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 MoreI 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 MoreThree 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.
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