SuperHumanizer Podcast

Visualizing Data: Palestine Vs. Disinformation

• Dr. Hani Chaabo • Season 1 • Episode 6

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Join Aline Batarseh, executive director of Visualizing Impact (the powerhouse behind Visualizing Palestine), as she unveils the mission to reclaim the Palestinian narrative through data-driven visuals. Dispel disinformation and discover the untold stories of Palestinian resilience, community, and the systemic silencing they face. Explore how Visualizing Palestine's innovative approach, including their "system of silencing" infographic, is shifting the narrative on Palestine. Aline shares personal experiences, highlighting the urgency of addressing misrepresentations in media and education, and the power of visual advocacy and artistic activism in the fight for social justice.

#visualizingdata #believedata #dataistruth #catsforalgorithm #seedsofcompassion 


Articles Mentioned In This Episode:

Major media and the systemic silencing of Palestinians

https://mondoweiss.net/2023/03/major-media-and-the-systemic-silencing-of-palestinians/

The time to act is now: addressing misrepresentations of the Arab World in school curriculums

https://mondoweiss.net/2019/03/addressing-misrepresentations-curriculums/

Your Silence Will Not Protect You Healing With Audre Lourde

https://www.shsoutherner.net/blogs/73daysletters/2016/12/10/your-silence-will-not-protect-you-healing-with-audre-lorde/

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Hani: Hello, everyone. I have Aline Batarseh here with me today on Superhumanizer. Aline is executive director of Visualizing Impact, the organization behind the hugely impactful work of Visualizing Palestine, which raises awareness and understanding of the lived Palestinian experience using research based creative storytelling to address the root causes of oppression in order to shift the narrative and enable people to envision a free Palestine.

She is Palestinian American, a community organizer and development professional. She has extensive fundraising experience working with international and Palestinian nonprofits aimed at advancing human rights and equality for individuals and communities that experience systemic discrimination. She has close ties supporting many civil society organizations in Palestine and in the U. S. She has a master's degree in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. She supports Al Shabaka, a Palestinian policy network, and its commitment to bringing Palestinian voices, knowledge and experience to policy analysis and strategy. She's also a writer for Mondoweiss.

Of course, when I started looking for awesome superhumanizers for this podcast, the first place I went to was Visualizing Impact, and I was so fortunate to find you, Aline, you truly are a shero. Thank you so much for being here. 

Aline: Thank you so much, Hani, for having me and you also are a hero. I'm really appreciative of having this conversation with you.

Thank you so much. 

Hani: Thank you so much. Before we get into our very important topic for today, I thought we would get to know you a little bit through your love of being a Palestinian. Would you tell us a little bit about why you love being a Palestinian?

Aline: Uh, There's so much to love about being Palestinian. I actually don't know where to start, but the first thing that comes to mind to me is the warmth of our community, and generosity that we show each other and People who come and visit Palestine we go out of our way to help people

 This is not just linked to being Palestinian. It's very much part of the Middle Eastern culture in general, our wider culture. But it is something now being in the U. S. That I miss the most. You can feel, that difference because we are very community oriented as a people whereas, there's so much individualism in the U. S. and unfortunately that's being globalized as well. Yes. When you live in community with people. You are much more in touch with, their needs, their wants. You share yourself in ways that are different.

 I've experienced both living in Palestine and living in the U. S. Those things come, to light for me. There's one story that I always remember, I was in Palestine a couple of years ago I went to a falafel shop that is down the street from my parents' home, in Jerusalem. I bought falafel and went home, and a couple of hours later, my dad comes to the house and he says, Oh, did you go to the Iker Maui, which is a Palestinian, falafel shop. I was like, yes, how come, how did you know? He's like, I went in I wanted to get falafel.

And he said no, don't get, anything Your daughter was here. Your daughter? Yes. , You know, ,I was like, he was watching out, went outta his way. 

Hani: Wow. Amazing. 

Aline: Do you care about making money? More money, but you don't know that your daughter came in and Wow I had been out of the country for eight years, so I knew he knew my face, but I didn't know he made those connections that I was, who I was. I was like, wow, he still remembers me after all of those years. This is how strong those ties are. I just love telling this story because it will never happen where I live right now.

Hani: So true. They know you, your family, they care about you. It's inherent in the society and it's beautiful to hear you say that. A lot of my Palestinian guests Also talk about the beautiful close knit community and also my guests who are not Palestinian, Jewish people and Americans, Europeans who went there to do human rights work.

They also say they felt like they were treated like a Palestinian, which is really beautiful. Thank you for sharing that 

Aline: you're welcome. The other thing that I will add is that also this gives you a sense of safety, even though, it is a country that is largely unsafe because of the political situation and military occupation and apartheid.

That is communal safety that people are watching out for you all the time and go out of their way to help you. So this is all tied to me in the love that comes from our community.

Hani: beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that. So we got to know you through your love of Palestine. Let's now get to know you you're such an awesome person. Tell us a little bit more about your life as a Palestinian and your background. 

Aline: I was born in Jerusalem both of my parents are Palestinian. From the Old City. My mother is Armenian Palestinian, it's one of those communities that are growing smaller and smaller in numbers. In 1948, there were 25000 Armenians in Palestine. Now there are about 1, 000 Armenians left in Jerusalem. And so they're really under threat of diminishing as a community.

My mother's family they're referred to as The local Armenians as opposed to the Armenians who came to Palestine after the Armenian genocide and at that time Palestine opened the doors for Armenians who came as a result of the genocide.

My mother's family had been there for centuries. They live in the Armenian quarter of Jerusalem, which is quite under huge threats right now. 25 percent of the quarter is under threat of being taken by an Israeli Australian developer. There's a huge story there that I won't go into, my father's family actually lived right outside of the old city of Jerusalem. In 1948, they were pushed into the old city and they took refuge with the Catholic church gave them a home in the old city. I grew up in Jerusalem, went to school there I studied in the U. S. later on in life did my bachelor's and my master's, then went back to Jerusalem and worked there for many years on women's rights, children's rights mental health. For around nine years.

 Then I moved with my family my husband and two daughters to the U. S. Almost eight years now. It was a difficult decision for us because we were concerned about, the future of our Children in a country that continues to experience military occupation and apartheid.

 You lose something with that decision, but also, of course we gain the privilege of having the ability to speak out and trying to change the way the U. S. supports Israel right now. I take it as my responsibility as a Palestinian American

Aline: who lives here to continue to raise awareness on being complicit as a country in Israel's actions and maintaining of oppression and domination over Palestinians. That's a little bit about me.

Hani: Amazing. I totally echo you. It's always a sacrifice to leave from there. You're leaving behind your community and all these beautiful things you just told us about. You're not going to find some of those things here, but you're putting yourself in a place that's more impactful where you can advocate for Palestinians in ways that weren't possible to you while living there, which is really amazing. you didn't leave them. You didn't abandon them. You plugged into and are furthering some of the most important work we're seeing that advocates for Palestinians. I see work from visualizing Palestine everywhere across social media.

 I've also learned so much these infographics, how can you learn so much about all this data in one infographic. It's so well studied. You guys put your heart and soul into it. There's a lot of work in the background would you tell us more about visualizing Palestine, how you ended up there and the mission

of the organization? 

Aline: I joined visualizing Palestine two years ago as executive director. It was co founded more than 10 years ago. , at the time that visualizing Palestine was co founded, you didn't really have infographics. The world has changed so much since then.

But what you did have and still have is a lot of data and information in human rights reports, articles that reflect on the situation in Palestine. There is no scarcity of material out there that brings to light all of the, system of oppression that Palestinians live under what the co founders wanted to do with visualizing Palestine is to really shed light on the data that already exists in ways that are visual, that people can relate to because many people are not going to read hundreds of pages of reports. Unless you're, working in that field you're a researcher, you're writing an article or an academic paper, you're not going to read all of those reports. So they wanted to make the data accessible to people who are visual learners.

There's just so much data on Palestine. You want to make it relatable some infographics use day to day things that people can relate to Not just bring in the data, but bring in the stories of Palestinians and their lived experience making it relatable to people who might not have had that experience.

 Our mission is basically to use data and research to visually communicate Palestinian experiences. And at the end of the day change the narrative on Palestine. And, envisioning a liberated future 

we want to live in a world that is free from oppression, but we're also talking about collective liberation because all of our liberation is interrelated. All of our safety is interrelated, this is a message that we like to bring across with our visuals. That's in a nutshell what Visualizing Palestine does.

 To me, joining Visualizing Palestine was a very important move because I felt, coming to the U. S. I really wanted to use, my experience and history to continue to to raise awareness and drive people to taking action.

And this is one of the ways, there are many other ways when I first came to the US, I was involved on a voluntary basis in different initiatives and worked with a reproductive justice organization, 

But starting to work with visualizing Palestine was in a way like going back home, when I can't be there so it's very personal to me, it's much more than, a job. It's really about sharing, our story with the world. 

Hani: Yeah, it's your purpose you're rooted in your purpose you're bridging all these experiences and all this expertise.

 In mental health nine years in reproductive justice. Talking about Wealth of knowledge that you're bringing into this process of telling stories, bringing in data, creating something people can relate to, even if you're not Palestinian .

When I was researching what visualizing Palestine does on the website, I came across, a master class. You guys put out the process of how you create these infographics, which makes it accessible for others to do the same. It's beautiful that you're sharing so that other people can also tell these stories and create impact within their own skill sets. One thing that really stood out to me was you use a narrative wave approach in which you build momentum to move specific narrative goals through tactics, interventions, and partnerships.

Would you tell us more about those three things?

Aline: Yeah it's a really important question because, um, the narrative intervention. So when we look at our theory of change, we're basically looking at the dominant narrative is really controlled by. by Israel, by Zionists.

That is true in the U. S. We're breaking through that slowly. But the idea of narrative interventions is that we are bringing new ideas. To think about the long term impact because the narrative is controlled um, so much, through mainstream media, schools, the higher education system, through the government.

There is just so much internalized Misconceptions about Palestine that we need to slowly shift the narrative so we're doing it, through putting out infographics, but then we're also doing it through partnering with people in the movement with organizations I'm sure you've seen that some of our infographics we produce ourselves, but others we produce in partnership with other organizations or movement actors whether they're in the U S or in Palestine, because they're using the infographics as tools, to Basically put pressure on their governments or to make an intervention at the UN or to even talk to their classrooms and their students about the situation.

And then, it's not just about the visuals themselves, but it's about how we use those visuals to , either write articles using those visuals or using them in conferences or in protests and in exhibitions, you know, so these are all the different tactics that we use to bring attention to the visuals.

And, over the past few months, especially we've seen a huge, increase in the use of those visuals by others in our community, whether it's through social media or through our website where people can go to download our visuals. And then we asked them to tell us how they're using them and why to give us, data it's all about the data for us, To help us, understand how are people using it?

What's useful for them? Are there other things that we can do to, support, the narrative shift that we want to see. I feel like I went all over the place answering your question, but.

Hani: Amazing. Please keep going all over the place.

 Beautiful. There is so much planning that goes into preparing for these infographics and then designing and then following their impact. I learned so much looking at this a wheel that you guys have on your website that talks about the process of how you create your infographics.

Hani: It's a wheel that's divided into about three sections. Starts with looking at how we can change the direction what are the ideas we're looking at? And then through the data, it, Goes through to the story. So how do we go from the data to the story?

Because that increases the emotional appeal of this data and then going from the story to the visual expression where that data is actually translated into a design and then From increasing the emotional appeal to increasing the shift in perception. Going into how the infographic is published, how it's shared, which is what you told us about with the organizations and different avenues, and then tracking its impact and its virality.

 I saw these visualizations showing up and the organizations that were putting them forward and then also in the protests. The process is really evidence based. It's so well studied and there's so much work that goes behind these infographics.

So I, I wanted to share that with our audience and we're actually going to show this wheel in the reels on social media so people can actually get inspired and maybe even follow the same process. Thank you so much for explaining that to us. 

You wrote an article in Mondoweiss in March of last year, 2023, about the quote, major media and the systemic silencing of Palestinians.

We also saw very recently a report from Human Rights Watch that confirms this about social media. You were already writing about this and the studies done on it way before this report even came out. And you've actually been writing about this for a long time. So can you tell us more about that article and some of the data that you highlighted in there?

Aline: Yeah, for sure. Just zooming out of the article for a minute. Typically on a yearly basis, we decide what the priorities are for the themes and the stories that we're going to tell that year in 2023, we decided that one of the themes was going to be freedom of expression.

And freedom of expression is such a wide topic. The reason we wanted to focus on it is because people are speaking out more, because we have More access to non traditional forms of media, which includes social media. We've become louder, right? And during the unity intifada in 2021, I remember, Vox News basically said that we won the social media war, because Palestinians were able to access an avenue that is typically not accessed by us.

Our voices are silenced, people don't hear from us, but with that increase in speech, Israel has also been ramping up the system to silence us. And it's not just Israel, right? There are other governments that are involved in it.

The Palestinian Authority is involved in silencing speech. There are other tactics that are involved, which includes media, and one of the first visuals that we wanted to produce on this is a summary visual. It's basically the system of silencing visual that I refer to in the article which highlights all of these different levels of silencing.

 One of those is mainstream media. In this article, I wanted to highlight how mainstream media has been complicit in silencing Palestinian voices in many different ways. First We're not featured in articles, I'll highlight some of the statistics, which don't come from us. They're in a study that Maha Nassar did in 2020. She revealed that. Non Palestinians wrote 99 percent of opinion pieces. Imagine about Palestinians. This was from 1970 to 2019. I don't have more recent statistics, but we can be sure that continues to be the case the silencing is just so widespread and so accepted you don't see many people questioning it.

 We wanted to bring attention to the statistics, but also talk about, it's not just by not featuring Palestinians. It's also the way that the news reports, we're always reported on in the passive tense, Palestinians are dead. They don't say Palestinians have been killed or who has killed Palestinians, and so we bring in the story of the journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh who was actually a family friend. When she was killed, it was a shock for everyone in Palestine at the time, because this one journalist who's been reporting on Palestine for years on Al Jazeera, who has been revered by the Palestinian community, who was wearing press vest, and a helmet, was killed in front of cameras in front of her colleagues.

And that was still being questioned. It was still being questioned when you have Israelis talk about someone killed. You have no one questioning them. They don't even go back and check the sources. They just report it as is. But when we have eyewitnesses, even they go and do an investigation to come to the conclusion that we give them off the bat.

Reporting on Palestinians in the the passive sense obscuring who the killer is not highlighting Palestinian voices to talk about, our experiences living under Israeli oppression. So that's just some of the highlights from the article.

And of course, even though we have the social media as an avenue, we're also silenced there. Algorithms that work against us. Posts that are taken down all the time, so the article refers to some of these things as well. 

As long as we refuse to be silent, I know it's difficult. I know that there's a lot of fear in our community but the louder all of us are, the more difficult it will be to silence us, and this is partly why we wanted to put out those visuals. It's not just, about, raising the alarm or bringing attention to those systems that silence us, but it's also to encourage people to push back and to show, cases where we are successful despite, all of the efforts to silence us and to to continue to oppress us.

Hani: Thankfully, that safety in numbers that you mentioned in the very beginning, that safety in community and mobilizing, showing that this community does exist and it's bigger than all of these actors that are trying to suppress us, unfortunately, it's funded by these big organizations and funders which you mentioned actually in the system of silencing infographic.

I want to highlight also you mentioned the review of the New York Times in the same period of the Maha Nassar study was done also showed that 98% Of articles written about Palestinians were written by non Palestinians. There's another study in 2021 by Holly Jackson at MIT that looked at anti Palestinian bias in the New York Times during the two intifadas or uprisings in 1987 and 2000 and she concluded that over 30, 000 articles that analyzed both periods, less than 50% Referenced Palestine or Palestinians, while over 90 percent referenced Israel or Israelis. It's just ridiculous. I'm laughing about it because it's just so ridiculous that the uprisings are about the oppression of Palestinians and their plight so many reasons why this pressure cooker resulted in the intifadas, yet 50 percent referenced Palestinians and 90 percent referenced Israelis. The narrative even made the intifadas about Israelis much more than it made it about Palestinians. Then there was another report commissioned by META, independently, actually, in 2021, that showed there was an adverse human rights impact on Palestinian users to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, political participation and non discrimination and therefore on the ability of Palestinians to share information and insights about their experiences as they were happening, which is so important. How will we know what's happening? If we don't hear it from the people it's happening to while it's happening to them.

And so I wanted to dissect the system of silencing infographic a little bit more because it's so powerful. There's so much in there you really have to read every single point to understand how big this system of oppression is. It starts with Israeli policy, and then it goes on to the Palestinian authorities, the foreign governments, the funders, the universities, and then other actors, including the people that are lobbying for Israel, and then the media.

There's so many elements to this. 

Aline: Yeah, it's a really intricate system, and exactly why we wanted to create this summary visual because there's so much to cover, so we have anti boycott legislation in the U. S. It actually started with first the federal level. It doesn't work. They go to the state level. We have more than 35 states that have anti boycott laws in the US. Then those laws are taken as templates to repress other types of speech. The exact same templates are taken word for word they just change, anti Israel to anti guns, or to abortion or to trans people, when we talk about how important and how interrelated all of our struggles are this is really the gist of it. Because when we talk about a system of oppression it's all of these actors who oppress freedoms, who are taking the same methods and using them and applying them on other communities, that's just one example.

When you look at the visual, the Israeli policy aspect of system of silencing is the most intricate one. It goes from, assassinations to repression of protest to mass surveillance. The Pegasus effect using surveillance system testing it on Palestinians and then taking it and selling it to other governments to silence speech and human rights defenders in other countries.

 Israel prides itself in its mass surveillance it's a horrible way to, keep people, not just under, scrutiny and privacy is completely out in the open, but also to, silence people by making them afraid to speak out then we have, attacks on press like we saw with Shireen Abu Akleh, even in this past period the biggest number of journalists in the past 20 years have been killed over the past three months.

And this is all going, without being questioned. What they're getting away with right now is really horrible. It's always been horrible but this is the height of, the slow genocide that we've been seeing over the years is now at a heightened pace.

 Then of course, political speech is deemed as anti Semitic. Now you say one word and you're being silenced by being attacked, for even when you say genocide right now they tell you this is anti Semitic and the facts speak for themselves.

 Listen to the speech that Israeli government officials are putting out there look for those quotes. We're not saying anything. It's their words, and it's their actions. Then, stripping people of their citizenship, Palestinians with this Israeli passports or Palestinians who have Jerusalem IDs are stripped from their residency rights as well.

Aline: As was the case with Salah Ammouri a year and a half ago because of his political expression. He was expelled and his residency rights were taken away from him. Right now we can't display the Palestinian flag. This is why people have come up with the watermelon, you know.

So, um, Then of course, Nakbe commemoration is completely banned. It's really difficult for people even to mention their experience of, Displacement and the catastrophe in 1948 that resulted in more than 750, 000 Palestinians being expelled from Palestine.

I can go on and on, but there are just so many examples of how Israel restricts speech. Unfortunately, the Palestinian Authority, uh has been very complicit. It's not representative of the Palestinian people. We call them the subcontractors of Israeli occupation in the West Bank because they use their power to suppress dissent, whether that's, on social media or in the streets people are arrested all the time so it's very unfortunate the role that the Palestinian Authority plays to suppress their own community. 

Then we look at foreign governments, Germany is a case. 

Hani: Germany, What is going on Germany? Did you not learn from your past? What is happening? 

Aline: Yeah, exactly. Suppression of protest. People cannot use the Palestinian flags as well. There is so much happening in Germany. And unfortunately this shows that there has been no lessons learned from history and there is.

racism towards the Palestinian community. I can't think that it's just guilt Holocaust guilt, but it's also bigger than that to me, 

Hani: there's something striking about that. Our goal audience is people in North America and in Europe because those are the impactful countries right now on the Palestinian cause.

Unfortunately, they're more impactful than the Arabs and Palestinians themselves. Every time I promote our reels in Germany the comments under the reels are just some of the most racist comments I've ever seen towards Arabs in my life. It was really striking because I've been to Germany many times.

I actually considered living in Germany myself before I decided to live in America. Now looking back thank God I didn't make that decision because I didn't realize how much racism there is towards Palestinians and Arabs until I started reading these comments 

Aline: yeah, there's just so much it's so ingrained it's really shocking to me that again, there is no learning from that history, But, they've played their role in, other genocides as well.

 It's disappointing that this hasn't evolved, over the years. But it's not the only country by any means. 

Hani: Yes, that's right. 

Aline: We see suppression obviously in the U. S. as well, in the UK and other countries by government officials their statements and their inaction just speaks, louder than anything else.

They're exclusive for Israel then there's a whole other beast of funders and how they're involved in maintaining the status quo and suppressing political speech in Palestine because before the Oslo Accords the Palestinian civil society was quite involved.

In the liberation movement and had a big role to play in providing services and supporting the community. Once the Oslo Accords happened, there, there was a shift, because of funding in the way that Palestinian civil society exists, and it became quite controlled with the types of projects that they can implement what they can say, what they can't say censorship of words, they can't say Nakba, occupation in the reports and the proposals that you write to funders.

There's also the type of projects that you implement, if you want to do peace building projects, which means basically normalization projects with Israelis that is encouraged. But if you want to do a project that focuses on human rights and exposes Israeli policies that's not accepted.

So a lot of those agendas were imposed on Palestinians. And then with the recent situation in Gaza, we actually saw an amplification of that. So you see, the Americans and European governments giving more money to Israel militarily, while at the same time, because a lot of the funders are European funders, but also American funders to Palestinian civil society a lot of them have stopped funding very important Palestinian organizations, including in Gaza, where, their work is needed the most, and they're in most need for support. But again, it's one of the ways to shrink civil society.

And then in addition to that they've introduced all those anti terrorism laws where Palestinian civil society has to sign, a clause that says that they're Anti, you know, which is, which is fine. Theoretically, what they're doing is they're actually imposing a mechanism to monitor and report on people within their own community to police their own community and their engagement in political activity.

So it's a very intricate and horrible way to silence society. It's one of the ways that, it's not talked about as much because it's not as obvious as some of the other ways, but it's a very important system that has become part of this larger system to suppress dissent and at the end of the day, self determination for Palestinians.

 Yeah. We refer to the universities, the Israeli lobby and, their role they work in concert with the government using lawfare and threats a lot of people are afraid that they'll lose their jobs because they're monitoring what people say and do.

Smear campaigns. We will be working on that topic as well in upcoming months conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, so people are afraid to say anything about Israel

Hani: yeah. There's a website called the canary mission, which wow, one person that I'm going to be interviewing, I googled him and then the first thing that popped up is canary mission, you would think that his LinkedIn would pop up first, or all the amazing stuff that he's done but no, the first thing that popped up was canary mission.

And I'm like, Oh, wow, what is this? How interesting that this person is on this website and I open it up and it's a smear campaign and there's so many people on there, doctors and researchers and people that are respectable people in society, that are being shamed in this way it's really striking and it shows up first, so there's obviously a lot of investment that goes into how the search engine works for that to be the first thing that pops up when you Google these people.

Yeah. 

Aline: Yeah, exactly. They do this intentionally. You have university students whose photos were being taken. And I don't know if you heard about this, but with trucks going around saying this student supports Hamas or this, which is completely not true, it's not true. Yeah. So it's just a really horrible way and it's scary. It's very scary and of course, especially for younger people, they completely lose their privacy, but they're also getting threats, it's a very dirty game and it really impacts people.

We've seen so many people lose their jobs at the university level, so many students for justice in Palestine clubs have been suspended. So there's just a huge impact on our ability to speak about our real experiences as Palestinians, and unfortunately that becomes the focus when our focus is really on ending the current genocide, and ending the system of oppression against Palestinians. It distracts us from what we're actually trying to do, they put all their resources and power into this at the same time, we see people that are refusing to accept. 

Hani: Thankfully. 

Aline: Yeah. 

Hani: Thankfully. I really feel like it's in large part because of the work you're doing and how it connects to other people's work and empowering us with data and actual science behind What's happening here.

 Thank you so much for going through each of these points on this infographic, there's so much more even behind each of these headlines that I just learned listening to you, and I'm sure that volumes of books can be written about the system of silencing. So I want to thank you for really taking the time to dissect this infographic for us. There's another infographic that I thought we could talk about. It's not as, heavily science filled as the one we just talked about, but it definitely is very emotionally charged, you placed an ad in the New York Times, which is a representation of the too many Children killed.

On the Visualizing Palestine profile, there's a whole animation that goes with it that I didn't even know about until I went looking for it. Very chilling animation creatively brilliant, emotionally torturous, where you're walked through a crowd and it tells the stories of these children as you're walking 

and in the end it says, they're not just numbers. Stop the genocide appears written in English, Arabic and Hebrew. So powerful. What went into making that and putting it into the New York Times? 

Aline: , we were not the ones who put it in the New York Times we were asked to support with doing the research and the design for the ad. This is the first time that we actually do anything like this we've had, visuals for billboards before, but this is the first time that we actually support with placing an ad.

 We did that back end work, which is the research and the visualization so the silhouette of the child those figures within it's actually the number I think it was 6, 700 people killed in that ad that was placed back then, and the figures in that silhouette are that exact number. So the data is also correct in that particular ad since then we've integrated that silhouette in other visuals. So you'll see at the animation you cannot update a silhouette with this many numbers.

This is part of the challenge of just how horrific the conditions are right now. Is that you can't even keep up with the numbers and and reflect them in a visual. Or even update a visual like this with the numbers. There's always aspects of the work there's the idea, but then there is, how are we going to represent this idea, what will speak to people?

 That's the creative process that comes with what statements we want to make we really wanted to show the numbers, and evoke the emotion with, so many figures within that silhouette, but then also refer to the stories behind those numbers.

And because there are so many stories, we zoom into some of them. In the New York Times ad, we have some of the stories of the people and then in the animation, you will see that we just focused on the children. We focused on the, numbers of people killed and then we zoomed into 40%. of the people killed have been children so far we talk some about some of their stories, how some of them are also babies who have not even had a chance to realize their dreams, who have been killed before daring to dream. There's always this aspect of We want to bring life to the data and we want to shed light on what it means to be Palestinian and a Palestinian in Gaza right now.

What does it mean to be a Palestinian child in Gaza right now? We've done several things on this particular topic and I would encourage people to check out the visual that talks about six wars old, which has a huge focus on mental health and how Children who are 16 years old right now in Gaza have gone through six major assaults and what that means to them both in terms of, killing childhoods, but then also to live with a trauma of going through six Assaults within your lifetime if you're 16 or even as a child, living through the conditions right now in Gaza.

The other visual that we worked on was on buses. We reflect the number of buses that it would take to carry the number of children that have been killed. We talk about 177 buses that should have carried the children that are killed today to school, not going to school, and who are prevented from living their childhood and experiencing life the way children should. Wanting to not only bring attention to raise awareness around the situation of Palestinians, but also move people to take action to take those visuals and use them as educational tools, awareness tools to be compelled to do something about the situation we all have different roles to play. We can talk to our neighbors, our colleagues write to the newspaper. We can certainly write and call our Congress people if people are based in the U. S., this is the least that people can and should be doing because it's really not that much effort to put in, but it has potentially a huge impact.

Speaking out at schools, at universities, all of this is important. We want people to take action at the end of the day, and we want to also document what is happening. It's both a privilege and a responsibility because we are witnessing what's happening in Palestine and we are archiving it because we're hoping that one day we won't have to anymore, you know? the idea is that we will have those historical records, but we want to reach a place where, we're all living in freedom. 

Hani: Absolutely. I interviewed the executive director of UNRWA USA, and she talked about planned obsolescence, where, one day, we don't want this anymore we don't want to talk about these killings and the genocide and visualizing Palestine, one day, maybe we want to talk about How to build Palestine again, or how to create more intersections between civil society to move from the narrative of occupation, apartheid, genocide, et cetera, hopefully one day.

I really hope so. In the ad, it's got a quote in really big letters. It says, if I die, remember that I, we were individuals, humans, we had names, dreams, and achievements. And our only fault was that we were classified as inferior. And this comes from a gentleman named Bilal Al Dabbour, who was a neurologist and posted this on Twitter before he was killed.

Allah yarhamu. Thank you for dissecting that for us. I know it's not easy to talk about it. It's not easy to make it. It's not easy to research it. So I want to honor that and all that work that went into that. 

Aline: Thank you so much Hani.. 

Hani: Thank you. You wrote an article for Mondoweiss in 2019, entitled The Time to Act is Now Addressing Misrepresentations of the Arab World in School Curriculums.

It talks about how an Arab and Palestinian American group of women exposed misrepresentations and biases about Arabs in their own children's school education here in the U. S. And they actually fought to change that. So cool. Talk about sheroes. So would you tell us more about that? And I know that you also have had a recent experience with your own children related to that.

Aline: Yeah. I could talk about this for hours because It's just such a painful place that where we're at right now with the school system. Um, if we want to talk about like systems of silencing in the U. S., the three major ones are education, media, and the government. When we look at the education system and what children are exposed to in their schools, there is a very clear agenda to make Palestine invisible. It's completely invisible. Palestinians are not talked about.

If we're talked about, we're talked about as Arabs. As terrorists. This is how Palestinians are referenced. At the same time, there is a huge focus in the schools on Holocaust education, which is totally fine. You know, this is, This is not the point.

Unfortunately, that is used to then justify Israeli existence as an exclusively Jewish state that excludes the indigenous population in Palestine. The conclusion that students and teachers reach is that Israel can do no wrong, which is a problem. So this is honestly, this is the crux of the problem.

When I moved to the U. S. The first experience I had with my child, my eight year old in school she would talk, she would listen to her teachers speak about, world history, it's very simplified for that age group.

And, asking questions. One time her teacher had a picture of snow from different countries. And one of them was with the dome of the rock with snow on it. And, she said, where is this picture? And someone said, Israel. My daughter came home and she's like, Mama, this is Jerusalem.

This is Palestine. Of course, the Dome of the Rock is in Jerusalem. It's an occupied territory. It is not Israel. It's occupied territory according to international law, we're not making this up. Yes. It's the simple things, but it's also how children are misinformed. The very next experience she had at her school where an art teacher, was talking about, her experience and had an art piece around where she lived before. One of the places was Israel, and my daughter told her friend that she was offended.

Her friend went up to the school teacher and she said, you refer to country as Israel, and she refers to it as Palestine. You know what the teacher did? The teacher looked at the map behind her and my daughter's friend went up to the teacher personally, she didn't go in front of the whole class.

She just went to her privately. And she said, 

Hani: to basically stand up for your daughter or to do something where she could be a little bit more sensitive to your daughter. 

Aline: In front of the whole class, she says, This girl, my daughter just told me that, where I lived is Palestine and not Israel.

Look at the map. The map says Israel. That was the teacher's response to a 10 year old. 

Hani: That is traumatizing.

Aline: Of course, it's traumatizing. It's traumatizing. And we know who writes history. We know who does maps, Palestine is completely erased from the map.

 I felt that I really needed to get more involved in, the local community and addressing misrepresentation. There are many really good efforts. I joined the education outreach program at the National Arab American Women's Association and the goal of the program was to start with Fairfax County, which is where we live, and to talk to them about, misrepresentation of Arabs and Palestinians and Arab Americans in school curricula to push for that change.

It's a very difficult process, partly because we're all volunteers and , there are many forces that are stronger than us that work systematically on curriculum, on forcing those, study guides on schools. We have a limited space. It's not impossible, but it has been very difficult.

It's been particularly difficult over the past few months because you see schools, the education board releasing statements after October 7th, and then complete silence when there's more than 25, 000 Palestinians killed, 

Hani: including our president. 

Aline: Exactly. And it's not just this violence.

 My daughter co organized a walkout in her high school which was approved by the superintendent. Everything went through the correct channels. Before the walkout happened, the principal called the students in and she told them that they cannot say certain words during the walkout.

They cannot use the word genocide. They cannot use the word siege. The word apartheid. She said that these are hate words and that there are students on the school campus that are offended and parents that are afraid for their students safety by our students using those words.

So it was, a long battle with the principal. I had a discussion with her and a lot of drama happened around this and a lot of trauma, to be honest with you, happened. 

Hani: Of course. 

Aline: The students were trying to do something to stop to put an end to the genocide.

They want their words heard and what they got in response instead was that they were causing harm by bringing attention to it, so they want to avoid those hard truths. The role of the school is to hold uncomfortable truths in the school, of course.

 They were, completely shutting down space for learning and belonging and agency, for students like my daughter and others who were also experiencing, earlier that week when the walkout happened, my daughter's very good friend lost 30 members of her family in Gaza, who were killed by an Israeli bomb.

 There was no compassion there was no compassion shown. All the principal cared about was how those other students who are already privileged and their families were uncomfortable by certain words and not the actual trauma that my daughter and some of her friends, were experiencing because of this assault on Gaza. It's a very intricate system and very racist and they don't realize it because it's so normal, for our experiences not to be highlighted. The internalized acceptance is Palestinians being killed. This is the reality. 

Hani: basic humanity, 

Aline: basic humanity. Within the school system, we have a very long way to go at the end of the day the principal did not have her way. We did talk, we were able to have them, do the walkout and use the words, but they were harassed.

They were harassed on campus. There were parents who came, they're not supposed to do that, who came and took videos of the students. It's a very direct form of harassment and intimidation for the students who are speaking out about the situation. It's not comfortable.

The teachers have not addressed any of this, in the schools, there's complete silence around it, which is, a form of violence, whereas we know. It would not have been the same if it were Israelis that were targeted. 

Hani: Of course. First of all, thank you so much for fighting the fight and having them actually do the walkout, make their voices heard despite all the obstacles and the intimidation.

There is nothing more traumatizing than denying someone's existence and erasing someone's grief, And their experience, it actually re traumatizes and deepens the trauma and for children, your kids are young for Children to go through that. It's really tragic, especially when we are in a place in America where we are valuing things like diversity, equity, inclusion For me as a doctor and being in that space and talking about inclusion, it's really striking to me that in our medical societies, that inclusion has not included Palestinians or Arabs.

In my work, I'm trying to actually bring that to the forefront, including the experience of doctors who are hurting right now in all of this Arabs and Jewish doctors, like let's include everyone. the system of silencing the system of denying is so present across the board, and unfortunately The idea of diversity, equity, inclusion does not include Palestinians or Arabs, thank you for fighting that fight because it will definitely be a wave that we will all follow.

Aline, you are so Amazing. I can sit here and talk to you for hours, but I know I have to let you go because you are very busy woman. I have two more questions for you. What is your advice for people that are organizing social justice causes and how can they use visualizing Palestine in their efforts?

Aline: That's a great question. I think I referred to this a little bit earlier, but obviously I think it's very important and I'm seeing, how, other people or other social justice groups who are not necessarily focused on Palestine have been bringing Palestine in because we all realize how interconnected our struggles are, from the Black Lives Matter to Indigenous groups to, reproductive justice groups to environmental justice.

We make those connections, but we're also seeing, those groups really working with us. And it's so important because we won't be able to to reach anywhere if we don't work together, and our efforts complement each other. So that's really important. And we're so appreciative, even with South Africa, bringing the case to the ICJ.

That's a huge example of, that historical solidarity that we've had with South Africa. And Who better understands apartheid than Africans? 

Hani: Seriously. 

Aline: All of this is really important work and connections that are being made over the years.

Our visuals are out there to be tools that are used by anyone, but especially social justice activists, but not only, educators, students anyone who wants to learn, who wants to educate about Palestine and who wants to use the visuals to take action.

Our visuals are available on social media, but they're also available on our website. So people can always use to share to download for many different reasons, for protests, for exhibitions for papers that students use, in research for educators who use them, in classrooms.

 Every visual that we create on our website has a link that takes you to the sources that we use to create that visual.

 Anyone that wants to learn more about the data behind each visual can actually dig in more. Because the visuals are windows into those larger topics so there's always so much more. We're actually launching a new website over the next month. It will be even more accessible and have, More functionalities that people can use I hope that's helpful information. 

Hani: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It really it's an encyclopedia of human rights for Palestinians for Arabs and for this intersectionality of liberation. I really love how you brought that up. We're not free until we're all free. I love that you highlighted that it's so important for us to connect our liberation efforts.

 To end our time together, dear Aline, would you share with us something that's been helpful to you navigating this time of conflict, maybe a piece of writing or a stress management practice or anything else that's been helpful to you? 

Aline: Thank you. Um, it's hard to find those You know, moments of hope.

 The fact that there are so many people taking action and after those months of exhaustion because of what's happening, people are refusing to stay silent. One of my sources of inspiration has, been Audre Lorde and her words and her wisdom over the years.

And I'll read something from her that, encourages me to continue to speak out and I hope that it will encourage others as well. I'll start reading the letter. I don't have much more to say. We are waiting and fighting, but fighting without knowing can be as hard as knowing without fighting.

We push against a water that we feel on our skin, but that cannot see. It's frightening, but in these moments we can ground ourselves with strength through others such as the incredible Audre Lorde. I'll share the, this is from the Southerner, so I'll share the article with you. This is an excerpt of Audre Lorde's essay in Sister Outsiders, Essays and Speeches published in 1984.

It makes you think, quote, I was going to die if not sooner than later, whether or not I have ever spoken myself, my silences. Had not protected me, your silence will not protect you. What are the words you do not have yet? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?

We have been socialized to respect fear more than our need for language. I think that one is That's the most beautiful part for me. And of course I am afraid you can hear it in my voice because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self revelation and that always seems fraught with danger.

But my daughter, when I told her of our topic and my difficulty with it said, tell them about how you're never really a whole person if you remain silent because there's always that one little piece inside of you that wants to be spoken out. And if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and hotter.

And if you don't speak it out one day, it will just up and punch you in the mouth. This is just part of the letter. But to me the part that really stands out is we have been socialized to respect fear more than our need for language. It's something that I remind myself because, of course we're all afraid.

And sometimes we hold onto that fear rather than our need to speak out and something dies in us.. Yes. Whenever we're silent, 

Hani: beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. There's nothing more important to heal trauma than to actually put language to it, to speak it, to tell the story.

That is actually a neuroscience fact that to heal from trauma, you need to put it into language. I love the part about transforming silence into language and action. which I feel embodies visualizing Palestine so much. Thank you so much for sharing that with us, for sharing who you are with us and this very important work.

It's been some of the most important and best hour spent thank you so much for sharing.

Aline: Thank you so much, Hani.. Thank you for giving me the space To share with you and and for taking the time, to reach out and to connect.

I appreciate it so much. I really enjoyed the conversation as well. 

Hani: Me too. Thank you. It's been an honor. I'm just going to say a little prayer. Is that okay with you? May all beings everywhere thrive in peace and dignity and share in all our joys and freedoms. And may we see true peace in the Middle East for all in our lifetime. Ameen, Amen.