Photos Courtesy of Visualizing Palestine

Visualizing Palestine executive director Aline Batarseh (center) and American Friends Service Committee’s national director of its U.S. Palestine Activism Program (right) celebrate the January opening of their joint project, “Why We Record: Defying Fragmentation and Erasure in Palestine” at the Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington, D.C.

When a Madison carpenter learned an exhibit on the history of Palestine, curated jointly by the American Friends Service Committee and Visualizing Palestine, was available and free to download, she paid from her own pocket to print, mount and laminate the data-based art and archival photography. 

Cassandra Dixon even drove it to Greenfield for its first showing, just before Ramadan at Nadiana Art Gallery, an event in collaboration with the Milwaukee chapter of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network.

Dixon makes her prints available to others who want to display them. (Send your request to palestinepartners4justice@gmail.com). The Madison Friends (Quakers) and USPCN’s Milwaukee chapter have both booked it for showings this spring: 

“Why We Record: Defying Fragmentation and Erasure in Palestine” is an exhibit that features Visualizing Palestine’s data-and-research-driven visualizations and AFSC’s archival photos and stories collected from Palestinian people.

Why We Record: Defying Fragmentation and Erasure in Palestine includes Visualizing Palestine’s data-and-research-driven art that “visually communicate(s) Palestinian experiences to provoke narrative change,” VP’s website explains. “Palestine is the subject of more than a century of colonial narratives upheld by imperial empires, which sustain the brutal system of Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid we see today. Although the basic facts and root causes of the Palestinian struggle are well-documented, they are frequently denied or obscured by those shielding Israel from accountability.”

It also includes photos from AFSC’s archive that date back to the Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe that refers to the expulsion of Palestinians from their land in 1948, and excerpts from published stories AFSC collected from Palestinians themselves. The Quakers have supported Palestinians through humanitarian work and advocacy since 1948.

An act of conviction

“This exhibit can help us better understand what is going on (in Gaza and the West Bank) and what brought us to this point so people can come to their own conclusions,” Dixon said in an interview with the Wisconsin Muslim Journal. “An enormous amount of work went into making and curating this exhibit. It seems reasonable to me to get it out there and share it as much as possible. 

Cassandra Dixon, a member of the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, loans the exhibit to interested parties.

“My hope is that a number of organizations, community groups, churches and libraries will decide to borrow this exhibit,” she added.

Maybe she printed the exhibit out of frustration, admitted Dixon, a member of the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, an active group that frequently organizes educational events and protests to raise awareness of the struggle Palestinians face to survive in their homeland. The information about what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank is available. 

“We look at this stuff all the time and we don’t seem to make as big of strides toward understanding it as I wish we did,” she said. “Given the amount of money we are spending (to support Israel’s military) and the amount of political cover we give the state of Israel, and especially now, after these past two years when we have funded the deaths of over 20,000 children, you owe it to yourself to understand what is being done with that money. There is no option of neutrality, of not paying attention.

“I personally think that we need to stop this but I can’t speak for someone else. We all deserve to see the facts presented in a way we can absorb them, think critically about them, talk about them and discuss them. There are huge gaps in our knowledge about Palestine’s history, especially its history since 1948.”

Upcoming showings in Wisconsin

The Madison Friends will host the exhibit this Thursday and Friday, 3:30 – 7 p.m. and Sunday, 1 – 6 p.m.at the Madison Friends Meeting, 1704 Roberts Ct., Madison.

At a meeting of the Madison Friends’ Committee on Peace, Social and Environmental Concerns met to consider hosting the Why We Record exhibit, agreement was “spontaneous,” said committee member Jane Hammatt Kavaloski, who volunteered to take charge of the event.

“We plan to combine it with another national Quaker action called ‘Love in Action,’ Kavaloski said. “Quaker communities all over the country will sit in silence for an hour, outside in a public place, holding signs that demonstrate Quaker values like peace and social justice. On Sunday, we will sit in silence in a public place and, at the same time, we’ll hand out flyers to let people know about the exhibit at the Quaker meeting house down the street.”

A press release about the Madison Friends exhibit of Why We Record explains, “The exhibit invites viewers to witness the truths of the past, the heartbreak of the present and the possibilities for a future without oppression in Palestine. The exhibit is family friendly and, despite the inclusion of difficult material, it is appropriate for all ages.” 

“We scheduled the exhibit times to make it accessible to others who use our meeting house,” Kavaloski explained. Those include a Buddhist group, an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, a parenting group and other community groups.

“It’s an important exhibit and we want people to see it,” she added. “Quakers have been in that part of the world for over a hundred years. They’re in a good position to share the Palestinian narrative with others.”

Haitham Salawdeh of Wauwatosa serves as USPCN national treasurer and as the Milwaukee chapter’s co-chair.

USPCN’s Milwaukee Chapter will host the Why We Record exhibit, April 4 – 10, at the Walker’s Point Center for the Arts, 839 S. Fifth St., Milwaukee. After a successful showing before Ramadan in Greenfield, the organization decided to bring the exhibit back to the Milwaukee area, this time to Walker’s Point. 

“We had 50-60 people come by for a one-night event,” said Haitham Salawdeh of Wauwatosa, the treasurer for USPCN national and the lead for its Milwaukee chapter. “Community members came out, saw the exhibit and stayed visiting until it closed.”

Bint Jamila’s Table, a creative culinary design studio in Milwaukee, created an artistic display of Palestinian foods for guests to snack on as well as admire, he added. 

USPCN believes this exhibit is important because “anything that centers Palestine is a good idea,” Salawdeh said. “When somebody is trying to put Palestine on people’s minds and in people’s hearts, when someone is trying to put Palestine on the agenda, we want to support them. Using art, from visualized data to photography to the culinary arts to music creates the opportunity for a different impact than just hearing more words about it.”