Country of Contradictions

Women Wage Peace / October 24, 2016 by Sophie Schor

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.

The Old City / August 12, 2015 by Sophie Schor

Even after over a year of living here, I find myself wandering around the Old City of Jerusalem with eyes wide open, absorbing all the sites and sounds and smells of this contested and beating heart of Jerusalem. My feet find their way over the familiar stones and roads, but with the curiosity and knowledge that there will always be corners of this walled-in area that I'll never see and never know.

I've designed a tour of the Old City for the friends who come visit; it is mainly organized around food and my favorite corners.

The illusion of insecurity? Or the delusion of security? / July 20, 2015 by Sophie Schor

"It's fine until it's not fine." This sentence has been echoing in my head for a long time now. Especially when it comes to walking through neighborhoods I'm "not supposed" to be in, or villages I'm "not supposed" to see, or people I'm "not supposed" to meet.

Riding home on the bus last week, our entire way was detoured as the road was blocked. Stones had been thrown at the light rail station by Palestinians in the neighborhood Shuafat, police were looking for the people who had done it. But that moment of seeing the red tape across the lampposts and the flashing lights, my heart was in my throat wondering what had happened. How bad? To whom?

Walls / July 13, 2015 by Sophie Schor

Welcome back to Israel and Palestine, where the coffee is strong and the conflict is never ending.

More Than Just Numbers / June 17, 2015 by Sophie Schor

I just covered 384km in 12 hours to sit at an army base where 387 soldiers, now officers, and 21 women, now officers, stood for 3 hours in 36 degree heat. They paraded around the yard. Left. Right. Left.

My cousin just finished his officers course in the army, and I hitched a ride with the family to the base down near Mitzpe Ramon, aka the Deep South, far from any semblance of urban life and surrounded by desert.

Thyme to Build A Road: Solidarity Action in South Hebron Hills / June 13, 2015 by Sophie Schor

It was after the end of prayers and suddenly many young men from the village showed up, pick axes in tow. “The Shabaab will break the ground, you will put in the plants.” We quickly settled into a rhythm, conversations flowing and laughter ringing across the field as we watched row after row of thyme settle its roots into the dirt.

The young man next to me, Omar, swung the pickaxe into the dirt and told me about how he finished his B.A. at Hebron University in Agricultural development and wants to do a Masters in water. I smiled encouraging words as I pushed away rocks and broke up dirt to place yet another thyme plant in the ground. Tariq, another young villager, described what life is like in his village. There's a difference when you read that some villages only receive two hour of electricity to when someone looks you in the eye and tells you this

As the journalist next to me asked Muhammad about the village, I overheard him respond in broken English, “I was born here, I live here, and I will stay here.”

The fierce desire to remain rooted in a place, in the face of so much violent opposition, bureaucratic antagonism, and a prejudiced system almost seems naïve. Yet, existence is resistance. That line has been echoing in my head all weekend.

This weekend, an unprecedented event took place. Over the course of 36 hours, 71 people spent time working in Susiya, Bir el-Eid and Umm al-Khair in the South Hebron Hills in the West Bank.

Here’s the catch—most of those people were Jews.

"The Yishuv" / June 6, 2015 by Sophie Schor

I'm not supposed to be writing this right now.

It is Shabbat and I'm sitting in a room in my cousin's house. Not just any house, it is a Haredi house. Not just any Haredi house, it is in a settlement in the West Bank. Writing is not allowed, but it is nap time and everyone has disappeared for a few hours to hide from the afternoon heat.

Occupation is not a Solution / May 20, 2015 by Sophie Schor

Since moving here to Jerusalem last June. I've met many different people, had many eye opening conversations, and have been both disillusioned by politics and inspired by people.

In June, I will be joining over 50 other people (mainly Diaspora Jews and other internationals) with All That's Left: Anti-Occupation Collective to go to the South Hebron Hills to help build a road in solidarity with the Palestinian communities living there. These communities live in Area C and are officially unrecognized by the Israeli government. This means that the villages do not have access to general utilities such as water or electricity. Furthermore, even though these families have lived on their lands for many generations, there is a constant threat that their homes will be demolished. There is currently a standing order to demolish the village of Susiya. This has happened many times before and is part of a policy of the Israeli government to condense Palestinians living on land that is in Area C (Israeli sovereignty) to cities such as Yatta. The Palestinians living in the South Hebron Hills have also faced a lot of settler violence from the nearby communities. For more information on the Israeli policies in Area C, see here.

I visited the South Hebron Hills and the village of Susiya in March. I was most struck by these experiences as I saw that this is an unsustainable existence. Occupation is not a solution.

Grief and Hollyhocks / May 13, 2015 by Sophie Schor

I found that my grandma died as I was sitting in a room surrounded by Palestinians sharing their personal stories about losing their homes in 1948.

Nakba day is coming up, and at this important juncture in historical narratives, we gathered, 50 people, in a room to honor their stories. Each person who spoke began by situating themselves and their families by a chain of names. My father was….son of….daughter of….mother of…from the village of….They held onto these names as tightly as the heartbeats that continue to pump the blood through their veins.

My grandmother, Judy Bloom-Criden, daughter of Jacob Mirviss, was born in Connecticut, not in a village in the Galilee. And yet on Friday that is where she will be buried: in the Hula valley under the shadow of the Mt. Hermon with the only tiny sliver of snow to be found in this country. She was an English teacher, and taught almost everyone on the Kibbutz and their kids how to swim. She played the flute. She made a killer chocolate cake from some crazy combination of vinegar and cocoa. She moved here in the 1970s, following the death of her husband. Her sister had already lived in the Negev for almost twenty years; her parents had also recently made the permanent pilgrimage to the desert. I asked her once, under the gaze of a painting of klezmer musicians, why she came to Israel. “It’s the home of the Jewish people,” she said. Full stop.

All For Peace Radio / May 5, 2015 by Sophie Schor

I watched a young, tan Israeli woman in a tank top walk out of a recording studio to be replaced by two girls wearing matching hijabs walk in.

Her show was about music in English, Hebrew and Arabic. The Palestinian girls come once a week for training how to have their own talk show. They talked about love and boyfriends.

A place without borders: All for Peace Radio.