Laurie and I are staying 10 days after the delegation. Some mysterious force canceled the reservation we previously booked and put us in a great hotel in the Old City of Jerusalem, next to the Tower of David Museum.
Read More
Arriving in Jerusalem, took me back to the origins of a people of three faiths; Christianity, Judaism and Islam. To see and experience the livening presence of the three faiths and how they are interconnected through this historical, middle- eastern Arab town named Jerusalem to the faith of three historic peoples opens my mind and heart to listen and hear fully.
Read More
In order to drive a vehicle, one must have a license. In the case of Israel and the West Bank the plates are either yellow (Israeli) or green and white (Palestinian). We had a yellow license plate that enabled us to use the super highways built for the Israeli settlers. Our travel would have been severely curtailed if we had had to go through the numerous checkpoints.
Read More
Having spent the last ten days in Palestine and Israel, where we met with the most compelling Palestinian and Israeli speakers, I was blown away by the diverse perspectives and their articulated hope for a just and peaceful resolution.
Read More
Our eyes saw the checkpoint for people crossing from Gaza to Israel. Of course, it is more than a simple checkpoint (can such a thing be simple?), it is a massive stretch of buildings containing Israeli intelligence offices, interrogation rooms, detention cells, and who knows what else.
Read More
While the other delegates were watching the IDF teenagers with automatic weapons, I was enchanted by the children. I was at the back of the group and was watching them when they saw Issa Amro. As soon as they spotted him they began to chant in unison, “Issa Amro! Issa Amro! Issa Amro!” As they neared us shyness overcame them and they merely grinned ear to ear.
Read More
Palestinian Pie - A cook's incomplete, vegetarian, gluten-free recipe composed in Jerusalem; or How to Feed a Nation
Read More
Imagine this scenario in the USA.The camp is for Palestinians whose homes were razed by Israel. The focus is on educational workshops and they recently staged an exhibit of paintings called In Between, that describes the angst of young people living with daily trauma.
Read More
Although there is a concerted effort to erase the existence of Palestinians since the time of the Nakba, archaeologists were able to save the remains of the community of Lifta, a wealthy and intellectual hub, near Jerusalem. We hiked down to the main gathering place of Lifta where there is a beautiful spring surrounded by trees.
Read More
Returning home from Palestine/Israel has been like entering another world.
Read More
Any Jewish person has the right of return, return to a place she or her family has never been. No Palestinian person has the right to return to the place of her birth or her family home. Opposing the expansion of Zionism is not anti-Semitic.
Read More
I saw Palestine today. Endless foothills without many signs of life. I can tell that someone lives there because the hills have been sculpted like steps leading to somewhere. It looks like a massive undertaking, carving steps from bottom to top, the full circumference of the foothill of a mountain.
Read More
Last week we visited the Tent of Nations south of Bethlehem. Daher Nassar greeted us so warmly with the biggest, most genuinely joyful smile, and showed us his family’s farm. Though almost completely surrounded by large, growing settlements, his family has legal papers documenting their title to the 100-acre hillside farm dating back to the Ottoman Empire.
Read More
It is tempting to think of the word 'tent' as a metaphor for a gathering of peoples together. In the case of Palestinian Daoud Nassar it also has a literal meaning.
The Nassar family is one of the few Palestinian landowners who have an official paper deed to prove ownership of their land near Bethlehem.
Read More
My ancestors spoke to me. No, they yelled at me, pulled and pushed me, argued and turned their backs on each other in my tense body. Our Olive Harvest Delegation visited the Palestinian hillside village of Lifta. Just outside Jerusalem, Lifta was attacked by the Haganah Zionist militia in December 1947.
Read More
We witnessed the village of Lifta today - a village attacked by Zionist militias in 1947 and soon abandoned by its people as not to experience the reality of neighboring villages like Deir Yasin whose people were massacred. This story is similar to the story of over 500 Palestinian villages.
Read More
This place, atop a roof surrounded by partial walls and ceiling of cinder blocks, tin, burlap and tarps, has a feeling like home. It's not the physical surroundings that feel familiar, but the strong sense of community that clearly lives here.
Read More
At the end of the first day, I haven’t looked into the part of my brain that tells me how I feel about today’s trip. My main focus today was to shut up the part of my mind that judges and evaluates and let my inner most self soak in the surroundings, the people and their lives, the words of the speakers and the emotion in the spaces.
Read More