Beyond Witness: Building a Movement More Powerful Than Our Grief
Visualizing Palestine Year in Review 2023
“Are you still alive?”
These words defined the last three months of 2023 for Palestinians. It was a year of confronting the most extreme acts of settler colonial oppression that Palestinians have experienced since the Nakba of 1948, seventy-five years ago.
Those torturous months swallowed up the rest of the year. “Before” now feels like a lifetime ago, and “after” has not yet arrived. It was a year without closure.
As difficult as it is to reflect on 2023 as Israel’s acts of genocide continue unabated, we do so in the spirit of documentation, determination, remembrance, and gratitude for the way our community came together. We will not forget, and out of the rubble, we will build a movement more powerful than our grief.
Around the world, people are showing up for Palestine on all fronts: direct action, boycotts, legal advocacy, education, protests, and art. Visualizing Palestine’s role is to build narrative power in alignment with Palestinian demands for freedom, justice, and equality. These are some of the key developments that shaped our work in 2023:
- Genocide: in 2023, genocide was the most critical lens through which to understand what is happening in Palestine. Israeli officials were explicit in their genocidal intent toward Palestinians. Israeli acts of genocide are not new in Palestinian history (and are a common feature of settler colonialism globally), but they are unfolding with renewed intensity. There has never been an act of genocide that was not denied by its perpetrators and accomplices. In 2023, Israeli, U.S., and German officials as well as major media played a particularly prominent role in this denialism.
- Colonial narratives perpetuating violence: In the wake of Hamas’s operation on October 7, colonial narratives manifested in the uneven application of concern for civilians and international law, especially as the Israeli government was killing Palestinian civilians at an “unprecedented and unparalleled” rate. Violence that is aligned with North American and European interests was presented as legitimate or decontextualized from history. Palestinians were dichotomously portrayed as either terrorists or victims, with their basic rights conditioned on their adherence to the role of “perfect victim.” In many cases, grassroots protest chants calling for Palestinian liberation, such as “from the river to the sea,” drew more ire than Israeli acts of genocide or incitement to genocide. Major media was unwilling to have a nuanced conversation about the range of ways that colonized peoples respond to systemic oppression.
- The power of social media: Despite multiple communications blackouts in Gaza and Israel’s murder of a record number of journalists, Palestinian stories reached billions of people on social media in 2023. This year, TikTok had to clarify that the popularity of Palestinian content on its platform reflected the attitudes of young people, not biased algorithms. Hashtags supporting Palestine also received more views on Instagram and Facebook. Online activity mirrored offline activity, as the vast majority of protesters around the world demanded a ceasefire. Social media remains a critical tool for oppressed communities to share information and mobilize offline solidarity.
- A System of Silencing: Freedom of expression was one of our themes for 2023 and the focus of our first publications of the year. It has become an even more critical topic, as those who speak out on Palestine are being met with intensified repression. As a Palestine Legal team member put it: “Because they cannot win the debate, the machine of anti-Palestinian repression has been working overtime to censor, punish, threaten, and criminalize the most basic expressions for Palestinian freedom.”
- Beyond Gaza: May 2023 marked 75 years of continuous Israeli colonial violence across historic Palestine. In the West Bank, Israel killed more Palestinians in 2023 than in any other year since 2005, 39% of whom were killed prior to October 7. Under the cover of its military assault on Gaza, we saw Israeli forces invade cities and refugee camps in the West Bank and conduct mass arrests, while Israeli officials expanded illegal settlements and armed settlers. At a time when 1% of historic Palestine is the subject of 99% of headlines, Palestinians continue to reject forced fragmentation and are determined to expose and resist a continuum of Israeli violence.
Visualizing Palestine in 2023: At a Glance
Throughout the year, we conducted continuous research on 3 priority themes: Israel’s atrocities in Gaza; freedom of expression; and settlements, settler violence, and corporate complicity in settler violence.
This research fueled the following narrative interventions, which fed into organizing and action strategies:
- 29 infographics
- 5 interactive platforms: Palestine Open Maps (new features), A Place of Many Beginnings, We Had Dreams, Remember their Names, The Rise of U.S. Anti-Boycott Legislation
- 2 short videos
- 212,000 followers of VP social media pages (112% increase over 2022)
- Total reach of 8.6 million on social media
- 1,347+ use cases of VP visuals (237% increase over 2022) in 79 countries (compared to 46 in 2022), based on information documented through the VP website downloads system
- 2,895 new subscribers to our e-newsletter in 2023 (248% increase over 2022), totaling 10,334 subscribers.
- 909 donors and 731 active members
- +135 translation requests for visuals into other languages
- 67 volunteers engaged
- 2 endorsed campaigns including No Pride In Apartheid and Not on Our Dime
- 2 ads in 3 North American newspapers’ print editions reaching more than 1 million subscribers.
10+ community events, including:
- Funder Or Censor webinar: In conjunction with the release of our visual “Funder or Censor,” we organized a webinar addressing how politically conditioned funding impacts Palestinian civil society and the Palestinian liberation movement. Speakers included Alaa Tartir, Program and Policy Advisor to Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network; and Seif Kassis, International & Legal Advocacy Officer, BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights. The webinar was moderated by Aline Batarseh, Visualizing Palestine’s executive director.
- Podcast with Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East : Aline Batarseh speaks on the role of data storytelling in shifting the dominant narrative on Palestine.
- “The Pegasus Effect” panel at RightsCon: In an online session at RightsCon, we highlighted The Pegasus Effect. The session examined Pegasus spyware, a product of Israeli cyber company NSO group, and explored the implications of the Israeli surveillance industry on human rights. Speakers included Fionnuala Ni Aolain, UN Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights; Wesam Ahmad, Head of Al-Haq Center for Applied International Law; Ubai Aboudi, Executive Director at Bisan Center for Research and Development; and Samer Abdelnour, Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh Business School. The session was moderated by Jessica Anderson, Deputy Director of Visualizing Palestine.
- Boycott film screening
We hosted a virtual screening of Just Vision’s latest documentary Boycott, followed by a discussion of the film and VP’s related visual “The Rise of U.S. Anti-Boycott Legislation.” The discussion featured Daniel Nerenberg, Communications Associate at Just Vision, and Nasreen Abd Elal, Information Designer at Visualizing Palestine. It was moderated by Zeina Hutchison, human rights activist and community organizer. - Palestine Writes Literature Festival
We presented our interactive project “A Place of Many Beginnings: Three Paths into the History of Palestine,” created in partnership with Palestine Writes, at the festival in a session titled “Material Culture, Borders and Borderlessness through Millennia.” VP’s information designer, Nasreen Abd Elal, spoke alongside Palestinian academics Dr. Nur Masalha and Dr. Salman Abu Sitta, moderated by Susan Abulhawa, author and executive director of Palestine Writes.
We were also present at the following events:
- Toronto Palestine Film Festival
- Israeli Apartheid Week at Harvard University, Boston
- National Students for Justice in Palestine Conference, Los Angeles
- American Federation of Ramallah Convention, Chicago
- People Power Conference, Copenhagen
VP in the Media:
- Major media and the systemic silencing of Palestinians, Aline Batarseh, Mondoweiss, March 29
- Why human compassion decreases the more people are killed, episode featuring VP’s Information Designer Nasreen Abd Elal, Al-Jazeera’s The Stream, December 21
- New York Times full page ad, October 27 with MPower Change
- The Toronto Star full page ad, November 11, and Ottawa Citizen full page ad, November 22 with Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME)
Visualizing Palestine’s Narrative Impact in 2023
Throughout 2023, and especially during the last three months of the year, Visualizing Palestine (along with other movement actors) had an opportunity and responsibility to bear witness and contextualize the unfolding genocide against Palestinians. Our team worked non-stop to make visual tools available for use by activists, educators, and students.
Israeli Military Assault on Gaza
Prior to 2023, life for the 2.3 million Palestinians living in captivity in Gaza was already unlivable under a 16-year Israeli-imposed land, air, and sea blockade. Starting on October 7, 2023, Israel began its 6th military assault on Gaza in 16 years. This assault dwarfed the scale of any previous bombardment, leaving 23,000 Palestinians killed, including at least 9,600 children; more than 60,000 injured; more than 85% displaced; more than 8,000 missing under the rubble; and more than 350,000 homes damaged or destroyed. The majority of Gaza’s population is at heightened risk of death from disease and starvation as Israel continues to deprive Palestinians of essentials for life, including water, food, fuel, and medicine. These are just a few of the immediate and long-term devastating impacts of Israel’s assault, which continues with impunity well into 2024.
New Visual Resources on Gaza:
Gaza As 100 People: Conditions of life in Gaza were dire before October 2023.
20 Years of Mourning: In the context of systemic oppression, the lives of Palestinians are not given equal value to the lives of Israelis. This visual brings attention to the asymmetric impact of colonial violence.
Fatalities Summary (updated twice): From 1988-November 2023, there were 9x more Palestinians killed than Israelis. By the end of 2023, Israeli forces had killed more Palestinians in three months than in the previous 35 years combined.
Genocide Definition and Quotes: this visual highlights statements made by Israeli officials that clearly establish their intent to commit genocide in Gaza.
Miscarriage of Justice and Giving Birth Under Bombs Reel: Palestinian liberation is a reproductive justice issue. In 2023, thousands of pregnant women in Gaza were forced to navigate pregnancy and birth amidst a genocide.
Break The Siege and Israel is Starving Gaza: Food insecurity in Gaza was already high (63%) prior to October 2023. Depriving food and attacking food systems are time-worn tactics of genocide, and these visuals illustrate how a trickle of essentials entering Gaza over a three-month period have failed to alleviate starvation.
74 Elders: This visual is a tribute to Palestinian elders — the first survivors of the 1948 Nakba — who were killed during Israel’s most recent assault on Gaza.
Gaza Families: Hundreds of Palestinian families in Gaza have lost multiple members to indiscriminate Israeli bombardment, while numerous families have been entirely wiped off the registry.
Gaza Water- 2023 and Gaza Water Salinity: Before October, Palestinians in Gaza were already struggling to access clean water, with 97% of Gaza’s freshwater resources contaminated due to the Israeli blockade and repeated military bombardments. Following the most recent Israeli assault, the already dire situation became catastrophic. We partnered with The Built Environment Observatory to develop these visuals.
Gaza’s Original Villages: This visual shows the villages of origin of Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the majority of whose homes are within 30–40 kilometers from Gaza. During the 1948 Nakba, 27% of the 750,000 Palestinians who were forcibly displaced sought refuge in Gaza, and were never allowed to return home. Today, they make up 70% of the population in Gaza. They are experiencing yet another Nakba, along with the rest of the Palestinian population in the besieged enclave.
Stop the Genocide Animations: Dedicated volunteers helped us create two animations to amplify calls to stop the genocide. One focused on children, and the other one focused on the cumulative impact of six Israeli military assaults on Gaza in 16 years.
Two Platforms:
We Had Dreams: An anonymous friend of VP designed and developed this platform to uplift the testimonies of Palestinians in Gaza. Volunteers translated it into nine languages.
Remember Their Names: This platform is a memorial for those killed during Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Thirteen volunteers made this project possible.
Updated Visuals on Gaza
Visualizing Palestine updated several visuals from our archives to contextualize the current conditions in Gaza:
Treating Trauma Under Israeli Fire (Updated three times)
Freedom of Expression
As Palestinian calls for freedom from oppression and settler colonialism persist and continue to get louder, Israel and its allies have resorted to desperate tactics to muzzle dissent: from Israeli bans on waving the Palestinian flag in public, to arrests of Palestinians who voice opposition to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, to the prohibition of boycotts by Israel and its allies, to the systemic targeting and murder of journalists, to mainstream media’s complicity in the silencing of Palestinian voices, to falsely accusing academics of antisemitism in American universities, to Germany’s bans on rallies and Palestinian flags, to the Palestinian Authority’s role in silencing dissent, and so much more. Over the past year, Visualizing Palestine has created several visuals to bring attention to the actors and tactics involved in this system of silencing.
System of Silencing: We created this summary visual to put individual silencing incidents, actors, and tactics in their broader context. We conducted a series of short interviews on the system of silencing with Lara Sheehi (Professor at George Washington University), Mona Shtaya (Advocacy & Communications Manager, 7amleh), Ubai Aboudi (Director of Bisan Center for Research and Development), and Majed Abusalama (Palestine Speaks).
The Rise of U.S. Anti-Boycott Legislation visual and interactive version: We developed this visual and interactive platform in partnership with Palestine Legal and Just Vision to highlight the 443 anti-boycott measures introduced by US lawmakers since 2014 in an attempt to repress the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Through these resources, we also show how anti-boycott measures have expanded to target climate action, gun control, transgender rights, abortion access, and workplace equity.
Killing the Story: The murders of journalists James Miller, Yaser Murtaja, and Shireen Abu Akleh are three among many that show a long pattern of Israeli impunity for targeting of journalists.
Funder of Censor? How Politically Conditioned Funding Harms Civil Society in Palestine: We produced this visual in partnership with Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, and Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights to illustrate how politically conditioned funding supports Israeli colonial policies, depoliticizes Palestinian civil society, criminalizes resistance to Israeli colonization, and thwarts Palestinian aspirations for self-determination.
Administrative Detention: incarceration without charge or trial: Khader Adnan, who was held in Israeli administrative detention for 6 cumulative years of his life, was killed by medical neglect in an Israeli prison in May 2023 after 87 days of a hunger strike. Adnan was the subject of Visualizing Palestine’s first visual, published in 2012.
Settlements, Settler Violence, and Corporate Complicity
In 2023, we saw an “unprecedented surge” in illegal Israeli settlement construction, as well as an increase in the frequency and severity of settler attacks against Palestinians. In fact, 2023 is being described as the “most violent year” of settler violence since 2006, when the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) began to maintain regular records of Israeli settler violence in the West Bank. Between October 7-December 30, over 1,000 Palestinians were displaced and more than 300 were killed in the West Bank as a result of settler violence and Israeli military assaults.
Rising Israeli Settler Violence in the Occupied West Bank: We updated this visual in collaboration with Premiere Urgence Internationale Palestine Mission, to include data for the entire year of 2022. There was a 196% increase in acts of Israeli settler violence from 2017–2022, a trend that continued into 2023, with an especially alarming increase in settler violence since October 2023.
Warning: Contains Human Rights Violations: Every year, Israeli Chemicals Ltd. (ICL) pumps millions of cubic meters of water out of the northern basin of the Dead Sea, located in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, to mine its abundant minerals: potash, bromine, and magnesium. We Partnered with Al-Haq and Afrewatch to examine the relationship between military occupation, resource extraction, and corporate complicity.
Not On Our Dime: We partnered with a coalition of eight national and local U.S.-based organizations rallying behind the Not On Our Dime! Act in New York. This first-of-its-kind legislation would stop New York organizations from masquerading as charities to send millions of dollars annually to organizations involved in illegal Israeli settlements.
Interactive Platforms:
A Place of Many Beginnings: Three Paths Into the History of Palestine: We partnered with the Palestine Writes Literature Festival on this interactive project to explore the rich, layered, and multicultural history of Palestine. The project delves into Palestine’s rich history, from the agricultural revolution to international trade and transit routes to multifaith histories to place names to material culture. This project challenges hundreds of years of colonial scholarship on Palestine, and charts new paths to explore Palestine’s rich history.
Palestine Open Maps- Update: This platform allows users to explore, search, and download historical maps and spatial data on Palestine before and after the Nakba. We updated the platform to commemorate 75 years of the Nakba with new features, including an Arabic interface, new historical aerial photographs, new overlays, related links to sites, and a 3D viewer. Special thanks to Ahmad Barclay and Majd Al-Shihab for making these updates possible.
Organizational Development
Early in 2023, we launched a strategic plan for 2023–2025, which outlines our priorities for deepening the impact of Visualizing Palestine’s role in the Palestinian liberation movement.
In 2023, we welcomed new board members to VP: Fateh Azzam (Chair), Lara Nasser-Langley (Treasurer), Lena El-Malak (Secretary), Nora Lester-Murad (member), and Rehab Nazzal (member).
We also worked with:
- Two research interns: Shuruq Josting and Alia Ragab. Both interns supported in-depth research for the production of visual resources.
- Majd Rafie provided short-term research support, and worked on some illustrations for A Place of Many Beginnings.
- Lamis Alsayed, Yara Ramadan, Daleen Saah, and Hadeel Saalok worked with us on developing some of the visual resources that we published in 2023.
- Ghadir Shafie and Maura James Dooley supported fundraising activities.
From Our Community
In 2023, we documented 1,347 use cases of our visuals by educators, activists, and advocates across 79 countries. Here are some examples of what they shared with us.
Many people used their social media platforms to highlight the situation in Palestine and Gaza specifically.
What’s next?
Here are some of our commitments in 2024:
Narrative Shifts
- Contribute to the creation of narrative shifts that center the experiences of Palestinians, including by producing research and creating visuals on the following topics: ongoing Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank; Israel’s systemic targeting of Palestinian children; the gendered dimensions of Israeli violence; repression of dissent on Palestine; and the impact of political boycotts.
- Release a book of VP’s visuals in partnership with Haymarket Books. Here is a sneak peek of what’s to come.
Outreach
- Increase online and offline outreach activities to continue to build community and raise public consciousness on Palestine.
- Launch a new website, with new features and improved accessibility and usability.
Collaborations and Partnerships
- Continue to improve collaboration with strategic partners, especially in Palestine, and expand relationships with cross-movement partners. This will include: initiating collaborations with strategic partners to advance mutually identified narrative goals, responding to partnership requests that fit VP’s priorities, and participating in partner events and conferences with the aim of strengthening our network of partners within and across movements.
Institutional Sustainability
- Invest in engaging and growing VP’s 700+ community of Members, Member Matchers, and donors.
- Ensure that team members, our strongest asset, are adequately supported and compensated.
And more…
Financial Updates
Highlights (2023)
- 84% of VP’s revenue came from individual donors, including 28% from one-time donors and 56% from recurring contributions
- 909 individuals contributed, including 15 major donors
- 731 people were active as VP Members as of December 2024
The revenue and expense snapshots below cover the period of December 1, 2022 — November 2023 (12 months). These figures are not yet audited. VP’s accounts are audited in March of each year.
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THANK YOU FOR BEING PART OF VISUALIZING PALESTINE IN 2023!
Questions? Reach out to us at data@visualizingimpact.org
