Hunger Strikes

[Feb 2012] ‘Hunger Strikes’ was created as Palestinian administrative detainee Khader Adnan concluded the second month of a 66-day total voluntary fast. Coverage of Adnan’s hunger strike was limited and often presented in the narrow context of the Israeli military occupation. We became interested in understanding the hunger strike both as an extreme feat of human physical and mental endurance, and also within its historic context as a tool of political protest.

2026 Update (slide 3): We updated our visual to commemorate the sustained hunger strike by a group of Palestine Action activists held in prolonged pre-trial detention, situating their action within the broader history of prisoner hunger strikes from Palestine to South Africa to the United Kingdom. We aimed to draw attention to efforts to resist the criminalization of solidarity in the UK.

First, the six hunger strikers were acquitted of the most serious charges brought against them. Subsequently, the UK High Court ruled that the government’s ban on Palestine Action was “disproportionate and unlawful.”