A boy from Um al Kher, a village in Palestine’s South Hebron Hills, extends a peace sign while he tends his family’s goats in the shadow of an illegal Israeli settlement.
Three Weeks in Palestine
In December of 2022 I traveled to Hebron, Palestine, to teach photography to Community Peacemaker Teams, a human rights organization with offices across the globe.
Hebron, a large industrial city, is officially a segregated, separated into two districts — H1 and H2. H1 is under the control of the Palestinian Authority and is home to roughly 170,000 Palestinians and makes up 80 percent of the land base. H2 is controlled by the Israeli military and is home to roughly 30,000 Palestinians, 600 Israeli settlers, 1,500 IDF soldiers and 18 military checkpoints and the old city. I stayed in H2 and, along with teaching photography and videography to the local CPT team, I also monitored checkpoints and documented settler incursions.
Towards the end of my stay I spent a night in Um al Kher, a Palestinian village in the South Hebron Hills that is slowing being choked out by illegal Israeli settlements backed by IDF soldiers and the Israeli state.
Upon my return to Canada I created a series of presentations that combined my photographs with journal entries I wrote during my time in Palestine. These presentations took place in the spring of 2023 and featured performances by Zaynab Mohamed and Bessie Wapp. Mohamed is a Lebanese-Canadian poet who’s grandmother was displaced by the 1948 Nakba that saw 750,000 Palestinian forced from their homes leading up to the foundation of the state of Israel. Wapp is a musician and actor with Easter European Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. All proceeds from the events went towards CPT Palestine.
