Yesterday, with the official move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, all eyes were on Israel. Yesterday, on the 59th day of the Great Freedom March, 55 Gazans died. Yesterday, on the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel, over two thousand injuries (at least 1,350 from live ammunition) of individuals who were walking up to the border fence that separates the Gaza Strip from Israel. Yesterday, on the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, the United States opened the new embassy in Jerusalem and opened up the wounds of the conflict.
Read MoreJerusalem is coming to Denver! /
All the time, Jerusalem is in the back of my mind and I know that the work I'm doing now is for my friends living in tents after their homes were demolished (yet again); it is for my friends who dedicate their lives to radical education and creating new narratives of coexistence and peace; and for my friends who are constantly striving to create a different reality in Israel and in Palestine.
Combatants for Peace (CfP), an organization that I was deeply involved with when I lived in Jerusalem, are embarking on a speaking tour in Colorado. I've been dedicating my free hours between school, work, friends, and family to bringing two activists here to share their personal stories with different communities here.
Lucky for me, Jerusalem will soon be coming to Denver!
Read MoreAn Uphill Climb /
I was slowly walking up the hill to my apartment, sleep-deprived after a few dusty days and nights at Sarura, carrying a backpack and the scent of wood smoke in my clothes and hair. A man was standing at the corner, at the top of the incline. He smiled, uninvited, and asked in Hebrew:
?עליה קשה Aliyah kesha? [Hard climb?]
It might have been the general exhaustion or the heaviness of his question that led me to shake my head yes and shrug my shoulders as in defeat. He motioned to my backpack and asked, in that tone that only strange men who want to engage in conversation with a lone woman on the street have,
?רוצה עזרה Rotza ezra? [Want help?]
To which I shook my head defiantly, smiled, and said, "No, I'm strong."
Read MoreLeaving the Cave /
Plato is famous for his allegory of a cave. In it, he employs a metaphor that if you were born in a cave and lived in a cave your entire life, captive and unable to turn your head, only seeing shadows cast on the stone wall, you would know no other reality than that. But if you were to leave the cave and walk under the sun and see the real world outside—not the world of the shadows, rather the world of light and dark—how would you ever begin to describe it to those still sitting in the cave and watching the wall?
How can I even describe the last forty days of Sumud: Freedom Camp and living in Sarura?
Against a backdrop of desert hills, a terraced valley with newly planted olive trees, and the mountains of Jordan peering at us through the hazy distance, we built a movement.
Read MoreWe are Free: 10 days at Sumud /
I woke up this morning feeling free: free from despair, free from helplessness, free from disappointment, free from cynicism, free from the feeling that the future cannot be changed.
Sumud Freedom Camp freed me. 11 days later and the camp is still standing at Sarura, I spent 8 nights there in the desert over the last week. I joined with my full heart in building the physical camp, in building the intentional community that has been born there, and in building the world that we as Palestinians, Israelis and Diaspora Jews want to live in.
Read MoreWe Are Sumud /
Three days ago, Fadel used his key to open the door to his family's cave-home and entered his home again for the first time in twenty years. Three days ago, over three hundred Palestinians, Israelis, and diaspora Jews arrived to Fadel's family lands to be there for him to open his home and return. The joy in the air was palpable as groups propped up a tent on the ruined rock walls of a home from the village of Sarura, as new walls were built, as the cave was cleared of dust and dirt and made habitable. Teams were established to be on clean-up duty and sort out a system for recycling and trash. Other teams were busy preparing the roadway to be repaved to ensure that water could be transported to this remote location and enable quicker transport in an emergency if someone needed to get to a nearby hospital.
Read MoreWhy We March /
The world rose up. 673 women-led marches sprung up from Antarctica to Washington. Hundreds of thousands of feet marching, walking, dancing, prancing, chanting, singing, yelling, smiling, laughing, traveling with a message.
Hundreds of thousands of feet from coast to coast, from continent to continent, marching with a purpose: to be heard.
Read MoreSomething Broke. /
Something broke last week and a deep grief set in. I was surprised by the heaviness of my mourning. Hillary Clinton’s climactic denouement and Donald Trump’s decisive rise to power has left me spinning in an emotional tidal wave. I wake up in the morning and my limbs feel heavy. My heart hurts. My brain races and runs. My instinct is to throw the covers over my head and hide away, to play soothing music and close the blinds and sit in darkness.
Yet—it is hard to bounce back from watching a woman come so close, yet still be unable to attain the highest-office, the symbolic house that equates the highest power in our world. It is with this heavy heart that I went to Beit Jala this weekend for a continuing seminar with the women activists of Combatants for Peace. I was emotionally burnt out and exhausted, yet I knew I had committed to the process and so I went.
Read MoreHope Keeps Us Warm /
Originally published by The Jerusalem Post, online here.
SOPHIE SCHOR 11/03/2016
It was hot, 32 degrees, yet the warmth I felt was coming not from the desert heat, but rather from the company I was with. I was surrounded by thousands of women clapping in unison. Hope rose in waves around us.
Women Wage Peace, an Israeli women’s peace movement founded in November 2014, organized a massive event called the March of Hope, in which, for three weeks, women marched throughout the country demanding a return to diplomatic negotiations and an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Women Wage Peace /
It was 32° C (90°F), sweat dripped between my shoulder blades while I stood still. But the warmth I felt was not coming from the desert heat, rather from the company I was in. I was surrounded by thousands of women wearing white who were clapping their hands in unison and leaning forward to hear every word the speakers were saying. Hope rose in waves around us.
Women Wage Peace—the Israeli women’s peace movement that I researched for my masters degree—organized a massive event where for the last two weeks, women have been marching 250km from Rosh HaNikra, the northernmost point of the country next to the border with Lebanon, to Jerusalem. Along the way, they have stopped and met with different communities, and organized events and solidarity marches across the country. All along the way, people met the women and joined them. It culminated on Wednesday with thousands and thousands of people wearing white snaking their way through the streets of Jerusalem from the Supreme Court to the Prime Minister’s house. The organizers claim that it was a crowd of 20,000 people.
The march was a year in the making.
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