London: To See in the Dark with Nicholas Mirzoeff, 16 January

Join the Institute for Advanced Studies at University College London on 16 January for the launch of Nicholas Mirzoeff’s new book, To See In the Dark: Palestine and Visual Activism Since October 7.

To see Palestine is to see the world. Since 7 October 2023, the forces of racial capitalism, settler colonialism and white supremacy have become all too visible in Israel's war on Gaza. Urban, networked Gazan youth have documented and shared their struggle with the world using social media strategies, derived from movements from Tahrir Square to Black Lives Matter.

In To See In The Dark, Mirzoeff explores how these videos and photos transmitted and viewed outside Palestine, via platforms like Instagram and TikTok, enabled a dramatic switch in public opinion, leading to the global uprising against genocide. In this groundbreaking analysis, he also connects the personal and the political via his own anti-Zionist Jewishness, weaving an autotheory of domestic, political and sexual violence. Through this exploration, he finds new collective anticolonial ways of seeing, combining online and embodied experiences.

Find out more and get your tickets here.

London: Britain’s Role in Enabling Israel’s War on Gaza

The Palestinian Forum in Britain is convening an urgent and thought-provoking seminar on 22 January that delves into the pivotal role Britain has played in enabling and sustaining Israel's war on Gaza.

In the wake of a ground-breaking Al Jazeera investigation revealing the UK's disproportionate surveillance activities over Gaza and its ongoing arms trade with Israel, this seminar will uncover the policies, economic ties, and military strategies implicating the UK in the genocide of the Gaza Strip.

Featuring Zeinab Kamal, Sara Husseini, Matt Kennard, Samer Jaber, and Tayab Ali, This seminar is designed to empower activists, academics, and concerned citizens with the knowledge and tools to demand accountability and drive transformative change in UK policy towards Palestine.

You can reserve your ticket here.

Virtual Event: Why Memory Matters in Palestine and Beyond

Why Memory Matters in Palestine and Beyond is an initiative to build a better understanding of what has led to the situation in Palestine today, encourage critical thinking, and inspire action towards building more peaceful societies everywhere.

The first part of Why Memory Matters in Palestine and Beyond includes six recorded conversations – available as both a podcast and a video series on ICSC’s YouTube channel – with guest speakers from academia and the fields of human rights and cultural heritage. The second part is a live, three-day webinar taking place January 21st, 22nd and 23rd, that brings together Sites of Conscience members and partners who have faced related injustices in Bangladesh, South Africa, Northern Ireland and elsewhere to reflect on the six conversations and share their experiences offering communities spaces for truth-telling, critical reflection and dialogue in even the most dire settings.   

Find out more and register for the webinar here.

Book of the Week

Here is a book with a big heart. A personal as well as political history of Palestine, poignantly written and closely argued. It’s impossible to read this and continue to argue for the status quo.

– Arundhati Roy

Mohammad Tarbush was born in British Mandate Palestine. As an infant, he and his family were forced to evacuate their village together with its entire population after the Zionist victory that led to the establishment of the State of Israel. As landless refugees in the West Bank the family sank into poverty.

When, as a teenager, Tarbush left home one day under the pretext of visiting relatives in Jordan, he in fact set off on a year-long hitchhiking journey to Europe, where he would eventually become a highly successful international banker and a key behind-the-scenes promoter of the Palestinian cause.

My Palestine is a poignant personal memoir and an incisive political and economic commentary on the tumultuous events that shaped the history of Israel, Palestine and the modern Middle East.

You can get the book from our Bookshop (US / UK).

Reading Roundup

Notes to Gaza's Beloved Dead – George Abraham writes a eulogy for Gaza’s dead, pondering how they are encountered through the filter of social media, and how their lives resound across space and time. 

Writing in Gaza – Gazan writer Yousef el-Qedra, translated by M Lynx Qualey, weighs the many meanings of writing in Gaza: as an act of existence in the shadow of war, as an act of “counter-creation,” as a cry against the silent world, as a celebration of life.

‘I Want to Fight Wherever There is Still Life’ in Gaza & Beyond – Paola Salwan Daher calls on the Palestine solidarity movement to refuse the politics of despair, and to find, in the bare act of survival itself, the means to struggle for Palestinian liberation.

What It’s Truly Like to Sleep in a Damp, Frigid Tent: A Report From Gaza – Abubaker Abed reports from Deir al-Balah on the hypothermic conditions facing displaced Gazans, highlighting the role of the Israeli blockade on aid in the deaths brought on by winter.

Israel Cannot Lose A 'Humanity' It Never Had – James Ray refutes liberal Zionist perspectives on the genocide in Gaza which treat it as an aberration, rather than the rule, of Israel’s political existence.

In Gaza's Schools, Where Silence Falls – Rawand Alagha, a high school teacher in Gaza, writes about her students’ desire to continue learning, and how she has given them hope amid the ongoing bombardment.

Israel’s Exploitation of Palestinian Labor: A Strategy of Erasure – Ihab Maharmeh examines how the cancellation of more than 140,000 Palestinian work visas after October 7 is an invisible assault on Palestinian political, economic, and social structures in the long history of Zionist exploitation of Palestinian labor.

Gaza Diary: A Red Glow at Sunset – In this dispatch from Gaza, Hend Salama Abo Helow describes how the Israeli bombardment shreds the fabric of everyday life.

The Tent is Closing In on Us – Gazan poet Shaimaa Abulebda shares a new poem on the sensory experience of living in a tent: “We wish for the unmerciful stones— / knowing they could crumble to rubble / and tear us limb by limb.”

Even If the War Ends, Gaza will No Longer Be Home – Malak Hijazi wonders whether it will even be possible to remain in Gaza should a ceasefire deal be reached.

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up to receive it in your inbox.