Leaving the Cave / June 29, 2017 by Sophie Schor

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.

We are Free: 10 days at Sumud / May 29, 2017 by Sophie Schor

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.

We Are Sumud / May 22, 2017 by Sophie Schor

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.

The Hills of Nabi-Saleh / August 31, 2015 by Sophie Schor

A photo has been circling around the web in the last three days of an Israeli soldier holding a Palestinian child in a headlock. I stumbled across the video of the entire encounter. The video was posted on Facebook and it began playing without my consent (you know that annoying feature where your newsfeed suddenly comes alive?). I couldn’t look away. In less than 3 minutes, it captured everything that is wrong with the occupation.

Ruins / July 22, 2015 by Sophie Schor

Once a week, my class goes on a tour of Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. To begin, our professor took us to the "Corridor," or the narrow but important sliver that connects the route from Tel Aviv to the heart of West Jerusalem. (Demarcated by the narrow yellow area between the borders and the Occupied territories here.)

As we gathered on the bus to return to university, our professor challenged us. Both these locations carry a certain narrative, how do we take a step back to put it into historical context? My thoughts ran, but I couldn't find words to answer. The history is still unfolding around us daily, and the story of Motza and Lifta are not far enough removed to be stared at objectively. The schoolhouse of Lifta is surrounded by the shopping mall near the bus station which I see every time I take a bus back to Jerusalem from elsewhere. The red roof-tiles and old stones glare at the city which has developed around it. Jerusalem is city that is ever-evolving and never-forgetting.

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.

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.

March 15th, 2015

I spent the weekend at a conference with Palestinians and Israelis in Beit Jala, a place only 15 minutes from Jerusalem that sits at the confluence of roads that lies in the space where Israelis and Palestinians both have permission to be. We stayed at a hotel called the Everest, and as we climbed the hill to the very top, it was clear why it was named such.

It was an incredible weekend; there were Palestinians from all over the West Bank near Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron. Israelis from Jerusalem, Hadera, Sderot and the north. We began the weekend by sharing the thing that is most important to us: family, freedom, silence, music, learning, an end to occupation, peace.

I befriended a young Palestinian from Jericho who plays classical guitar with fingers plucking notes like water. He shared how he can't meet his friends in Haifa because he doesn't have a permit to travel and the frustration he feels being 21 and not able to go 45 minutes away from home. I listened as a young Israeli described how she couldn't return to her work for 2 weeks after a rocket had fallen near it this summer. An older Palestinian from Bethlehem described his experience as a 15 year old when the army would not let him return to his home during a curfew and after making him take the long way around, arrested him. I listened as another Israeli described a moment meeting a Gazan and acting as his legal companion to satisfy permit requirements to reach Jordan. The Israeli shared how it was the Gazan's first time out of Gaza in his entire life—he hadn't seen an orange orchard since he was little. The Israeli took the long way to the Jordanian border with a stop in Jerusalem so that this Gazan could visit al-Aqsa. I sat at breakfast with a Palestinian whose family is originally from Gaza. He described how 15 members of his family died this summer. 11 of them died at the same time when their house was flattened. Yet he continues to come to these meetings. His eyes sparkle when he laughs.

Brought together to share these heavy personal stories, I was surrounded by a lightness. Here we were, a strange mixture of Arabic, English, Hebrew, and patient translations, coming together to talk, to listen, and to be heard.

The second day was devoted to brainstorming sessions: what projects could we create together, what ideas did we want to put into action? Ideas ranged from language exchange, to fundraising for a center for disabled children, to starting a running group and organizing a marathon from Tel Aviv to Ramallah, to trying to humanize the news and remove media bias. Past groups had created Tiyul Rihla, an organization that takes Israelis and Palestinians on tours of historical sites and shares both narratives and Two Neighbors, a fashion line that incorporates Palestinian embroidery in high fashion and is sold in the States. Our ideas were big, yet we broke them down into small steps such as exchanging each other's email addresses. The main goal was to commit to meet again.

I left the bubble from this weekend and I feel hopeful. I am now faced with so many opportunities and new beginnings, new friends and new experiences to come. The weekend was invigorating and inspiring. Good things can begin with something small.

Elections are in 3 days. Hold your breath, knock on wood, and do whatever superstitious ritual you have for good luck. We need it here.

To learn more about the organization that hosts Global Village Square Conferences, click here.