The Difference between Bullets and Stones

A stunning, heartfelt, and inspiring collection of photographs, poems, and stories capturing the spirit and resilience of a people.

The Difference between Bullets and Stones is a collaboration between Pulitzer Prize-winning Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha and award-winning American photographer Michael Christopher Brown, with foreword by acclaimed photographer and activist Misan Harriman. The book unites Mosab’s poems from Gaza with Michael’s photographs from the West Bank and Jerusalem, illuminating the grief, resilience, and vitality of Palestinian life: “Those living through siege, dispossession, and the weight of generational memory,” says Mosab Abu Toha. “The book humanizes lives too often reduced to headlines, illuminating the deeper emotional and spiritual story of a people who continue to survive, create, and dream of freedom.”

At its core, the book seeks not to shock, but to invite recognition: here are people, their routines, their grief, their courage. “It is not straight journalism,” says Michael Christopher Brown, “but neither is it pure poetry. It is a hybrid, where images and words together share human truths.” With Mosab Abu Toha’s poems and close to two hundred photographs, The Difference between Bullets and Stones is a fitting tribute to Palestinian resistance and the people’s quest for freedom.