Everything is Okay. / July 13, 2016 by Sophie Schor

"Everything is okay"

"No"

I noticed this graffiti the other day. The call and response of it captured the schizophrenic reality here these days.

Everything is okay in Tel Aviv. You go to the beach and drink fresh squeezed orange juice or a milkshake made from Halva and dates, and everything is okay. You go to dinner, you laugh with friends. Everything is okay. You order another drink, everything is okay.

You get on a bus that goes straight to work, disappear in your office, answer emails, hit the commuter grind at the end of the day and go straight home, and you can pretend everything is okay.

But it is not okay here. Earlier this month a 15 year old Palestinian boy was shot and killed for being near to a group of boys who were throwing rocks at soldiers. He was just heading home from a pool party.

A 13 year old girl was sleeping in her home inside the settlement Kiryat Arba. A 19 year old Palestinian boy stabbed her to death. (Her family just held a memorial service on Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, which also is shaking the foundations of “okay”).

Then, less than 24 hours later, there was an attack in Netanya and a drive-by in the West Bank. The entire city of Hebron was put under curfew.

Al-Araqib, an unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev, was demolished for the 100th time.

A crowd-funding campaign was launched to raise funds to pay the legal fees for the soldier, Elor Azaria, who shot a Palestinian in the head execution-style in Hebron in March. The campaign raised over 590,000NIS (over $150,000) in 3 days.

And today, the NGO Transparency Law was just passed. While the concept of transparency is generally viewed in a positive light, this law’s underlying aims may be far from benign. This law targets specific human rights organizations within Israeli borders that receive foreign funding. It was promoted at the Knesset by Members Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennet—far right wing members of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition. The bill initially required that representatives of the targeted NGOs wear armbands when they entered the Knesset. This was dropped, as it was seen as too contentious a throwback to other times when people were required to wear armbands identifying them. The law that passed requires NGOs to report foreign funding—not private donors—just foreign funding. Who receives foreign funding here?

There are 27 NGOs listed as receiving half their money from abroad and who will be subjected to the new law. See the full list here. The list includes 25 human-rights organizations. (Read “left wing”). My personal favorites (truly, these are some of my favorite organizations):

Coalition of Women for Peace (feminism at its finest),
Yesh Din (a law organization specializing in legal assistance in the Palestinian territories),
Who Profits (an amazing online site that compiles a list of which companies profit from continued occupation),
Terrestrial Jerusalem (an organization that maps facts on the ground in East and West Jerusalem),
Btselem (human rights watch group),
Ir Amim (Jerusalem based organization documenting inequalities in the city),
Breaking the Silence (the organization of soldiers which publishes testimonies from service that do not conform to the discourse of the IDF being the most “moral army in the world”),
Gisha (an organization focused on accessibility in and out of the Gaza blockade and humanitarian needs in Gaza),
and Sikuuy (an organization that promotes full equality and civil rights in Israeli borders).

Many writers are up in arms about this law as the first of many that are embedding fascist principles within Israeli democracy. (And not just writers in Israel. The UN and the US call this law an affront to democracy.)

This begins to feel routine. I turn off the news, I stop swiping through Twitter; it’s too much to read, too much to follow. How do you keep track of the pointless deaths, the demolished homes, the empty political speeches, and above all, the constant violence? The general cyclical continuation of humiliation, violence, suppression, and arrests under occupation continues.

But this routine is not okay. This sly slippery slope into fascism is not okay. The lived reality for Israelis and Palestinians is not okay. The rise in extremism, the rise in violence, the rise in fear, this is not okay. The moment when we begin to simply brush it aside and say "It's normal," that's not okay.

I begin to appreciate the person that wrote “No” in response to that spray-paint stencil: It is takes back the space. That “No” yells at the naivety and sweeps aside the sand which Jews living on this side of the Green Line bury their heads into. It wakes me up from my summertime haze and reverie in which I have hidden in myself, reading books at the beach and doing my best not to be present here. I look around, and all I can think to myself is “No. It’s not okay.”

At least this week, things are happening to push back against all this being routine. The Center for Jewish Nonviolence has officially kicked off their weeklong event “Occupation is Not My Judaism” in which over 50 Jews from 8 countries are currently here and participating in direct non-violent action against the occupation daily. They are working with Palestinian communities to plant, to build, and to reap justice. Follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

And this Friday is the Freedom March. Marking 10 years of the organization Combatants for Peace, the march will be big. Come! I’ll be there. I'm thinking of making a sign that says:

No. This is Not Okay.

Daily Dose of Violence / March 9, 2016 by Sophie Schor

Today is the day to write. In the last few months I have been silent on the Internet as I settled into a new job, a new rhythm, and poured myself into a new art project. I woke up this morning with a fire in my mind and it has lit a million beacons alight.

As winter makes way for spring, the daily dose of violence here has become the new norm.

Last night, as I was in yoga class in Jaffa, we heard sirens. One siren, two sirens, three sirens, four. Cars whipped past the windows of the studio and the teacher told us to breathe in and out. Phones began ringing frantically, and having lived in Israel long enough, I recognize the signs of something serious having happened.

There was an attack in Jaffa. A Palestinian man from Qalqilya with Hamas affiliations stabbed 12 people, beginning at the Jaffa Port and then running north towards Tel Aviv. They "apprehended" (read: "shot," "neutralized," "killed") him. As I walked home, I saw that all the surrounding roads had been closed off. And as I read the news, I pieced together that it had been right there, one block from the yoga studio.

I ran straight to yoga yesterday upon returning to Tel Aviv from work in Jerusalem. I literally ran from bus to bus to catch the one that would bring me to this space where for one hour I could find quiet and turn off my brain.

Because all day there had been sirens.

I had purposefully gone to yoga because I was trying to decompress from the imaginings of bloodstained stones near Damascus Gate from the morning when a 50-year-old woman was shot and killed before being apprehended because she attempted to stab Border-Police. The constant sirens rushing towards the Old City framed our morning meetings and were still echoing in my mind as I stood up to give a presentation.

I went to yoga because I was looking to find a way to turn it off and breathe for a moment instead of thinking about how that death could lead a young man (rumors say that it is her son) to responding similarly and going back to Damascus Gate and shooting two policeman in the afternoon. He was also killed.

At the same moment, there was an attempted attack in Petah Tikvah as well. The assailant was killed.

This morning, there have already been two attacks in Jerusalem and one attack in another city. Sitting on my balcony, I hear more sirens. The cracks are showing.

Israel is responding to the recent surge in attacks by closing down the villages in the West Bank where the attackers came from and by declaring that they will officially finish building the Separation Wall and by shutting down newspapers that are inciting stabbing attacks. All this is dramatized and politicized further by the fact that U.S. VP Joe Biden is currently in town.

It definitely feels as though suddenly violence is on my doorstep in Jaffa—but none of this is new. Since October this year, over 200 people have died (at least 188 Palestinians have been shot dead by Israelis. Many were accused of committing attacks, or attempted attacks, which have left at least 28 Israelis dead). This is all framed in the recent domestic political context whereby Arab Members of Knesset have been isolated in the Knesset for visiting the grieving families of Palestinian attackers, where more settlements have been built, and human rights organizations are being ostracized and penalized.

For me, intermingled with last night is all interconnected with having spent a week in the West Bank. I spent last week co-leading an Extend Tour of American Reform Rabbis (I was a participant last year, you can read my observations from that trip here). Every seven years, the Rabbis have a conference in Israel, and several of them decided to “extend” their stay and come with us. We spent 3 days driving on curving roads framed by white and pink blooming almond trees seeing the realities of occupation. We met with Palestinian activists, Israeli activists, Palestinian and Israeli intellectuals and writers, and a settler from the YESHA Council. We explored Hebron with Breaking the Silence—where we were accosted by settlers who screamed and yelled and threatened us. We entered Ofer Military Court with Salwa and Gerard of Military Court Watch and sat in court as a 13-year-old boy was brought to trial. We saw again and again how this occupation is not only an occupation of land, but it is an occupation of the mind.

Upon returning to Tel Aviv, as always, I felt nauseous. The whiplash of going “there and back again” was disorienting. I can’t get the image of martyr posters of the 22 year old student from Qalandiya Refugee camp out of my mind. Or the selfie sent to me by a Palestinian resident of Bil'in with tears pouring down his face after this Friday's protest was met with tear gas. Violence is a daily affair in the West Bank. It only becomes newsworthy when it hits close to home in the center of the country, or when an American is killed.

This is all to say welcome to the Unholy Land. I’ll be unleashing my new photography project in the next few weeks. Subscribe to the newsletter, or follow me on instagram, to be among the first to see it when it is unveiled.