Elham Shahin honoured by Palestinian yet is clueless about their flag

CAIRO - 22 June 2019: The "Lady of the Earth" Foundation awarded the Egyptian actress, Elham Shahin, with the title of "Lady of the Earth" Ambassador.

During the ceremony, the Egyptian actress stressed that Jerusalem is a Palestinian city and will remain so, as it will eventually return to its rightful owners; the Palestinian.

Shahin then took to Instagram to express her happiness with this honour as she published numerous photos from ceremony and thanked the Foundation and the Palestinian people. All is well so far, until Shahin decided to put few emojis at the end of her post; one of them being the supposed Palestinian flag, well that was what she thought until one of her followers pointed out that it is in fact the flag of Sudan and not Palestine.

Shahin instantly replaced the Sudanese flag with what she thought was the 'actual' Palestinian flag and apologized for the mistake, but it was just not Shahin's day. Again one of her followers pointed out that this is Jordan's flag and not Palestine.
The awkward situation led Shahin to declare that “the emojis are too small and unclear to distinguish the right flag”.

While some people regarded the matter as comical, others were less impressed and took it as an insult to Palestine and Palestinian, leading them to question why was Shahin awarded the title when not only she has done little, if anything for the Palestinian cause but she does not even know their flag.

The "Lady of the Earth" Foundation was created to establish peace and help the Arab state of Palestine. The ceremony was scheduled to take place in the Palestinian territories, but due to security considerations, the organisers decided hold it in Cairo.

This incident does force the question of how do celebrities and public figures get chosen for a particular award or title outside their field of expertise? Only recently Yasmine Sabry was awarded the title of ambassador for African Women rights and it does make people wonder what have Sabry and Shahin done to deserve such titles, whereas there are so many anonymous figures working tirelessly and campaigning for a particular cause yet receive no recognition.

Maybe the time has come for the abandonment of such awards and titles and let every individual thrive and win awards in their own particular field, at least then they will have the knowledge to fully carry and represent the title/award.