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April 8, 2025

The Palestinian Museum

Dear Friends,

The Palestinian Museum, on the grounds of Birzeit University just 16 miles from Jerusalem, is a must-see. It’s a small, visually stunning modern building surrounded by beautiful gardens. The museum’s mission is educational as it celebrates Palestinian culture - past, present, and future.

A light stone building against a blue sky with white clouds,  with an art installation of the arms of two back hoes
An art installation by Nida Sinnokrot on the museum’s terrace. The arms of backhoes are “raised up to the skies in a primal gesture that recalls despair as well as prayer, absolution, and defiance”. These machines are the same ones that are used for both building and demolishing homes in Palestine.

The current exhibit is called ‘This is Not an Exhibition’ - a collection of works by Palestinian artists from Gaza. Two Gazan art organizations were invited to use the Museum’s exhibition hall “after the flames of war swallowed their spaces in Gaza”. It would have been impossible to gather art from Gaza itself, so the Gazan art has been collected from the West Bank. In Gaza, frames, paintings, and books have been burned for fuel.

A blue wall with many paintings, rubble in the middle of the room, and on the far wall an image of rescue workers working in a disaster area
Paintings by artists from Gaza. In the middle of the space, a pile of rubble with embers burning underneath. On the far wall, footage of rescue efforts following an Israeli bombing (video of the space)

In the exhibit room, as in Gaza itself, the buzzing sound of Israeli drones is constant. As I am writing this in Ramallah, we are hearing the same Israeli drones (zannāneh) overhead.

Four paintings, clockwise from top left: a painting of women in blues; a colorful image of Jerusalem; a colorful painting of Frida Kahlo; an oil painting of a field
Some of the paintings in ‘This is not an exhibition’, with work by more than 100 Palestinian artists from Gaza.

Here are some of the other pieces I loved in the museum:

A portrait of a man sitting at a desk, holding a pen near a piece of paper on the desk, within an intricate mother-of-pearl frame
From 1935: Portrait by Essa Zughbi. I was struck by the intricately inlaid mother of pearl frame, by Yusuf Zughbi. When early Zionists claimed that Palestine was ‘a land without a people’, these are some of the people they were trying to erase

Two images of four tiles each, and the cover of the book Feast of Ashes, featuring the tiles found on the Dome of the Rock
From the 1920s: tiles by David Ohannessian. The artist’s granddaughter is a colleague of mine and a friend. She has written a book about her grandfather’s life, Feast of Ashes

Two images of gardens one of a vast landscape against a blue sky with white clouds; in the second, a woman (me) standing amidst the plants
The gorgeous gardens at the Museum are designed in a terraced layout that reflects the traditional methods of olive farming in the mountains of Palestine. In the distance, the Mediterranean Sea, which is not accessible to Palestinians here.

The museum's logo, with writing in Arabic and the words 'the palestinian museum' and 'Non-Governmental Association'
The Museum (just an hour from Jerusalem) documents the brilliance and steadfastness of the Palestinian people. Downloadable exhibits are also available.

POSTSCRIPT:

Since my visit to the museum about a week ago, the assault on the people of Palestine has intensified. The situation is deteriorating in Gaza and in the West Bank. One village in Jenin (in the West Bank) has 65 home demolition warnings. And the frequency and intensity of settler attacks have reached an unprecedented level. In Gaza, bombings have intensified and the blockade (food, water, medicine, fuel) continues.

You may have read that on March 23, Israeli soldiers executed 15 rescue workers (reported even in the NY Times). Here is a side-by-side of an Israeli spokesperson saying that the ambulances were unmarked, without headlights, and were “advancing suspiciously” - while the video shows that the vehicles were clearly marked as Red Crescent vehicles, with lights flashing. News sources later reported that “Israel's army has admitted its soldiers made mistakes over the killing of 15 emergency workers in southern Gaza on 23 March”. What were the mistakes? They mistakenly assassinated medical personnel? Mistakenly buried their bodies in a mass grave? Mistakenly buried the ambulance along with the bodies? Mistakenly lied about it? If the cell phone footage had not surfaced, would Israel have been able to convince us of their innocence? What we are witnessing is a systematic pattern of genocide, which Israel has been pursuing with the full backing of the U.S. government.

Salaam,

Nancy

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