24/08/2022
In the past weeks we've been sending cinematographer and activist, Rachel Shor, and activist, Naomi Nur Zahor, to film the women of Masafer Yatta—rocky piece of land in which 1,150 people live, mostly in natural or carved caves. They raise sheep and grow agricultural crops for their own livelihood.
In building this article, Rachel and Nur were a clear choice. When they look through the camera lens, they do not simply see a group of marginalized women in a forgotten and occupied space. They see the woman before them--full and complete and complex.
The article about the women of Masafer Yatta is an ethical and professional stance of Social TV. As an independent and alternative media organization, which aims to disassemble oppressive power structures, we oppose the colonialist practices which define women as weak and insignificant.
We see the Palestinian women, who live in the occupied territories and within the Israeli state, as partners of the feminist struggle to dismantle national and political power structures.
Last "Independence Day,” in the dead of night, while Israeli citizens were waving nationalist flags and barbecuing, the supreme court secretly issued a warrant commanding the deportation of the natives of Masafer Yatta from their homes. It all started when the state of Israel declared the 30,000 dunams (30,000,000 square meters!) as a “closed military zone" and ordered the natives to leave their homes immediately. Despite the fact that it is Israeli-occupied land and international law forbids such a measure, the policy makers and their legal advisors simply claimed that "the army commander's authority, to declare territories as closed on occupied land, overrules the international judicial law.”
Though the case of Masafer Yatta has been in the Israeli court system for over 22 years, the Supreme Court, suddenly and symbolically, issued the announcement for a mass-transfer on the eve of the Israeli Independence Day. The judge, David Mintz—a settler himself—issued the expulsion order.
The women of Masafer Yatta carry on their backs complex identities, each one with her own load, coping together and individually with the implications of the expulsion, the impending demolition of their homes, the unknown, and the State which sees them as the "enemy,” enacting a long series of racist and discriminating practices.
This article is in honor of Kifah, Hiba, Sanaa, Majda, Zohariya, Dalia, and Farissa.
