For the most part coffee-table books serve only two purposes: They look aesthetic in a living room, and they lend faux intellectual credibility to their owners: The second, of course, to those who are not particularly discerning.
Now and again, however, the trend is bucked. In the case of “Visualizing Palestine,” Haymarket Books has outdone itself with an object of both beauty and political/intellectual merit. Bravo to the editors, Aline Batarseh, Jessica Anderson, and Yosra El Gazzar for offering a searing political expose of the apartheid conditions in Palestine in the modern garb of infographics and narratives.
The 392-page volume combines analysis, storytelling, graphics, and historical exegesis. For many, Palestine has only been in their mindscapes since October 7th, 2023; in fact, the Palestinians have been living under the yoke of colonial oppression since the founding of the State of Israel. “Visualizing Palestine” takes the consumer on a journey from 1948 to the present, giving meaning to the book’s subtitle “A Chronicle of Colonialism & the Struggle for Liberation.”
Aesthetically, the production is topnotch, inviting, not intimidating, despite the density of information and data to ingest. The book should be shared widely and discussed; in addition, it should prod the consumer to get active in the struggle against colonialism.
“Visualizing Palestine” will face one profound hurdle, however, which has to do with the information bubbles most of us live in. If the book is bought, read, and consumed only by those already convinced of the need for Palestinian liberation, then it will be only partially a success. If the data presented cannot convince anyone outside of that “bubble” of what some of us believe to be a crucial moral issue of our times, then we face a problem deeper than anything one book could possibly solve.
Let’s hope that it makes a difference, that the authors’ and editors’ work is requited with action, and that lives are changed and saved by action spurred by information.
