An Uphill Climb / August 11, 2017 by Sophie Schor

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."

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.

Between a Wall and a Hard Place / August 17, 2015 by Sophie Schor

We were walking in the corridors of no-man’s land in the Northern corner of Jerusalem municipality at the edge where the Neve Ya'akov settlement ends and the grey concrete wall that separates Jerusalem from where the West Bank begins. Our professor pointed towards a flat concrete court that was overgrown with brush and prickly plants and mentioned, “Arabs and Jews used to play football there. But that was before they built the wall…”

We were standing in the corner of Neve Ya’akov, a neighborhood that is often classified as just a suburb of Jerusalem, which lies across the green line and hugs the curve of the separation barrier. The distinguishing characteristic between the houses on the left and the houses on the right were striking. One side was clearly Jewish, Jerusalem stones turned yellow with time, white water-boilers speckling the rooftops. The apartments on the right were Arab, bright new stories built up to house more families, black water-boilers dotted their roofs.

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.

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.

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.

March 23,2015

I spent the day in a utopia. The best part about all of this? It’s real.

I’m volunteering with a mixed school in Jerusalem that is called Hand in Hand. It’s both Arabs and Jews, K-12. The school has been around since 1998 and now has over 600 students.

It’s a public school, and in order to understand just how special that is, you need to understand the Israeli school system. Within Israeli education, there are separate tracks for Arab and Jewish schools. That means different curriculum, different language, separate worlds. This type of school however, is rare. Classes are taught in Arabic and Hebrew, often with 2 teachers in every classroom. They have redesigned their history curriculum to include both narratives and they celebrate and learn about Jewish, Muslim, and Christian holidays. The first class to graduate high school was in 2011.

I spent the day with 3 graduates taking photos and interviewing students, teachers and people who work at the school. We are creating a project similar to Humans of New York, but about the school instead. It will be up on the Facebook page of the school in the next few weeks.

We asked kids questions like, “If you were any kind of food what would you be?” We asked older kids about what it was like for them to come back to school after this summer. Teachers shared what inspired them and the security guard told us he loves cats. Conversation flowed between Hebrew and Arabic without pause.

My favorite moment was when we talked with two 1st graders who’s classroom had been burned in November by extremists (for news coverage of the event see here). We asked if the boys were friends and one said about the other, “He’s annoying in class.” That moment captured for me the beauty of this place. It wasn’t about who was a Jew and who was an Arab. They were just normal 1st graders. But it was also normal to be asked a question in Hebrew and respond in Arabic or vice versa. It was normal to grow up with friends who are different than you. It was normal to have friends who live across the invisible lines that zigzag and cut through this city.

The school is idealistic and may be a bubble, but it is a beautiful bubble and a great place to start. For more info look up Hand in Hand: Center for Jewish-Arab Education.

Elections / March 16, 2015 by Sophie Schor

March 16, 2015

Elections are upon us. Polls open tomorrow at 7am, close at 9pm. Results begin to come in at 10pm tomorrow. The battle is being fought until the end: tonight in a move to court Bayt HaYehudi voters, Netanyahu officially stated that he is against the establishment of a Palestinian State. Herzog and Livni also dropped a political plot twist and announced that while they said that they would rotate the Prime Ministership in 2 years, they will no longer rotate. This is a huge deal; I know from many conversations that many people on the left were hesitant to vote for their united left-center party if Livni was the PM. Meanwhile the Joint-Arab Party has changed the face of politics here; if they manage to convince enough Palestinians to vote instead of boycott the election, they could have upwards of 14 seats in the Knesset. And the Haredi women party is pushing for acknowledgement of women's rights within the religious communities.

If this sounds complicated to you, just know, it's a soap opera here. Dramas play out, lovers are crossed, and someone wakes up from a coma.

But it's so much more than that. This little place garners so much attention worldwide and the decision of a vote impacts so many lives. Especially the lives of Palestinians living in the territories under military law who are not eligible to vote. (The biggest contradiction being the Palestinians who work in the printing shop that prepared the materials for the ballots for tomorrow who are themselves unable to vote.) Gaza has barely been mentioned at all during the campaign cycle, this summer was swept under a rug. Israelis are more concerned with economic redistribution and the expensive cost of living here, yet the mainstream conversation barely touches the grim realities of occupation or the connection between high food prices in grocery stores to the subsidization of settlements. According to +972 mag, 60% of Israelis polled believe that there will be no progress on the peace process regardless of who forms the next government, "because there is no solution to the disputes between the two sides."

Yet, there are some fireball politicians. Notably Stav Shafir, 29 year old and 2nd seat on the Labor party's list. She made a name for herself as part of the social movement protests in the summer of 2011. But I noticed her after she made this incredible speech during an impromptu session of the Knesset.

She called out the right and their financial corruption, ideological corruption, and perversion of political ideals. She'll be assured a seat tomorrow in the next session of Knesset. And for that, I'm grateful. I'll be voting tomorrow for the first time, let's hope that the results leads to something changing.

International Women's Day March at Qalandiya Checkpoint / March 7, 2015 by Sophie Schor

March 7, 2015

Busy week since I've returned. On Wednesday there was a March of over 3,000 women who stood outside the Knesset demanding peace. The event was organized by a new group that formed after the war this summer, Women Wage Peace. The garden across from the parliament was full of Jewish and Palestinian women who gathered to demand peace.

Then this morning I was at Qalandiya checkpoint, the crossing between Jerusalem and Ramallah, with many women who were protesting against the occupation for International Women's Day. The nonviolent demonstration was organized by many feminist groups in Israel and Palestine including Women in Black, Mahsom Watch, Women against Violence, Democratic Women and 40 Mothers. I'm doing research for my masters on women peace movements in Israel/Palestine and the week proved to be first-hand research. Women were all ages, but I spoke with some of the founding matriarchs.

So there we stood on one side of the wall while Palestinian women from the West Bank stood on the other side; united by solidarity, divided by concrete. I joined some of the founding feminists in Israel over 60yrs old, Palestinian women from the North, young women from North and South, and internationals. We chanted, we held signs, we banged drums. One scrawny little woman wearing a straw-hat came up to me and handed me a page telling me to vote for the Joint-Arab list. She described to me how she immigrated to Israel from Canada in order that when she was arrested for protesting, they would be forced to honor her rights. She was spunky and radical and in her late 60s. Another woman and her daughter were part of Women in Black and held a big sign that said "Women against occupation." The daughter was my age and said that she has been standing on street corners and junctions with her mom for 10 years with that sign. A Palestinian woman and I began to talk about the event and her group "Women for Democracy" as the tear gas wafted over the wall towards us. We had to stop talking because breathing led to instant coughing.

From the other side of the wall, our Palestinian compatriots were hit with tear gas—not once, not twice, but three times. We only caught whiffs of it as the wind blew it our way, but it was enough to make me still gag hours later. 15 women were reportedly injured and several rushed to the hospital due to over exposure to tear gas. A peaceful, nonviolent protest for women's rights and it was met by teargas.

Here's to the brave women standing on the other side of the wall from me. And here's for the feeling of hope I had being surrounded by these strong, thoughtful, creative women who are fighting for a change. There's another protest tonight in Tel Aviv, it's being called "Israel wants Change" and is promising to fill Rabin square with people demanding a change in government.

Election season is in full swing here. Stay tuned!