The Weekly Dispatch: “There is no other form”

Hello, and welcome to this week’s dispatch.

Last week, the world learned that the great Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour passed away at the age of 79. A leading figure in the cultural scene of Palestine, Mansour’s distinct depictions of the land and its people constitute a rich visual archive of a culture and a society that refuses to be erased.

With other visual artists like Vera Tamari, Tayseer Barakat, and Nabil Anani, Mansour sought to depict Palestinian experiences under occupation and the steadfastness of their commitment to the land. After they stopped using Israeli-made art supplies, Mansour and other leading artists experimented with other media, such as mud, straw, wood, leather, henna and natural dyes, leading to an art that was materially rooted in the land of Palestine.

His family shared the following statement announcing his death:

Scroll down for the rest of our newly-revamped weekly dispatch:

We are proud to feature Ibtisam Azem’s novel The Sleep Thief, translated by Sinan Antoon, as our August/September selection for the PalFest Bookshelf. Longlisted for the Booker International Prize in 2025, Azem returns this summer with a “surreal, brilliant dagger of novel.”

Below you can read an excerpt from a recent review of The Sleep Thief by Britta Stromeyer, published by our friends at ArabLit.

“I asked the gods to give me back my yesterday; they refused, except for one, the kindest among them. Upon me he bestowed the gift of stealing sleep so I could dream.” In the opening pages of The Sleep Thief by Ibtisam Azem (tr. Sinan Antoon), Palestinian protagonist, Gharib Haifawi, recounts how he was dubbed the “sleep thief” by his interrogators during his imprisonment. Deprived of rest, he stole fleeting moments of sleep just to endure the torment. Now, the label haunts him, resurfacing in recurring dreams and nightmares where gods grant him the power to rob others of their rest and underscores the inescapability of his trauma.

The novel is composed of interconnected vignettes and short chapters. Rather than following a strictly linear plot, Azem presents a mosaic of episodes from the life of Gharib Haifawi. Each chapter stands on its own, but together they build a layered portrait of his experiences, relationships, and inner world. Azem’s prose is poetic and surreal, blending mythic elements with rich interiority. The chapter’s dream logic sets the tone for the novel’s exploration of blurred boundaries between reality and imagination, memory and longing.

From the beginning, The Sleep Thief plunges readers into the novel’s emotional core: the heavy toll of survival, the ache of injustice, and the search for dignity in a world demanding impossible choices. Rendered in a phantasmagoric register, the story follows Gharib, born during the Six-Day War and living within the Israeli borders, as he comes of age, enters the resistance, navigates friendship and desire, and pushes back against established norms.

The narrative shifts between first- and third-person perspectives, blurring the boundaries of waking life and nightmare. Through its episodic structure, each brief chapter illuminates distinct glimpses of Gharib’s world—his family lineage, clashes with Israeli authorities, intimate relationships, and internal turmoil. The result is a narrative rich in symbolism, etymology, and cultural motifs that range from culinary traditions to the heavy symbolism of the archive.

Gharib’s nightly struggle mirrors the cyclical violence and loss woven into the Palestinian experience—a reality where the past remains unrecoverable, and the future stays fraught with uncertainty. Driven by Gharib’s recurring nightmare, the narrative pulls readers into a vivid landscape where rest, identity, and political defiance are inextricably bound—tracking a protagonist who longs to break free from suffocating labels, rails against the commodification of suffering, and dares to imagine a Palestinian identity that transcends sorrow.

You can read the rest of the review here. Subscribe to the PalFest Bookshelf now to get your copy of The Sleep Thief and to support bold new publishing on Palestine.

Two Poems from Nima Hasan – Two new poems by Gazan poet Nima Hasan, translated by Huda Fakhreddine: “There is no other form. / Just you and the idea of you repeated. / Your perfume bottle empty. / Your place in hell already assigned. / Nothing frightens you anymore.”

How Sliman Mansour and His Colleagues Built an Art Movement for Palestine – Vera Tamari eulogizes her friend, the late painter Sliman Mansour, who helped build the Palestinian art movement and, even as his health failed, never let go of his devotion to Palestine.

The Brush that Carried a Homeland: Sliman Mansour – A rerun of an episode of the Tarwida podcast, featuring a conversation with the late Sliman Mansour as he looks back on his childhood, his mischief and hardships, and speaks with humor and honesty about what art meant to him.

The Train Runs Too Slow: Children of Exile – Amanee Izhaq tells the story of her family’s exile from Palestine to Jordan, and her father’s journey to Syria to join the PLO.

We Suffer Together – Selma Dabbagh describes how Palestinian Christians and Muslims understand their shared plight not in religious terms but through the lens of the marginalization and violence they experience at the hands of Israel.

In West Bank Village, a New Israeli Order Enables Settler Attacks While Claiming to Prevent Them – Sharif Abdel Kouddous reports on the Israeli military seizure of the Palestinian village of Taybeh, one of the last Christian-majority villages in the West Bank, amid a rising tide of Israeli settler violence against the villagers.

Liberal Zionism and the Democratic Party – Séamus Malekafzali analyzes how the rhetorical overtures that Democratic politicians in the United States make toward Palestine typically serve to mask deeper structural and material commitments that these politicians have to the legitimacy of Israel and the illegitimacy of Palestine.

Overturning Anti-BDS Laws is the Next Fight for the Pro-Palestine Left – Mari Cohen and Alex Kane describe how the Palestine solidarity movement is building momentum toward overturning anti-BDS laws across the United States.

International Law After Gaza: Demise and Political Power – Noura Erakat and Jake Romm argue that the Palestinian liberation struggle not only exposes the contradictions of international law as it is applied today, but also remains central to any effort to build a more egalitarian system.

Israel Is Using Qusra to Show Palestinians the Price of Staying – Mariam Barghouti reports on the ongoing Israeli siege on the town of Qusra in the West Bank as a clear case that Israeli settlers and Israeli soldiers are not different, but two sides of the same coin.

Crushed but Defiant: The Grape Growers of Gaza – Amro Rashad Abo Aisha and Nour Abo Aisha profile the Gazan farmers whose livelihoods in the grape vineyards have been largely destroyed by the genocide.

Hamas Must Not Concede in Talks What Israel Failed to Win on the Battlefield – Analyzing the efforts to disarm Hamas and incorporate it into a reconstructed Palestinian order, Sami Al-Arian argues that the movement needs strategic patience to preserve its independence and resistance identity.

Will Dahlan Take Over Gaza? – Lisa Goldman offers a biography of Mohammed Dahlan, who governed Gaza during the heyday of Oslo and whose name is often floated by Israeli and US intelligence services as a preferred successor to Mahmoud Abbas.

Resistance Archives: How Hezbollah's FPV Drones Documented Israel's Destruction of South Lebanon –  Patrick Anthony argues that the visuals taken by Hezbollah drones constitute a counter-archive against the Israeli invasion and bombardment of Lebanon: “Hezbollah’s Ababils flew time and again to the same scarred hilltops, the same stolen homes, imparting upon a landscape of ruin a defiant optics of return.”