“All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this…”
More than a decade ago, I first read that Palestinian perfume makers in Gaza, wanting to create unforgettable scents with unforgettable names to evoke unforgettable memories, and what’s more, to package them in memorably-shaped bottles, produced a line of scents named after terror groups and their missiles. More on Les Parfums de Palestine can be found in this report that caught my eye in 2012: “New Gaza perfume named for missile,” by Elhanan Miller, Times of Israel, December 6, 2012:
A new perfume created in Gaza will bear the name of a missile designed by Hamas and fired in the direction of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv during Operation Pillar of Defense in November,[2012] a local newspaper reported on Thursday.
Shadi Adwan, the owner of a local cosmetics company, decided to name a new scent M-75, to “honor the victory of the Palestinian people and the resistance during the eight-day war,” he told Islamist daily Al-Resalah.
That eight-day war ended in a crushing defeat of Hamas in Gaza. But what tricks memory plays on the Palestinians, who for the past half-century have been convinced that every defeat they have endured has been, if remembered rightly, a victory. Why should we deprive them of their hallucinations? If it keeps them happy, let them believe.
The M-75 missile is manufactured in Gaza by Hamas’s Izz A-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, and Hamas claims it possesses a range of 75 kilometers (46 miles).
How lovely that this M-75 perfume was so artfully given an alphanumeric name, just like the most famous perfume in the world, Chanel No. 5. Of course, the scents were not those of Chanel No. 5. As all perfume connaisseurs know, one 30-milliliter bottle (approximately 1.01 ounces) of the French fashion house’s celebrated scent is composed of 1,000 Pégomas jasmine flowers and 12 Pégomas roses. Pégomas is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes. The jasmine and roses can come from nowhere else; they must be cultivated and gathered only by members of the Mul family.
The M-75 perfume was a bit less exotic in its formulation. It combined the smells that evoke, as Proust’s madeleine famously did for him, a certain time and place. The place was Gaza, the time was the eight-day campaign between Hamas and Israel in November 2012, known as Operation Pillar of Defense. In this M-75 perfume, there is a hint of leather (the soldiers’ boots), of burning tires, of gunpowder (from rifles aimed at the settler-colonial Zionist land thieves), even a delicate hint of the gasoline used in Molotov cocktails. This was intended to be a perfume for the wives of Palestinian warriors, and for the warriors themselves.
“The fragrance is pleasant and attractive, like the missiles of the Palestinian resistance, and especially the M-75,” Adwan said, adding that his company wished “to remind citizens of the victory wherever they may be, even in China.”
According to the report, the perfume comes in masculine and feminine scents and costs double the price of other perfumes due to special ingredients it contains, “worthy of the victory in the Gaza Strip.”
Of course, it was double the price of other perfumes. It can’t have been easy to blend leather and smoke and gunpowder and gasoline in just the right proportions to make for a successful perfume, one that will cause a Palestinian, whereso’er he roam, from Ramallah or Gaza City to China and Peru, to summon up from the scent the great victory of Hamas over the Zionists in 2012.
I then forgot about that story, until just the other day, when a story appeared about a perfume shop in Gaza and its new fragrance: “Palestinians in Gaza launch rocket-themed perfume,” by Joanie Margulies, Jerusalem Post, October 2, 2023:
A video that surfaced via Palestinian media on Sunday showed a perfume shop in Gaza announcing its newest missile-themed fragrance.
Though the missile perfume may not give off the same odor as a rocket after it is launched, the presentation depicts a missile used in recent rocket attacks against Israel from the Gaza Strip.
A tweet from an Israeli reporter named the fragrance as Burak 100, after the long-range rockets used against Israel from the Islamic Jihad.
In a video entitled “In Gaza, perfume smells like resistance missiles,” a perfume store owner, identifying himself as 23-year-old Bilal Abu Seraya, is seen talking to a camera describing the growing demand for a scent-themed to honor the Islamic Jihad fighters.
The advertiser cites “inspiration” from 2021’s Operation Guardians of the Wall in Gaza.
So Palestinian perfumes have now been named after both the M-75 rocket used by Hamas, and the Burak 100 rocket used by Islamic Jihad. That’s pleasantly ecumenical; after all, the terror groups have often been at each other’s throats. I’m still unclear as to what “inspiration” a Palestinian could derive from the thrashing the IDF gave to Hamas and Islamic Jihad in 2012, 2014, 2021, and 2022. But we need to remind ourselves that the Palestinians remember every defeat as a victory, save that in 1948, which was long before the Palestinian people were invented.
“It was an old idea, but recently it became popular with young people – people who are rebellious and love resistance!” he [Bilal Abu Seraya] told the camera in Arabic.
“He explained that scents are determined by what a customer looks for and that they are named for the different factions and militia groups. He appeared to have several different missile-shaped bottles, posed almost like collector’s items.
Two of the groups included in the names of the perfume bottles included the Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades.
Just imagine the look in your sweetie’s eyes — and if your leman is wearing a niqab, that’s all you’ll see of her in any case — as she opens your present to her and finds a missile-shaped bottle of what is sure to become her favorite resistance perfume. The missile bottles come in all sizes — short-range, mid-range, and there is even one that looks like a long-range hypersonic missile to which can be added, for quite a reasonable sum, a darling little thermonuclear warhead. All in good fun, of course, but deeply inspirational nonetheless. The real thing we save for launching at the Zionist entity.
Hudders. says
ahh that sweet smell of death….
SJ says
I guess something has to cover up the foul smell of the unwashed niqab women.