OCTOBER 16, 2024 — On the 19th and 20th of this month, the inaugural Palestinian Liberatory Book Fair is set to run opposite the fairgrounds of the massive Frankfurt International Book Fair, one of the annual centers of the book trade, and the place where — last year — organizers shut down and silenced an event to award Palestinian novelist Adania Shibli a prize and another around her prize-winning novel, Minor Detail. Palestinian Liberatory Book Fair organizers say they plan to hold the fair opposite Frankfurt, as “we believe confrontation is required to break this suffocating silence.”
Below, read our complete conversation with organizers of the Palestinian Liberatory Book Fair, and find more at their instagram, @palestinelibrary_ffm.
Can you tell us when the Palästina Bibliothek Frankfurt / Palästina Vereins Frankfurt started up? What are its goals?
Palestinian Liberatory Book Fair: The Palästina Verein was founded on January 22, 2022 in Frankfurt am Main. The association’s aim is to amplify Palestinian voices and those in solidarity through political education, cultural events, and community relations work.
The Palästina Bibliothek [Palestinian Library] is the latest initiative by the Verein and was started for the 2024 Cultural festival. We reached out to and received book donations from authors around the world for us to share. The initiative is still new and our library is small; currently, we cater to those within the Verein and community but we have ambitions of being a public library, archive and cultural space that can help to raise consciousness in Germany about the Palestinian struggle. After the book fair we will be hosting a series of events and talks on Palestinian cooking, the connections between different anti-colonial struggles and book readings by different authors.
What was the impetus behind the Palestinian Liberatory Book Fair?
PLBF: The initial impetus behind the PLBF was the decision by the Frankfurt book fair to cancel Adania Shibli’s award ceremony last year due to the criticality of the Israeli occupation inherent in her novel, Minor Detail. To be sure, there is no shortage of reasons to challenge the politics of the Frankfurt Book Fair. They continue to work with Israeli publishing companies whilst banning Russian publishers, they bookwash companies like Amazon and have a history of including far-right publishers and politicians in the fair, including Björn Höcke of AfD, in 2017. (Also read: Publishers for Palestine Open Letter to the Frankfurt Book Fair.)
The book fair is also a demonstration of German soft power, presenting Germany to the world as a culturally progressive country. We seek to expose the real consequences of this policy for Palestinians and for those who are critical of German complicity in Israel’s crimes. Most importantly though, we want to show that Palestinian voices critical of the Israeli regime and of its numerous and ongoing human rights abuses cannot be silenced. Any attempt to do so by German institutions will be fought, our global solidarity movement strengthens with each passing day – our voices are already too loud to be ignored!
Can you explain a bit about the logistics? You will be screening the video of your interview with Rashid Khalidi, for instance? And how will the reading and discussion with Ahlam Bsharat take place? Can people come only at particular times, or will things be happening on a rolling basis?
PLBF: The various groups within the Palestinian solidarity movement in Frankfurt have become accustomed to holding events outside in public space. Because we stand against racism and its most violent and extreme manifestations, colonialism, apartheid and genocide, we are consistently denied access to rooms and venues that should be open to us.
From the student encampment at the Goethe Uni this past spring to the anti-colonial days to the Palestine culture festival in August, we have been taking political education to the streets. If we are denied space inside we will be loud outside. From our limited resources and the generous support of people in the community, we will have four tents that will make up the main viewing area, a big monitor and speakers to play pre-recorded interviews and allow our speakers from around the world to join via Zoom. There will be an additional two tents for our collaborators at Palihub to display their photography exhibitions “Through My Eyes” and “All we want is peace”. We are thrilled that author Ahlam Bsharat will be in Frankfurt with us in person for a reading and talk on Sunday afternoon.
We have a very dense program – there will be talks and readings happening almost continuously during the two days. People are welcome to come and go as they please and our program will be published this week so people can plan what events and talks they want to attend. As the event will be held outside, we would strongly recommend that all of our guests wear warm clothes, and perhaps bring along a blanket and other items to stave off the autumn chill and to be able to stay as long as possible.
Which film of Hebh Jamal’s will you be screening? Is there a set time, or will it occur as the possibility arises?
PLBF: Journalist Hebh Jamal has kindly agreed to do an interview with us at 18:00 on Saturday the 19th, followed by a film screening at 18:30, rough cut of her documentary project “Reason of State,” which documents the increasingly brutal German state repression of Palestinian solidarity. We have a projector and a large beamer to play the film outside if the weather allows, and if not we’ll screen it on the large monitor inside the tents.
It looks like there will also be tables—are these books for sale or a library on display, for reading on site?
PLBF: Our books are not for sale but we will create space to read on site to help familiarize our guests with Palestinian literature and create excitement about our Palestine Library project. As mentioned before, we have ambitions to open a library for the public in Frankfurt – but this will only be possible with substantial support from people who believe in this project. There are many ways to support our project financially with donations to our PayPal, with book donations or by just attending the Palestinian Liberatory book fair in person and talking to us.
We have been asked if we have a wish list of books – currently we do not have such a list.
When we started collecting books, our focus was on Palestinian titles but now we gladly broaden that to include works from or about the wider Arab world, and any titles that have to do with liberation struggles, especially anti-colonial struggles.
Can you speak a little about why you decided to hold the fair opposite the Frankfurt book fair?
PLBF: A key element in the manufacturing of consent for genocide in Germany is silence. The ability to go about business as usual and relegate the suffering of Palestinians to an unaddressed background noise is unbearable. We are holding the counter book fair opposite the Frankfurt book fair because we believe confrontation is required to break this suffocating silence. Holding our counter-fair in some corner of the city would make it easy for us to be ignored and for everything to go on as normal at the official book fair, and for those who are looking away from the brutality and the daily massacres to continue to do so.
Do you have additional events and writers who will be announced, and should people keep an eye on your Instagram for more information?
PLBF: We are planning on publishing our program this week on social media; as things stand this is our current program (which may be subject to some changes).
Will the events then be archived on your YouTube channel?
PLBF: All the talks from the two days will be recorded and posted to our YouTube channel: Palestinian Library FFM. It will take us a bit of time but for those who can’t attend please know that the talks will be shared with everyone.
What are your plans post-Frankfurt for, as you say, “building up a library to share Palestinian literature, history and culture”?
PLBF: When we started this initiative earlier this year and asked for book donations, Professor Rashid Khalidi was the first to respond and to send copies of his books. We have since received numerous donations, and our collection of Palestinian literature has grown to over 100 unique titles and over 160 books in total, with more on their way. The Library is currently open to those in the Palestinian Verein and wider community, and we hope to make it open to the various student groups in Frankfurt whose actions help to push the Palestinian struggle forward in Germany. One day we hope to open our Library to the public with a physical location, however, this is a long-term project that will require funding and broader support. We have so many ideas for the next projects – from Arabic lessons for children, reading groups with students, events with writers from around the world, translating the children’s book These Olive Trees into German, and so much more.
We also plan to initiate a series of teach-ins about the history of different anti-colonial struggles – to start to imagine the different possible paths forward. Whilst we struggle every day for a ceasefire and an end to the bloodshed and the occupation, we must also keep our eyes on the future. We must learn from other struggles, to set ourselves onto a new path, away from European and Western domination of Palestine and the world – for the sake of humanity.
Find out more by following on Instagram (@palestinelibrary_ffm) and YouTube (@Palestinianlibraryffm).
Publishers for Palestine 