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The Palestinian gazelle was and still is a part of my childhood. I grew up in a house where a photo on the wall showed my father, standing proudly next to the Palestinian gazelle. I saw the same kind of gazelle during a family trip with my children, only this time “someone” has decided to call this animal “the Israeli Gazelle”. It may be no coincidence that in this zoo most of the animals were contaminated with a disease that led to the amputation of their part. An image that reflects the case of distortion resulting from the game of role exchange and names’ crossbreeding. A case that engenders a cultural and civilized state with an identity confusion paving the way to erase historical memory.


It is the human existence and the civilized patrimony… facing identity exclusion and distortion of the personal definition, which is printed like a fingerprint in the remnant of the individual and collective memory. This is where the game of roles exchange becomes complicated, maybe even the most dangerous idea we’ve thought of until now. A game that aims to erase all differences between freedom and slavery, the killer and the victim, resistance and terrorism, the indigenous and the occupier, and even between death and life.


Identity is often linked to conflicts, which are national, religious or political. However, the issue of identity is a very personal one, creating a personal conflict only. It is related to self-identity for every individual, starting with political, social and finally sexual identity. It is the main hereditary substance for the free human intellect and the unique mark of human existence. Hence, any trial to contain identity will certainly fail… despite the visual or current abstraction of the identity and showing it in shapes that differ from its initial existence… it is that mark that no one can change, it is the instinct of things as they were destined to be.

Manal Mahamid