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We love you, our homeland, with joy, with song and with toil
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This iconic image by David Tartakover features the Israeli coastline, the blue Mediterranean Sea, a school picture of smiling young children facing a group of Arab men whose faces and expression we cannot see as they sit and gaze at the children across the separating green line. The poster declares: “We love you, our homeland - with joy, with song, and with toil.” This was the theme song of our innocent youth.
With this image, Tartakover, a political artist, pulls us into the Occupation and we find ourselves carefully looking through this group of kids remembering our own similar childhood portraits. As adults, we are smack in the middle of this 52 years long political nightmare as it invades our daily lives and the lives of the Palestinian people. And, as adults, we cannot help knowing that the Palestinians too love their homeland.
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As MachsomWatch activists we devote our efforts to protesting the Occupation and to calling for its end. We are grateful that in appreciation and support of the work of MachsomWatch, Tartakover has donated signed copies of this poster which he made in 1987 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Occupation.
We are offering this moving work to the first twenty supporters who join us with a contribution of $500 or 1800 NIS.
We are in the midst of planning our activities and our budget for 2020. We rely on our friends and supporters to make it possible for us to continue and we are delighted to be able to thank you with an original Tartakover work.
The poster measures 27 x 39 inches / 68.5 x 99 centimeters
Kindly donate and acquire
this signed work of art by David Tartkover!
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Olives burning in Burin in Yom Kippur Eve Photo by Munir.
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- Settler Violence Increases dramatically during this Year’s Olive Harvest Season: Tree burning, attacks on Palestinians and on volunteers who come to help out have increased dramatically this season. MachsomWatch volunteers as part of the Olive Harvest Coalition documented the situation in Burin, As-Sawiya, Hebron, and Hawarra. Read ▶
- Challenges to our Young People’s Program: Rabbi Rafi Peretz, Minister of Education, determined this month that “there is no room for Shovrim Shtika and MachsomWatch in the education system.” He instructed the entire education system to stop our tours and meetings with young people in high schools and in pre-military academies. For over six years we have been invited to participate and contribute to these encounters with the goal of sharing our experience and ideas with young groups as in frank discussions about the cost of the Occupation. Read ▶
- Illegal Outposts in the Jordan Valley: Settlers continue to construct illegal outposts and roads in the Jordan Valley. The Army often looks the other way as the settlers trespass on Palestinian lands. Our volunteers witnessed and documented one such incident near the Maskiot settler-colony in the northern Jordan Valley. Although we had every right to be there our volunteers were attacked by the abusive settlers as soldiers stood by. They were held under unsubstantiated claims for 5 hours and later released.: Read ▶ .
- During the Jewish feast of Sukkot the Ein Hanya Spring which served Wallaja Village for generations was finally opened to the Israeli public and the Palestinians were forbidden from accessing it and their lands in the surrounding area. Human rights groups have mounted a campaign to stop the plan for permanent relocation of the checkpoint which provides access to the village agricultural lands and to Ein Hanya Spring. Read ▶
- Denied again and yet again: We’ve been hearing complaints about a new and unexpected checkpoint in the land, this time at the American Embassy in Jerusalem. Palestinians seeking to apply for travel visas to the United States are required to appear for an interview at the American Consulate in West Jerusalem. No interview means no visa. Those who are denied permits to enter Israel proper but somehow manage to find their way to the Consulate are denied entry when they are unable to show an Israeli issued permit. They are sent away and sometimes arrested.
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One checkpoint: Many Impediments to Daily Life
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Is it possible that a farmer is denied access to his own privately owned land, except for just a few days a year?
The answer is YES, if he is unfortunate enough to be Palestinian, and the Separation Barrier/Fence separates him from his land.
We visited Mr. Nidal Amer, head of Mas’ha Village local council to hear about the olive harvest, which opened this year officially, in the beginning, October and has been marked by severe Jewish settler-colonist violence (see our news update above).
In this video, he describes the stress imposed on the villagers, whose land is now in the Seam Zone, on the other side of the separation fence. They must rely on the army schedule for opening the seasonal checkpoints for only a few days of cultivation and harvesting.
Get to know the whole story of the seasonal checkpoints...
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Photo: Long lines for permits issue at the Etzion DCO, by
Planned Work Permit Reform
During our years of fieldwork, we have witnessed and documented the harsh problems caused by the system for issuing permits to Palestinian workers in Israel. The workers are tied to specific employers who can cancel the permit at any given moment. For example, when a worker asks that the employer pay him the debt owed him or asks for his social benefits. Some employers also unlawfully trade in the permits they receive per quota, and apparently about one-third of the workers have been forced to purchase an expensive illegal permit.
MachsomWatch work team has long since suggested how that system should be changed – but the implementation of the reform finally approved by the Israeli government, is dragging its feet.
continue reading...
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Photo:
Where Were We in the Rocky Elections of 2019?
“We worked together in amazing collaboration: hundreds of Jewish women from all over the country… dozens of Arab activists… and Bedouin Arab women-activists…” thus reported one of our MachsomWatch volunteers, who participated in volunteer initiatives of civil society organizations during the 2nd election campaign of September 2019.
We mainly offered helping Bedouin women in the Negev on election day.
Two days before the election, the volunteers had to confront an unexpected turn of events…
find out what happened...
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