The Biting Book. Written By Judi Friedman. Illustrated By Kees De Kiefte. 1975.

More excerpts from the extremely beautiful “Subjective Atlas of Palestine“ project. View the full publication via link.

About: The Dutch designer Annelys de Vet invited Palestinian artists, photographers and designers to map their country as they see it. Given their closeness to the subject, this has resulted in unconventional, very human impressions of the landscape and the architecture, the cuisine, the music and the poetry of thought and expression. The drawings, photographs, maps and narratives made for this atlas reveal individual life experiences, from preparing chickpeas to a manual on water pipe smoking, from historic dress to modern music. Pages containing humorous and caustic newspaper cartoons and invented Palestinian currency followed by colourful cultural diaries and moving letters from prisoners. All in all, the contributions give an entirely different angle on a nation in occupied territory. In this subjective atlas it is the Palestinians themselves who show the disarming reverse side of the black-and-white image generally resorted to by the media.

Nevigeser Wallfahrtsdom, Gottfried Böhm. Photo: Matthias Heiderich

Inside Rathaus Offenbach (shot on iPhone). Architects: Architektengemeinschaft Maier, Graf und Speidel. Photo: Matthias Heiderich, 2023

Chiesa della Sacra Famiglia (Sacred Family Church), by Paolo Portoghesi and Vittorio Gigliotti (1971-1974).

Salerno, Italy.

© Roberto Conte (2016)

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Today's Seal Is Loaf

ilan pappé is so surgically precise in his criticism of zionist liberals and leftists and he has really highlighted what frustrates me the most about their allyship (which largely revolves around the sanctimonious stance of not wanting palestinians dead, otherwise known as the bare fucking minimum)

What is most illuminating – in the dialogue the liberal Zionists have with themselves on the pages of Haaretz – is their vicious attack on any one associating colonialism with Israel. [...] The Global Left is guilty of two ‘sins’, in the eyes of the liberal Zionists: one, it refers to Israel as a settler-colonial state and two, it provides a context for the Hamas attack on October 7.

There is no middle ground anymore. There is no way of supporting the liberal occupier, the progressive ethnic cleanser and the leftist genocider. The attempt to frame the stance I am calling for as racist or antisemitic will not hold water. It is a matter of where you would see yourself at this critical juncture in history, and how you value your own sense of self respect.

many of them are willing to criticize everything about israel but fall just short of admitting their role as settler colonizers or its existence as a settler colonialist state. its a very telling stance, because it keeps them defensive instead of apologetic. and i do believe the first step to any progress is real acknowledgement of what zionism has taken from palestinians and how to repair this. it's not tangential, it's central.

i also think without acknowledging or understanding the settler colonialism paradigm, any and all solidarity with palestinians is inherently frightening to them because they don't understand that all previously and currently colonized peoples see themselves in the palestinian struggle. instead they see solidarity with palestinians as anti-semitism (solidarity against israel instead of solidarity with palestine) because they misunderstand the palestinian cause and their role within it.

its an intellectual weakness that comes from either willful ignorance, brainwashing or a lack of real empathy. their allyship and their role will always be conditional until they fully understand this. until they do both palestinian resistance and solidarity will continue to feel more threatening to them than the violent apparatus of the israeli military state that is literally keeping them in a perpetual state of war. all their attempts to seek peace without confronting this are either naïve and ineffectual or serve to obfuscate their own brutal military regime even as it perpetuates horror in their name.

on some subconscious level i never even thought of david lynch as someone who could die

sandstorms in berber, sudan from tales from a forgotten city by hassan kamil [x]