‘I’m very patriotic,’ says 84-year-old activist Hanna Barag, who is regularly accused of the opposite. ‘More patriotic than people who remain silent.’ Barag is one member of an all-woman Israeli volunteer organization that is trying to challenge the ‘impossible conditions’ faced by Palestinians under Israeli occupation.
MachsomWatch – machsom is Hebrew for ‘checkpoint’ – has been documenting the actions of Israel’s Defense Forces at checkpoints in the West Bank and elsewhere in the Occupied Territories since 2001. It recently stepped up its work in military courts, where it’s compiling evidence of the ‘two separate legal systems’ – one for Israelis and the other for Palestinians. Despised by the political establishment, the organization posts footage and reports online that illustrate daily human rights abuses, submits its findings and runs tours of the West Bank to show the reality of the occupation. They offer help to those Palestinians who are blacklisted and barred from entering Israel.
