Israel Stamp Reviews

Palestine Sunbird: A Stamp of Defiance is a 2020 documentary film shot by Ayed Nabaa and produced by Al Jazeera and MediaTown . It tracks the efforts of one Khaled Jarrar, a Ramallah-based artist and activist, to promote his passport stamp and postage stamp designs in various European countries as a means of advocating for Palestinian statehood. In the context of philately, Sunbird is an important movie for a few reasons. The first and most obvious is that it is a documentary about stamps. There are not many of those being produced, certainly not on a stage such as Al Jazeera, so when one does get made it is an immediate cause for celebration. Second, it demonstrates the use of stamps as purveyors of political messages. The intersection of philately and politics has been an area of interest to scholars since before World War I, and it will continue to be of interest for as long as stamps are issued and territorial and ideological disputes persist. Third, the film offers a glimp...

The idea that stamps are a window into a nation's culture and history presupposes that culture and history are matters of national consensus. In reality, culture and history are abstractions. Culture is an abstraction of values, and history is an abstraction of narratives. Values and narratives are never static; they exist in states of perpetual internal tension. Most of the time these tensions are minor, even healthy -- the stuff of dinner table discussions -- which is what allows societies to function and develop as stable systems. Controversy is what ensues when values or narratives clash. When controversy rises above a certain pitch or when there is too much of it for too long, it starts to undermine the society's stability. It signals that values or narratives have moved so far apart from each other that they can no longer peacefully coexist. Controversy offers observers the most penetrating insight into a nation's culture and history, because it exposes the fissu...