Arabic graffiti in Homeland says 'Homeland is Racist'

A group of Arabic-speaking artists were hired by the award-winning Showtime series Homeland to decorate the set of a "Syrian refugee camp" while the drama was filming in Berlin. In a statement released on Wednesday, however, the artists came clean: They hadn't written "apolitical" Arabic graffiti as they were originally asked to do, but had actually accused Homeland of racism in the Arabic messages they spray-painted on the set's walls:

Arabic graffiti in the background of scenes in episode two of season five of Homeland translates to phrases like "Homeland is racist," "There is no Homeland," and "Homeland is a joke, and it didn't make us laugh."

"The set designers were too frantic to pay any attention to us; they were busy constructing a hyper-realistic set that addressed everything from the plastic laundry pins to the frayed edges of outdoor plastic curtains," the artists explained in their statement. "The content of what was written on the walls, however, was of no concern. In their eyes, Arabic script is merely a supplementary visual that completes the horror-fantasy of the Middle East, a poster image dehumanizing an entire region to human-less figures in black burkas and moreover, this season, to refugees. The show has thus created a chain of causality with Arabs at its beginning and as its outcome — their own victims and executioners at the same time."

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