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 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.

Why We March / January 22, 2017 by Sophie Schor

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.

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.

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.