October 13, 2023
The editors of the Avery Review and (sister organization) Columbia Books on Architecture and the City reaffirm our support the Palestinian people in their struggle against Israeli occupation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing. In addition to demanding a ceasefire from the international community and an end to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, we stand with a notion of peace that attends to the complete decolonization and end to the oppressive, settler colonial project in Palestine. Amid the total siege on Gaza—wherein Palestinians are collectively denied food, water, electricity, shelter, and medical care—and in light of the evacuation order issued on October 12, 2023, we rebuke the role of architecture and urbanism as tools of Israel’s state project of settler colonial violence, collective punishment, and forced displacement of Palestinians. The genocide of the people in Gaza is also a genocide of the land and of every lifeworld it sustains. No viable future—human or otherwise—is possible under apartheid.
As an academic platform, we cannot condone the many recent statements by institutions that erase any and all mention of Palestine and the Palestinian struggle. This erasure denies Palestinian life, demonstrates unconditional support for the apartheid state that is Israel, and obscures decades of structural violence. As editors, we condemn the role mainstream media has played in spreading misinformation, bias, and the silencing of Palestinian and allied voices. As editors, specifically working in the context of architecture and the built environment, we remain committed to understanding this present through the past. We insist that current accounts of our world hold and carry the historical violences and transgressions of past worlds. As Diala Shamas recently emphasized in the Guardian, “Recognizing the root causes of the current violence doesn’t require condoning attacks on civilians. Offering context is not offering an excuse. On the contrary: the only way to honor the loss of life—Palestinian and Israeli—is to address its source.”1
We therefore advocate for a reading of the ongoing violence as rooted in Israel’s 75-year-long settler colonial occupation, a systemic persecution that continues to enable similarly fascist regimes across the region. That we write this in the wake of Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing and expulsion of Indigenous Armenians from their ancestral lands in Artsakh urgently signals the necessity for our advocacy to be intersectional. Intersectionality calls for us, as a journal and press located in the US, to condemn our government’s active role in Israeli apartheid and genocide. It requires us to organize against the protracted history of and investment in settler colonialism in and by the US. We recognize the inextricability of liberation movements worldwide: To call for justice for Palestinians is to call for justice for Black, trans, feminist, Indigenous, and Jewish life; to value people over buildings, people over property, people over the nation, people over the state. We maintain our commitment to publishing work that centers Palestine and Palestinian voices in fights for freedom around the world. We extend solidarity to our fellow colleagues and readers joining us in this shared struggle.
Tizziana Baldenebro
Aleksandr Bierig
Caitlin Blanchfield
Marisa Cortright
Joanna Joseph
Isabelle Kirkham-Lewitt
Elsa MH Mäki
Melis UĞurlu
Kate Yeh Chiu
Meriam Soltan
Grace Sparapani