MachsomWatch - 20 years of Activism | Machsomwatch
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MachsomWatch - 20 years of Activism

MachsomWatch - 20 years of Activism

Tuesday, 17 August, 2021
source: 
Ha'aretz internet site
author: 
MachsomWatch and curator Alex Litvak


We are MachsomWatch

A photograph makes accessible, proves, depicts, paints, confirms, tells. It is a witness; it is an eye. It is the horror; it is the memory. It enters your home. Without a photo, it is as if the event never happened. By the time one takes out the camerainfo-icon, it is often too late; the moment has passed. Either the person refuses to be photographed or a woman signals that photographing her is forbidden. Too often we failed to appreciate the power of photography, so many events remain only in our unreliable memory. This is a digital exhibition to be viewed in the comfort of your home. It invites you to join our group of deeply committed women—extraordinary women, given the current political atmosphere in Israel. Each day--winter, summer, and the seasons in between--we travel to the checkpoints, the occupied territories, and the military courts to observe, document, and thereby expose the sights that only very few want to acknowledge.

This is our organization. This is MachsomWatch. Witnessing injustice, distress, and pain, we cry out for those who have no voice: The shepherds in the Jordan Valley and those in the South Hebron Hills whose homes are destroyed, again and again, leaving their families without shelter. The workers who get up before dawn to pass through overcrowded checkpoints that are indifferent to their hardships. The farmers of the Seam Zone who have not been able to reach their lands since the construction of the Separation Barrier. All they can do is gaze at their fields, barred from harvesting their trees when they are laden with olives. Palestinians who are denied a permit to work in Israel and have no other means to support their families. Traumatized Palestinian men, women and children who are woken in the middle of the night by soldiers breaking into their homes to conduct searches and inflict physical and mental chaos. Detaineesinfo-icon, including minors, whose trials we follow in military courts. People deprived of the ability to move from place to place, living behind fences and barriers. And all those men, women, and children whose future is being jeopardized and whose human and civil rights are being trampled on by the occupying state.

We, as Israelis, are responsible for all this injustice. We, as a people, whose history has been full of wrongs and denial of rights. We, as a nation, who were commanded to love our neighbor and the stranger amongst us. We, as women, must not be silent. We, as women, cannot be indifferent to the pain inflicted by the occupation. We must make our voices heard in the face of public silence.

As women activists, we invite all women, Jewish and Arab, to join us and work toward a society of equality for all, offering a future for our children. 


The texts in this exhibition are extracted from actual MW reports. CONTINUE TO EXHIBITION