Maschom Watch

 

Last night I attended a talk from a young lady who spent a number of months working as an Ecumencial Accompanier in the West bank .

 She was there as an observer to difuse difficult situations and to write reports which will be used in the future as statements of war crimes.She is a Christian and met these ladies often . What she witnessed was inhuman. Respect to them all. Working together .

  I love this story - its a moving example of people supporting each other , despite their own cultural or religious difference , against what they believe is unjust and quite simply - wrong .

Israeli Women against the Occupation and for Human Rights

MachsomWatch, in existence since 2001, is an organisation of peace activist Israeli women against the Israeli Occupation of the territories and the systematic repression of the Palestinian nation. We call for Palestinian freedom of movement within their own territory and for an end to the Occupation that destroys Palestinian society and inflicts grievous harm on Israeli society. 

http://www.machsomwatch.org/en

The Checkpoint Women of Israel

Machsom Watch advocates for fair treatement of Palestinians, drawing both resentment and respect from their countrymen

By Robert Hirschfield

Daphne Banai, 57, carries many dark tales, like the one she tells of pleading futilely with an Israeli soldier on behalf of a 78-year-old Palestinian man not allowed through to his village, though his papers were in order, because of closure.

“What you see,” says Banai, a leader of Machsom (Checkpoint) Watch, who monitors the treatment of Palestinians at the more than 600 West Bank checkpoints, “you cannot unsee.”

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3192/the_checkpoint_women_of_israel/

http://www.ziv-p.com/MW/  ( gallery of pictures a must see  )

What many of the soldiers see when Machsom women appear at the checkpoints are Israelis of dubious loyalty.

“Most of the soldiers are very angry at us,” says Banai. “They don’t like having ‘those bitches,’ as they call us, looking over their shoulders. It’s much easier to do what you want [if we weren’t there], like being able to slip up and give an old Palestinian a slap.”

“There are a couple of reasons for that,” says Banai. “First, almost all Jewish men do compulsory army service, then active reserve duty. As they are always between one period of being soldiers and another, this would complicate things for them, both with the soldiers at the checkpoints and the Palestinians. We, on the other hand, represent the civil society to which the soldiers and the Border Police are accountable. We represent their mothers, their grandmothers [many of the Machsom women are grandmothers], their girlfriends, their wives.”

Eighty-five percent of Israel’s checkpoints, designed to choke off terrorism at its point of origin, are inside the West Bank. Palestinians traveling from towns and villages, whether to find work or give birth or honor the dead, experience aimed guns, hard questions and long waits.

Banai travels to the West Bank in a van from Kfar Saba, near Tel Aviv. Every day, roughly 50 to 100 of Machsom’s 400 women go out in 24 shifts to keep tabs on the remote outposts. According to Banai, Israel’s checkpoints range from fixed stations, like the ones at Hawara and Beit Iba, near Nablus, to the “rolling checkpoints” that can spring up anywhere on the West Bank at any time.

“Our instructions to the women,” says Banai, “are ‘no cookies, no Nazis.’ Don’t befriend the soldiers and don’t offend them.”

The women’s main task is to observe and to write reports on what they observe, in order to make private acts of malice public. The reports are then published weekly on the organization’s website (www.machsomwatch.org) for all to read. Among the most loyal readers are officers and soldiers of the Israeli Army, who often, indignantly or plaintively, give their feedback.

Banai was not always so bold. Her first attempt at checkpoint activism, four years ago, brought her face-to-face with her own paranoia. An equally nervous colleague accompanied her. “We were scared out of our minds,” she says. “In every Palestinian, I saw a Hamas person. They all seemed to have beards. Even the women. Every time someone made a move, I thought he was going to take out a knife and stab me.”

Yet Banai says she sometimes worries “if we are not actually collaborating with the army, making it all appear more human. No improvements can change the nature of the checkpoints. Israeli checkpoints on the West Bank are a violation of human rights. When you prohibit a Palestinian from seeing his dying grandmother, it doesn’t much matter if you say it with a smile, or if you shout at him.

“I don’t want the checkpoints changed,” she says. “I want them gone