A Palestinian San Francisco Photographer Reflects on a Year of War

The ancient drum beats of Palestinian folk music blared at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco on a recent Thursday evening. Against a backdrop of a T-Rex skeleton, a hall of joyful people danced the dabke, and Najib Joe Hakim experienced a hint of hopefulness for the first time since October last year.

Hakim is an award-winning Palestinian American documentary photographer, artist and activist based in San Francisco. His work primarily focuses on social justice. But on special occasions, he takes on fun assignments like documenting Cal Academy’s Nightlife: Falastin, an event celebrating Palestinian culture last month.

“When I was there, I felt right. I felt happy. I felt the energy of life again,” Hakim says. “People would be joyful and appreciative of being together despite the elephant in the room.”

That elephant is Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which according to its health officials has killed over 41,800 people, mostly civilians, since Oct. 7, 2023. On that day, Hamas’ attack on Israel left about 1,200 people dead, according to the Israeli government. (The medical journal The Lancet estimates that there could be as many as 186,000 deaths in Gaza because of famine, communicable diseases and other consequences of the bombardment.)

The war has taken the lives of fellow artists Hakim knows and loves.

“I know one artist who’s been killed with her two sons, and two others whose homes and studios have been destroyed,” Hakim says. “So, it’s personal.”

Hakim was born in Beirut, Lebanon to Palestinian parents who fled during the 1948 Nakba, the mass displacement of Palestinians during the establishment of Israel. He and his parents moved to the U.S. when he was just a toddler. Hakim was raised in New York City and then Washington, D.C. He arrived in the Bay Area in 1987, when he was in his early 30s, and has been here ever since.

One of Hakim’s award-winning projects, Home Away From Home: Little Palestine by the Bay, was something he dreamt of doing since he was young. The 2014 multimedia project features photographs and audio stories of 26 Palestinians across the Bay Area. “The goal of the project was to give Palestinians a voice to tell their own stories in their own words, and to humanize their experiences,” he says.

When Israel’s war in Gaza started last October, Hakim said he went through a period of self-isolation. “For the first two months after Oct. 7, I didn’t even leave my apartment except to get food,” he reflects. “Part of the reason for that is I think most of the people out there are living in Disneyland. They don’t seem to feel what’s going on in Gaza in the same way I do.”

Over the past year, Hakim has felt angry and frustrated. “People are on the streets. People are demanding a ceasefire,” he says. “But the U.S. government doesn’t represent us. The government does not represent the interests of humanity,” he said. “I’ve always known that free speech didn’t include speech about Palestine.”

Yet Bay Area residents’ solidarity with Palestinians through protests, education and activism has felt heartening, he says.

“I think those people realize that this isn’t just about Palestine,” he says. “We are all connected. We are all somehow victims and the result of the imperial world.”

In another one of Hakim’s projects, Palestine Diary, he shares photos and stories from his visit to Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank in the late ’70s, when he was in his early 20s. “I rediscovered them recently and I thought, ‘Wow, these are my pictures,’” he says.

The captions accompanying the photos are excerpts from a journal he kept at the time. “When I read the journal recently, it felt like letters that I had written to my future self were just delivered,” he wrote on his website.

In one entry in Palestine Diary, he shares an excerpt from his journal. “I never felt so at home anywhere as I do here,” it reads. “Every breath feels like a charge of energy. Life here for me is as natural as waking up in the morning. I walk to the Old City and get some warm knafeh and freshly squeezed carrot juice as if I’ve done it my whole life.”

When thinking about his role as a Palestinian American artist as the war rages on, he hopes he can continue to make art that shares the joy of his people. “I’m trying to spread the beauty,” he says, “of Palestinian culture and people.”