Supporting these projects and organizations is one way to support Palestinians and their right to narrative and memory.

1. The Ongoing Nakba Education Center

Founded in 2012 by the BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights (BADIL), the Ongoing Nakba Education Center documents the stories of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians forcibly displaced since the Nakba, the catastrophic expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland by Zionist militias in 1948. The Ongoing Nakba Education Center’s website features many multimedia tools for understanding Palestinian history in an accessible and innovative format.

2. Zochrot

Zochrot, which means “remembering” in Hebrew, is an Israeli NGO, which has for nearly fifteen years strived to promote acknowledgment of and accountability for the Nakba and to advocate for the Palestinian right of return. The group’s mission includes helping Israelis recognize that “peace will come only after the country has been decolonized, enabling all its inhabitants and refugees to live together without the threat of expulsion or denial of Return.”

3. RIWAQ

For over twenty-five years, RIWAQ has created and facilitated projects which document and restore architectural heritage across Palestine. These projects include the Registry of Historical Buildings, which compiles extensive data on historical sites in Palestine, and theJob Creation Through Conservation initiative, which harnesses the economic power of conservation projects to create jobs for members of the community. Conservation projects are typically exclusive endeavors confined to more affluent circles. This project, however, breaks this trend by actively including all members of the community in a collective effort to restore cultural heritage. 

4. Visualizing Palestine

Visualizing Palestine is a project that converts data about the Palestinian occupation into fresh, visually striking graphics that are readable and concise. It was launched in 2012 byVisualizing Impact (VI), a non-profit that utilizes data science, technology, and design to communicate marginalized narratives to the wider public.

5. Activestills

Activestills is a collective of Palestinian, Israeli, and international documentary photographers who ardently believe in the power of photography as a form of advocacy and tool for social change. The group’s objective is to use images to expose Israel’s racist militaristic occupation, thereby contesting oppressive narratives and facilitating a more truthful, inclusive, and dynamic public discourse.

6. The Palestinian Festival of Literature

The Palestinian Festival of Literature is an annual literary festival that aims to challenge Israel’s cultural siege of Palestine. Since 2008, the event has gathered literary figures and literature lovers in different cities in historical Palestine in celebration of Palestinian art and culture. As the organization’s website makes clear, the group works “to reaffirm, in the words of Edward Said, ‘the power of culture over the culture of power.’”

7. The Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS)

Based in Washington, DC, the Institute for Palestine Studies is the world’s oldest institute solely dedicated to documenting, researching, analyzing, and publishing on Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict. The institute supports scholarship and writing about Palestine and has published more than 600 books since it was founded in Beirut in 1963. It also publishes four quarterly journals in Arabic, French, and English.

8. The Freedom Theatre

The Freedom Theatre aims to develop a robust artistic community in the north part of the West Bank, specifically in refugee communities in Jenin. The group operates many cultural initiatives, such as drama workshops, theater performances, and educational programs that help community members learn photography, film-making, theater, and creative writing. One notable project is the Freedom Bus, a project that uses interactive theater as a tool for cultural activism, encouraging its participants “to bear witness, raise awareness and build alliances throughout occupied Palestine and beyond,” as described on the group’s website.

9. PIVOT

PIVOT is a mobile application that utilizes Augmented Reality (AR) technology to allow users to explore Palestine’s history by looking through archived historical images of specific places in Palestine, giving users a more tangible vantage point into the past. As Sarah Moawad wrote in an excellent profile of PIVOT for Muftah, “To the founders of PIVOT, the importance of these conversations with the past lies in self-discovery – understanding how we, our families, our communities, our countries, got to this point.”

10. The Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU)

The Institute for Middle East Understanding’s objective is to assist journalists and writers who want to report on Palestine. They operate an extensive network of scholars, journalists, and members of Palestinian civil society in order to facilitate more accurate, nuanced, and competent reporting on the Palestinian Territories and Israel. They also curate an extensive library and set of resources about Palestine and Palestinians, past and present.

11. Palestine Remembered’s Nakba Oral History Project

The Palestine Remembered’s Nakba Oral History Project was created to comprehensively document Palestinian histories of dispossession, ethnic cleansing, and displacement and to preserve Palestinian memory by compiling hundreds of interviews and personal narratives. It also serves as a medium for displaced Palestinians to communicate and organize.

12. Just Vision

Just Vision is a non-profit media collective comprised of human rights advocates, journalists, and filmmakers, which produces films and other media that poignantly depict Palestinian stories. Its award-winning films have been a crucial part of the group’s public campaigns to end the Israeli occupation.

13. The Right to Movement Palestine Marathon

As the organizers of the Right to Movement Palestine Marathon explain on their website, “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement, but not everyone has the option.” Held in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the event confronts Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement in stark and tangible ways. The route gives participants “different views on Palestinian life,” including taking them along the Apartheid Wall that illegally snakes through Bethlehem and cuts the city into pieces.

14. Palestinian Film Festivals

All around the world, supporters of Palestine have been holding Palestinian film festivals. These include events in London, Boston, Toronto, Washington DC, Sydney, Houston,Chicago, Paris, Bristol, and Ann Arbor, Michigan. In addition to showcasing the talent of many Palestinian and Arab filmmakers, these festivals create a forum for discussing and contesting the Israeli occupation, even after the films are finished showing.

15. The Palestine Museum

The Palestine Museum is a new museum located in the West Bank that aims to celebrate Palestine’s culture and history. Expected to open by summer 2016, it is sure to become a vibrant source of energy and inspiration for its community.