text by David Shulman photo by Dood Evan 1. Asael, possibly the ugliest of all the illegal outposts in the southern West Bank—and the competition is fierce—is rapidly expanding. Yellow bulldozers, parked at the perimeter fence of the settlement, have carved out a huge swathe of intermeshed, criss-crossing gashes in the hill and valley just below. This wide, deep wound in the soil has been sliced, needless to say, through privately owned Palestinian land. We know the families. We’ve plowed here, on the edge of the outpost. There have been […]Saturday, January 18 2014 Umm al-Ara’is, Khushiyya and Twaneh by David Shulman
It’s not a good time to walk through the fields. The first, tentative green shoots are pushing up from soft soil irrigated by last month’s fierce snowfall. At Umm al-Khair, the huge field we cleared of rocks and thorns last summer is now a miracle of Irish green, wildly at odds with the browns and purples of the desert. The light is wintry, crisp, more than sufficient to highlight the gap between good and evil. Still, we find ourselves moving rapidly through fields, stepping as lightly as we can […]Saturday, November 2 2013 An article in “Le Monde” about Ta’ayush https://www.taayush.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/TAAYOUSH.pdf TAAYOUSH Written in French by Luc Beaudoin In the Paths of Occupied Palestine—Part 1 of 2 Photo Captions (clink the link, above, to see photos in the original article): Bedouins from Um al-Hayyari having difficulty watering their flocks: the settlement in Carmel (right) expanding their military defense. Bottom: Ta’ayush’s Tamar confronts soldiers defending the settlement consuming Palestinian lands. The Oslo Accords (1993) between Israel and the Palestinians predicted that a five-year interim period would lead up to enacting the permanent agreement in which the West Bank (and Gaza) would be […]
Wednesday, June 19 2013 The Struggle for Being by Amitai Ben-Abba
In the insane, maniacal strive to live life at its fullest I have found the most meaning in the perseverance and generosity of the Palestinian strugglers in the South Hebron Hills. The mechanics of disenfranchisement are so horrendously well-oiled, that the strugglers of the Wild South resist simply by being. And so, the rest of us, that come from safe(r) surroundings and secure(r) socioeconomic backgrounds, resist simply by being with them. That is the meaning of Ta’ayush – living together, living the end of apartheid and separate-ness. Waking up at […]Saturday, July 21 2012 They’ll Stone You When You’re Trying to Feed Your Sheep by Amitai Ben Abba “Waaargh!!!” the older settler roars and charges us with a rock in his palm. I am afraid, finding myself behind the camera at a settler attack once again. “We already called the cops, they’re attacking us, stop them!” I shout to the soldiers in the jeep down in the wadi. The settler runs past us to throw the stones at the shepherds and Ada makes a ninja jump, imitates the settler’s roar and starts running after him screaming at him go home, nutcase. Fruitcake. Cupcake. Ada, a brave yoga teacher […]
Tuesday, July 10 2012 The Beating and Why I Come Back for More by Amitai Ben Abba My arm was twisted, bent, injured, violated, but it was not broken. 5 soldiers and 4 settlers were huddled around me. I felt blows from all directions. My hat was in the dirt. I was biting dust, clinging to my glasses with my left hand, and desperately clenching the camera with my right. The blue shirted attacker grabbed my right arm, twisted, bent it. I screamed. The camera was extracted from my hopelessly clenched fingers. They quickly smashed the camera on the ground. Taayush means living together living the revolution […]
Saturday, December 24 2011 Plowing in Wadi J’kheish, visit to the villages of Ateer, T’wani and Tuba
A number of activists accompanied a harvest adjacent to Wadi J’kheish, about a kilometer southwest of the settlement of Susia. The activists continued on to a visit in the Bedouin village Ateer, located within the green line, some ten kilometers from the “Shani” border crossing; last Wednesday [21.12.11] the Israel Land Administration [Minhal Mekarka’ey Israel] carried out house demolitions in the village, leaving about 60 people without a roof over their heads. Of these about thirty will pass the night in a tin structure with a torn roof while the […]Saturday, April 2 2011 Susya, Twaneh, Beit Umar – By David Shulman
I wake at 5, enraged, for no special reason. Maybe it’s just the relentless daily cumulation, the noxious blend of racism, hatred and self-righteous nationalism that fills the public space in Israel these days. On Sunday I had to suffer through a speech by Netanyahu at the National Library. This is what he said: “We are the people of the Book. Our Book is the book, better than all other books. When it was translated into Greek, it immediately became clear that all existing Greek books could not compete with […]
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