Meet The artist creating a new Palestinian Toy Story

Shireen Abu Akleh, clad in her press vest and holding a microphone, her stance unwavering. Micheline Awad holding her canary-yellow pumps in one hand and throwing stones at the occupation army with the other. These are but a few images of the Palestinian resistance, moments captured and remembered. Yet, beyond them, there are countless other stories and nameless figures who have emerged from Palestine over the past seven decades of occupation. “The land is fertile,” says Mohammed Zakaria, founder of Jabbar. “It can’t help but keep giving birth to fighters.”

But how do you capture a moment in time? How do you preserve it, remember it, and learn from it? How does an act of resistance live forever? These were the questions that first prompted Zakaria to start Jabbar. And most importantly, how does one capture iconography?

Jabbar is a project that documents, celebrates and immortalises the Palestinian resistance, not just through well-known figures but through the everyday Palestinian in the form of 3D-printed figurines reminiscent of the ubiquitous US military toy soldiers. For him, it is an artistic and political counterattack. “I wanted to use this thing, which is already part of world pop culture, and subvert it with its own tools.”

The inspiration came from a story he heard that took place during an invasion of Jenin in 2022. Resistance fighters were injured and taken to the hospital, and one of the doctors took a weapon from one of the fighters and fired at the IOF. “The contrast was striking,” Zakaria reflects. “A doctor, in his white coat, stethoscope around his neck and holding a rifle.” From then on, he began reflecting on the powerful imagery that emerges from Palestine, rich in symbolism, and sought to enshrine it through Jabbar.

Originally published in Dazed MENA Issue 01 | Order Here

The project’s first manifesto declares its devotion to and celebration of “ordinary” people. “A grocery store owner, a cleaner at a dry-cleaning shop, a produce seller,” it reads. But this person happens to be Palestinian, living under unordinary circumstances and pushed to extraordinary acts of resistance daily. Zakaria recalls the image of a young boy, Fares, hurling a stone at an Israeli tank. “What can a stone do against a tank?” he asks.

Palestine has no army, no air force, and no navy. The Palestinian people are the army. Acknowledging that, Jabbar celebrates the grassroots resistance. “I don’t want to talk about factions. I want to talk about the people because they are the foundation of the factions. The stone is the foundation of [Al-Yassin 105], of the Carlo guns, and of the Ayyash rockets. The popular resistance is the foundation of everything.”

Jabbar’s first figurine was based on the now-iconic image of Aa’ed Abu Amro, photographed by Mustafa Hassona, holding a slingshot and the Palestinian flag during protests in the Gaza Strip. “There are many heroes from our people,” read the caption under Jabbar’s corresponding post. “Our legends are real and greater than their legends, and Aa’ed Abu Amro’s Sling is greater than David’s Sling.”

“Jabbar is a tool to remember and glorify the ordinary people, and perhaps through the representation of these ordinary people in such a glorified way, we – the viewers – can remember that resistance is a daily act, not an isolated event.”

Mohammed Zakaria

The model was a success, paving the way for more than 20 other characters, each representing an individual or moment of defiance. But the project didn’t stop there. It became an ongoing endeavour to chronicle he diverse forms of resistance – women, men, the elderly, and children – all driven by their love for Palestine and an unyielding spirit of resilience.

Jabbar presents a raw and unfiltered representation of this resilience. In an era when tokenism has often gentrified and commercialised the Palestinian cause, Jabbar feels like an act of reclamation. It is not a product of sanitised activism, nor a mere symbol stripped of its meaning. Each figurine that it introduces is accompanied by the story behind it, told with meticulous accuracy, therefore preserving not just the image but the truth.

“When we designed the figurine of Laila Khaled, we made sure to include details from the original image,” Zakaria explains. “She wears a ring made from a bullet casing. That detail is in the statue. Sometimes, we have to imagine elements that weren’t visible in the original image, but we always strive for realism. Like with Abu Abed, the Sheikh with the slingshot, we gave him Napoli sandals because it had to be authentic. These are real people.”

Jabbar has also fostered real connections beyond the screen. Zakaria personally met Laila Khaled and gifted her a figurine of herself. “When Mrs. Leila first saw the project, she told me she had never seen anything like it before. Hearing that from someone with the legacy of Laila Khaled pushed me forward. It reassured me that I’m on the right path.”

Through Jabbar’s Instagram account, which has become a space for dialogue and connection, he was also introduced to Abu Abed through one of its followers. The project, at its core, is by the people and for the people. That is why Zakaria donates 50% of the profits to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, with the rest reinvested into expanding the project.

Through Jabbar’s Instagram account, which has become a space for dialogue and connection, he was also introduced to Abu Abed through one of its followers. The project, at its core, is by the people and for the people. That is why Zakaria donates 50% of the profits to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, with the rest reinvested into expanding the project.

Everyone has been receiving the project in deeply varied ways, each response making Zakaria feel, appreciate and further understand its significance. For some, it sparks curiosity. “A woman messaged me on Instagram,” he shares. “She told me her boys, 11 and 14 years old, check my page every day to see the new characters I post. When we met, they’d come prepared with an Excel sheet full of new characters that I should create and the songs I should use.”

For others, it ignites inspiration. “There’s this character, Thaer. I showed it to a friend of mine, a 38-year-old man, and he said, ‘I want to be like him when I grow up.’” And for some, Zakaria tells me, it evokes something far more visceral. People hold the figurines in their hands and cry. Because at that moment, it feels like a reckoning—an unfiltered, almost jarring reminder of those who stood against the occupation. It stirs memories of faces we know and imparts lessons from those we don’t.

“The project is working on memory from two angles,” continues Zakaria. “On one hand, it’s an embodiment of collective memory. On the other, it challenges personal memory. When you hold these figures, when you play with them, you start to question why you grew up playing with American toy soldiers.” The world of toys has long been a battleground for ideology. American culture has cemented its heroes in plastic, glorifying its war machine through generations of children playing with G.I. Joe figures. Through Jabbar, Palestinian history gets its rightful agency over telling its own narrative.
“They were, those green guys, a tool for propaganda,” he says. “Jabbar wants to create an Arab propaganda. Our propaganda comes from real heroes, so the project is an attempt to create a self-born Arabic culture.”

As for the future of Jabbar? “Bigger than Warner Bros.,” declares Zakaria. “In the near future, we want to create an entire universe—our own Gotham City. When documenting the stories of these characters, we will also incorporate imagination. I envision a website built around a shared universe where Abu Abed is connected to Thaer, who as a child once ate Nabulsi cheese, got sick, and never liked it again. He would later hear Leila Khaled’s story, inspiring him to join the resistance. The goal is to create a broader, more comprehensive narrative.”

By doing so, it reinforces the humanity –or what Zakaria calls the “ordinarity” – of these people. It pushes back against mere glorification, instead dissolving the ego, a concept he explores when discussing the masked mulathamin fighters. In the fight for
Palestine, it is never about the individual, but the act itself—the good deed, not the face behind the mask.

“Jabbar is not the goal, but a tool,” he concludes. “Generally, I think of art as a tool for something, it’s an act of coding and decoding. It’s a tool to communicate between the subconscious of the artist and the subconscious of the receiver, and this is something artists usually forget—where the practice becomes art for the sake of art. This is a dangerous path to go down if you’re an artist. Jabbar is a tool to remember and glorify the ordinary people, and perhaps through the representation of these ordinary people in such a glorified way, we – the viewers – can remember that resistance is a daily act, not an isolated event. Resistance is local, it isn’t global. You resist not for glory, but for an ordinary life. [Jabbar] is a tool to remember.”

The name Jabbar, incidentally, means “mighty” in Arabic and is taken from a Quranic verse. And perhaps that is the essence of the project: might. The might of reclaiming narrative. The might of fighting oppression with its own tools. The might of enshrining the ‘ordinary’ Palestinian not as a victim nor as an omnipotent superhero, but as an unbreakable force of resistance.

Originally published in Dazed MENA Issue 01 | Order Here