Publishers Call for Boycott Frankfurt Book Fair

Publishers for Palestine, a coalition of nearly 600 publishers across 50 countries, is calling for an industry-wide boycott of the world’s largest publishing event, the Frankfurt Book Fair, over the Fair’s “failure to address its ties to German state and corporate partnership in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and programming that ignores Israel’s regime of occupation and apartheid.”

In the wake of October 7, 2023, the Frankfurt Book Fair responded by increasing Israeli programming at the fair, with its funding all the while laundered through the Israeli tech, AI, surveillance, and security sectors.

The demands of their boycott are as follows:

• condemn Israel’s regime of genocide and apartheid in Gaza and affirm the human rights of the Palestinian people;

• refuse collaboration with complicit Israeli book publishers, including by barring their participation in the Frankfurt Book Fair;

• denounce the attacks on Palestinian writers, journalists, and academics—and acknowledge that such attacks are part of a genocidal project seeking to erase Palestinian life and culture;

• and create programming that prominently features Palestinian writers, publishers, and narratives.

Click here to read more about the boycott. For ways to participate in and support the boycott, visit Publishers for Palestine.

New York: Screening of Bye Bye Tiberias, February 14

On February 14, Columbia Maison Française, along with the Center for Palestine Studies and Middle East Institute, is hosting a screening of Lina Souallem’s 2023 film Bye Bye Tiberias, followed by a Q&A with the director.

In her early twenties, Hiam Abbass left her native Palestinian village to follow her dream of becoming an actress in Europe, leaving behind her mother, grandmother, and seven sisters. Thirty years later, her filmmaker daughter Lina returns with her to the village and questions for the first time her mother’s bold choices, her chosen exile and the way the women in their family influenced both their lives.

Set between past and present, Bye Bye Tiberias pieces together images of today, family footage from the nineties and historical archives to portray four generations of daring Palestinian women who keep their story and legacy alive through the strength of their bonds, despite exile, dispossession, and heartbreak.

For more information, and to reserve a free ticket, click here.

New York: Two Films by Khaled Jarrar

Anthology Film Archives will be screening two films by Palestinian filmmaker Khaled Jarrar: Notes on Displacement (2022) on February 14 and February 20, and Infiltrators (2012) on February 15 and 16.

Notes on Displacement follows Nadira, an elderly Palestinian, has been a refugee since the age of 12. Now, she has to leave Damascus, too. She and her daughter, Mona, feared for their lives in Syria, but the idea of a safe existence elsewhere is still a distant dream. Filmmaker Khaled Jarrar receives unsettling videos and voice messages as they cross to the Greek island of Lesbos and joins them there, on the long road to a better life, experiencing firsthand what it means to be a refugee in this stunningly visceral exploration of displacement.

In Infiltrators, Khaled Jarrar shadows West Bank residents as they search for ways to bypass the highly militarized Israeli apartheid wall that separates them from Jerusalem. Over, under, or through, with great difficulty and risk, the infiltrators are by turn people who wish to visit relatives in hospitals, religious women trying to reach Al Aqsa, teenage boys tasked with “smuggling” bread, or, most often, construction workers: Palestinian men whose labor will be used to build up the city they are not permitted to enter. Alternating between cigarette breaks, detours, waiting, climbing, escaping, and confrontation, Infiltrators depicts the constant struggle both to survive and to resist captivity and occupation.

Reserve your tickets for these one-off screenings here.

Book of the Week

These poems are aware that in your care, they cannot die, cannot be stolen or buried, cannot be twisted less true... Know them, share them, and keep them safe – until the time comes to place them back on the traumatised tongues of that future on the other side.

—Ankh Spice

Keep Telling of Gaza is a beautifully painful call-and-response poetry book recently published by Sidhé Press. It is a book that refuses to settle with the commonly used sentence to refer to Gaza: there are no words left. This book seeks out words even when words are fatigued, repeated, exhausted and overused.

Written by Khawla Badwan and Alison Phipps, all proceeds from Keep Telling of Gaza support educational initiatives in Gaza.

You can buy the book from our Bookshop in the US, and from Sidhé Press in the UK and elsewhere.

Reading Roundup

Kissing the Ground in Gaza's North – Moazz Redwan, who grew up in Jabalia refugee camp, shares a journal about his return home to the north of Gaza.

Illusions of Containment: Versions of Hamas – In this deep dive into the political history of Hamas, Tom Stevenson reflects on the numerous “versions” of Hamas that exist in political discourse and actual practice, concluding that Hamas is an essentially indestructible political force.

Feet Unable to Arrive – A new poem from Nour Balousha: “I want something to return to / and a backdoor to escape / I want to embrace everything I lost in one fell swoop.”

Israel Escalates West Bank Military Assault, Invading Areas Across the North – Mariam Barghouti reports on the expansion of Israel’s occupation and bombardment across the West Bank, including the announcement of an indefinite military occupation of Jenin, which includes the deployment of battalions previously on the ground in Gaza.

Israel is Shifting Its Battlefield from Gaza to the West Bank – Alessandra Bajec analyzes how the Israeli political establishment is framing its intensification of violence and collective punishment in the West Bank as a “compensation” for its defeat in Gaza.

Now that We are Returning Home, Will Our Martyrs Return Too? – Reem A. Hamadaqa, a writer, translator, and teacher in Gaza, reflects on how the past sixteen months have revealed not that Gaza’s suffering was untranslatable to the world, but that it “revealed a world that simply was not listening.”

A New Coalition to Defend Palestine – Ronnie Kasrils argues that the formation of The Hague Group, an international coalition of states avowing international legal action to put an end to Israeli exceptionalism and impunity, constitutes a renewal of previous global anticolonial solidarity movements.

‘We are as dead as the ones beneath the graves’: When a Cemetery Becomes Home for the Living – Sahar Al-Ijla reports on a family that found refuge from the genocide in Ansar cemetery in Deir al-Balah, erecting their tents among the gravestones.

Tent – A new poem from Asmaa Dwaima: “In a tent, / Two thin mats stretched / Over the rippled sand.”

Our Makeshift Classroom – Ohood Nassar, a teacher in Gaza, describes how teaching a group of displaced students amid the genocide gave her the solace she needed to survive.

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