Hello, and welcome to this week’s dispatch.
This past week, in honor of Juneteenth, the Institute for Palestine Studies reshared its summer 2019 journal issue: a special issue on Black-Palestinian transnational solidarity. In the introduction to the issue, Noura Erakat and Marc Lamont Hill consider the contemporary renewals of Black-Palestinian transnational solidarity since the early years of the Movement for Black Lives, showing how this renewal emerges from histories of antiwar organizing, anticolonial struggle, global Black radicalism, and more.
Below we include an excerpt from Robin DG Kelley’s essay in the special issue: “From the River to the Sea to Every Mountain Top: Solidarity as Worldmaking.” In his piece, Kelley considers how “the Black and Palestinian Left embraced a vision of ‘worldmaking’ that was a catalyst for imagining revolution as opposed to plotting coalition.” He continues:
In March of 2018, I returned to the West Bank with a delegation organized by Abdulhadi around the theme of “teaching Palestine” and the indivisibility of justice. When we arrived in Nablus, we visited the Abu Jihad Museum for the Prisoners Movement where I first encountered “George Jackson in the Sun of Palestine.” I had read about the exhibit, but nothing compared to seeing the poetry and the posters inspiring revolution, documenting a movement, and promoting an icon.
What struck me most, however, was seeing the Jackson exhibit surrounded by hundreds of images of Palestinian prisoners along with their writings and artwork. I came away from the encounter convinced that it is not the condition of captivity that is the basis of solidarity but the critique of captivity from a place of confinement, the shared dreams of liberation, and the mobilizing and planning to fulfill that dream. Here, in a small, underfunded museum in Nablus—a city renowned for its fierce resistance to occupation—we encountered the afterlives of the post-1967 moment in imprisoned men and women who left a record of looking ahead in order to produce a radically different future.
This was worldmaking. Solidarity, in other words, is more than short-term alliances or coalitions but a sort of prefigurative politics that demands of us a deeper transformation of society and of our relationships to one another. What brought Palestinian and Black activists together in that moment was not just a recognition of parallel oppressions, humiliations, violence, and carcerality under occupation but a shared vision of liberation—a vision that extended beyond the nation-state and the transnational to the world.
Scroll down for:
A brand-new mixtape to benefit mutual aid in Gaza;
A book launch in New York, featuring Sara Abou Rashed, Sarah Aziza, and Mohammed Mhawish;
The exhibition Homeland Lost opening in London
Pizza Before We Die, a firsthand account from Gaza by the pseudonymous Hassan Kanafani as your Book of the Week; and
Your weekly Media Roundup.
Flowers Not Bombs: A Benefit Compilation for Mutual Aid in Gaza, out now
Music has always been part of how Palestine resists. In chants that gathered people into struggle, “some combination of rhythm, cadence, melody, spirit that makes organised sound meaningful”. In poems and folk forms remade into calls for defiance. In songs that carry grief, memory, courage, and the insistence on life, “the songs that remember the moments in which the people stood strong.” It lives in the battle cry and in the lullaby, in the song smuggled past the coloniser and in the voices that sing together to remember who they are, even in displacement. And Palestine, in this sense, is never only a place under siege. It is also a freedom-cry that echoes across borders, wherever people rise against dispossession, fascism, and empire.
Flowers Not Bombs is the second in a series of grassroots benefit compilations supporting Palestinian-led mutual aid groups on the ground in Gaza. Organized between Palestinians in the diaspora and Palestinians fighting to remain on their land in Gaza, these projects support daily survival, education, access to food, and community self-determination in the face of genocide and ongoing colonization.
The compilation will be released by Beacon Sound (Portland) digitally and as a limited-edition run of cassettes, and launched publicly on Radio AlHara (Bethlehem).
The proceeds from this second compilation will support on-the-ground work in Gaza by:
Arab Group for the Protection of Nature – an Amman-based organization helping to restore Gaza’s environmental and food systems through activities including olive tree planting, well rehabilitation, fishing support, and farmer-to-family food distribution, among others.
Palestinian Teacher Creativity Center – a Palestinian educational non-profit supporting children’s right to learn through diverse programs including mobile schools, catch-up classes, psychosocial support, and creative activities for displaced and war-affected children in Gaza.
Flowers Not Bombs is out this week. Find out more, listen, and purchase the compilation here.
New York: On Palestine, Memory, and Return, with Sara Abou Rashed, Sarah Aziza, and Mohammed Mhawish, 1 July
Join Sara Abou Rashed at The People’s Forum for the launch of her new book, Theories of Return.
Coming from Columbus, Ohio, Sara will be joined by Sarah Aziza (author of the award-winning memoir The Hollow Half) and acclaimed Gazan writer and journalist Mohammed Mhawish. This will be an illuminating event discussing the role of Palestinian writers today, Palestinian literature, memory, return, and more.
The evening features readings by all three writers, followed by a conversation & book signing.
London: Homeland Lost Exhibition Opening, 1 July
Homeland Lost is an exhibition of an historic series of Palestinian photographs by award-winning documentary photographer Alan Gignoux. Homeland Lost juxtaposes portraits of Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948 and their descendants, shown alongside images of their former homes and villages inside Israel. Taken between 2004 and 2005, Homeland Lost is a poignant and sobering reminder of the human toll of an ongoing conflict which has displaced an estimated 8 million Palestinians and their descendants since 1948.
Originally sponsored by the British Council in East Jerusalem and toured from 2006, this is the first time works from Homeland Lost been shown in the UK since it was exhibited alongside the Palestine Film Festival at the Barbican in 2008. Working with a Hasselblad medium-format camera and black and white film, Gignoux photographed individuals and families living in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. To each person he photographed, Gignoux made a clear and explicit pledge: that he would return to their former homes on their behalf and document what remained.
He returned as a witness in their stead, to a homeland they themselves were not permitted to visit, capturing firsthand accounts of the displaced and their descendants of the lasting trauma of losing homeland. In bringing these images together, Homeland Lost underscores the historical reality behind the Palestinian experience. The meeting of portrait and landscape, together with the stories of displaced Palestinians, reunites people with the places from which they were separated and uses photography as a means of bearing witness to both absence and presence.
Homeland Lost opens on 1 July at P12 Gallery in London. Find out more and plan your visit here.
Book of the Week
The human tragedy unfolding in Gaza has been made all the more tragic by the widespread denial and apathy expressed by much of the rest of the world. Here is an urgent first-hand account of life and death in Gaza, written not by a war correspondent, but an ordinary citizen whose life was upended when the genocide began.
In the midst of the chaos, Hassan began posting about his daily experiences on Reddit. Three activists, moved by his words, started collecting his posts without a clear plan - only the conviction that his story needed to be seen and the hope that somehow, it might help raise funds for him. By chance, those posts found their way to award-winning author Yasuko Thanh, who helped Hassan frame them for a book.
Hassan's missives are a vivid, heartbreaking account of war and its toll - on families, on children, on innocent civilians. These are stories of hunger, survival, and death. These are stories that demand to be heard. And yet, stories like these are not being told: Mainstream media has largely remained silent. Foreign journalists are barred from Gaza. Local journalists are being killed. In this vacuum, Hassan's voice breaks through out of the darkness and into the light.
Pizza Before We Die is literary journalism at its rawest and most urgent - clear eyed, unflinching, and deeply humane. Hassan captures the unspeakable horror of the tragedy in Gaza with restraint and precision, never sensationalizing, always bearing witness. It is a work of raw power and emotion, and a reminder that in the midst of chaos and tragedy, our shared humanity remains intact.
Pizza Before We Die is out now from Arsenal Pulp Books. A portion of proceeds from the sale of Pizza Before We Die will be donated to Doctors Without Borders / Medecins Sans Frontieres.
Artist Prints Back in Stock
We have a new supply of 30 watermelon prints in our rolling fundraiser for writers and their families in Gaza.
Hand carved and printed in artist Yasmine Shash’s studio press in Cairo, this is an open-ended run with each copy signed, numbered and dated.
All proceeds go directly to writers displaced by Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Read more & order your print here.
Media Roundup
Did Kamala Harris's Silence on Gaza Cost Her the White House? – Ta-Nehisi Coates considers the likelihood that Kamala Harris will run for president in 2028 and double down on her hollow invocations of the Black freedom movement, and he argues that “Gaza is not a betrayal of American democratic tradition but an expression of an American imperial tradition.”
Grief's Optimal Runtime – Mohammed Mhawish documents the dehumanizing effect the algorithm has on people in Gaza who are documenting their own genocide for social media.
Dead Lands – Adania Shibli considers the role of literature and writing in a moment when those who tell the truth about Gaza and Palestine are being systematically silenced: “What are we to do with the silence we never heard, the absence of red ink, and the words we’ll never read or know? How can we, writers and readers, proceed from this death of words? What are we to write in the aftermath of this absence, and what are we to read from it?”
The Sky As Witness – Sam Rabiyah explores the ethical contradictions inherent in using satellite maps and imagery to document the genocides in Gaza and Sudan.
War on the Shia – Reporting from Dahieh, the southern suburbs of Beirut, Zain Samir considers how Israel seeks to scapegoat the Shia of Lebanon, and by extension Hizbullah, in order to weaken popular support in Lebanon for resistance to Zionist expansionism.
Searching for Perseus – Lara Atallah writes about the overlapping mythologies that constitute the past of Lebanon, the Levant, and the Mediterranean, and weighs the divergent relationship that the colonized and the colonizer have to the prospect of the future.
In Campaign to Seize More of Gaza, Israel Expands Attacks on Palestinians Near “Yellow Line” – Mohamed Ahmed and Abdel Qader Sabbah report on how Israel’s violations of the ceasefire, its land grabs, and its displacement of Palestinians in Gaza have only grown more brazen over the past eight months.
Inside the Quiet Battle to Save Lebanon's Seeds – Yara El Murr and Julia Choucair Vizoso write about Lebanese farmers who, facing threats from both Israeli war and domestic legislation, are fighting to preserve their seeds and defend the future of food sovereignty in Lebanon.
After the Imperial War: Power, Progress, and Prosperity in the Arab World – Ghassan Dibeh argues, in this essay translated by Noha AbuShammala, for a strengthened economic cooperation among Arab countries that would fill the gap left by the diminishing power of the US/Israeli alliance in the Middle East.
The Reality of Returning to Gaza – Athar Abu Samra returns from Egypt to her hometown of Deir al Balah in Gaza, only to find it entirely unreocgnizable.
Toxic Bloom – Ismail Ibrahim breaks down Trump’s Board of Peace’s plan to redevelop Gaza in the wake of the genocide.
In Rare Move, Israel Seizes Homes Inside Palestinian Authority-Controlled Part of the West Bank, Raising Alarms Over Annexation – Asmaa Al-Masalmeh reports on the establishment of the first Israeli military base within Area A of the West Bank, near Jenin, displacing families and seizing homes in flagrant violation of international law.
Three Poems from Gaza – Three new poems by Taqwa Ahmed Alwawi: “I long for sleep, / but there is only this endless tide / of thought, wave after wave / in the infinite night.”
I Am Not Your Translator – Fady Joudah writes about the impossibility of protecting translation from reception in America that is often trivializing, exploitative, disingenuous, and otherwise harmful: “Why do you need the Arab to translate your barbarism, your consensus, your insuppressible quest for righteousness and progress, your radicalism and revolution, your fascism and reparation, your saviorhood and genocide, your revolving shame that whirls everyone in it, accuses everyone of it, your triumphs over the dark, pyrrhic they may be but always worth the price of the ticket, your terror and anti-terror, your ancient diseases and civilizational ones, autoimmunity and immunosuppression, your new expanding cuisine and cemeteries, your best of humanity and the worst of it?”
Thanks for reading. More next week.
