colonialism and slavery, and to build the wealth of global north countries and create our current capitalist society. Gotta change things on a bigger scale, slowly but surely.
And when it comes to dehumanization, the True Last Boss is definitely Palestinians. You can scream that colonialism never ended in Australia or USA and you’ll be fine. In pretty much any global north country, you can speak up against any kind of discrimination, and you’ll be fine. I guess in france you might loose a hand or an eye or get sued for supposedly beating up the police officers who just beat you up for participating in a protest after they shot yet another arab/black kid. But you’ll be fine.
If you speak up about Palestine though, you loose your job, you loose your school, and in the eyes of society you are an irredeemable monster denying anti-semitism and the Holocaust.
Anyway we gotta keep talking about Palestinians, do what we can, and not loose hope. Things will definitely change for the better one day. That's all. Thanks for reading.
Additionnal Material(ise!)
If you've got some gamer friends who never really thought about Palestine until now, (and who can stand watching YouTube videos longer than 5m unlike an anime boomer like me), link them this: the intro video by Rasheed Abueideh, Tamoor Hussein and Rami Ismail. Once they’re done with some kind of introductory material like this, get them on something like BDS. Or Against Arming Israel campaigns. Gotta look up activists in your city and what kind of action they have planned.
The important thing is to turn our feelings into actions, rather than scrolling and despairing constantly.
If you’ve got some Japanese speaking friends, you can link them some of the recent NoHateTV episodes on Palestine.
You can also follow and share Koji Sugihara’s Twitter account. He’s the representative of Network Against Japanese Arms Trafficking (NAJAT), and retweets info regarding protests for Palestine in Japanese cities, among other important stuff. Like how negationists and bigots recently convinced Gunma politicians to remove a memorial remembering Korean forced labourers. He retweets many other interesting accounts, in several languages, so keep an eye on all that via Oldtweetdeck.