Reflections From the Cohort - On Belonging by Maya

Maya is in the full-time 4-month immersive program (Cohort 25) and works with the Storytelling Project in Masafer Yatta and Rabbis for Human Rights as their work placements. Maya wrote the following reflection a few weeks ago on our 4-day trip to the South.

Maya (right) and Tash (left) on a quiet Shabbat in Kibbutz Revivim on Achvat's South Trip 
I’m sitting at a kitchen table in a massive communal living area on a tiny kibbutz in the Negev. It’s midday on a cloudy, cool Shabbat after a sweltering past few days and I’m fueling myself with mint black tea and chocolate-filled wafers.
I’m on a trip to the South with the Achvat Amim cohort. We are pausing for Shabbat after two days of learning in the field —going from Sderot, to Masafer Yatta, to Rahat. Before I flew from Chicago to here, I wrote down a few questions I wanted to explore during my time on this land.
Number 4 was: “What does being Israeli (or Israeli-American) mean to me and how can I integrate that into my life?” I knew it was a crazy question, and I still think it’s impossible to answer in a real way. However, I feel like I’ve chipped away at it a bit this week.

Cohort 25 in the Palestinian village of Umm al Khair—one of Achvat's partner communities in Masafer Yatta
It started last Sunday with a learning day in Tel Aviv centered on Ethiopian and Mizrahi identity in Israel. We listened to two Ethiopian community leaders discuss the ways in which they build community with other Ethiopian women and unlearn harmful narratives about their own history that they were fed growing up in Israel.
They expressed deep connection to their family history while also experiencing alienation for their political and life choices as openly feminist, leftist, women.
Then, on Monday, there was the attack in Susiya.
It was a typical day with my volunteer placement with the Storytelling Project during Ramadan. We were making our rounds and were at iftar in Tuwani, discussing wedding dress options and university studies with a partner of the project. 

Kate Greenberg of Cohort 18 and Elya Kaplan of Cohort 21 leading a storytelling day in Susya
Suddenly, phones on the table and in pockets started buzzing. We pieced together information from English, Hebrew, and Arabic group chats; over a dozen settlers attacked Palestinians and internationals in Susiya (where we had been meeting with partners just a few hours earlier). We cleared the dishes from the table with one hand and refreshed our phones with the other. 
We arrived in the main part of Susiya, we can see the military and police vehicle lights about a kilometer down the road. Our friends are there. At that point, we learned that Hamdan Bilal, one of the producers of No Other Land, is one of the people who was injured and arrested. 
We gathered under the stars with Susiya residents and called people off-site who were preparing to get the news out about the attack. The night sky twinkled above us. As military and police vehicles passed the village on the road from the site of the attack, we watched anxiously to see if they would turn into the area that were standing.
Soon, a car did turn right. It wasn’t the military or police, it was a familiar car in an unfamiliar state. An activist car with broken windows and sliced tires.

Army vehicles gathering at the settler attack in Susiya, to arrest multiple Palestinians who were violently assaulted including Hamdan Billal, Director of No Other Land
The next day, sitting in sunny Gan Sacher in Jerusalem, I was reminded of some learning I did in university about Indigenous belonging.
In North America, there is a really pervasive idea that belonging to an Indigenous nation or community is based on the amount of Indigenous “blood” you have biologically. The state reinforces this “blood quantum” determination of belonging through how it implements social services and legal systems. 
Conversely, Indigenous academics and community leaders argue that Indigenous belonging is actually determined on kinship and a community “claiming” an individual more than their genetic makeup. In this way, an individual with significant non-Indigenous ancestry can be Indigenous if their kin recognize them as such.
The borders around belonging are fluid and subjective, yet concrete and knowable. So, if I accept this model for understanding community belonging in my own life, how does that change how I understand my belonging in this place? Who claims me as their kin

Participants at a Tatreez workshop in Rahat
​I went to a family reunion last week and was so grateful for the opportunity to connect with family members I hadn’t seen in years and those I had never met before. It was so valuable to learn more about my family history and hug and look people in the eyes who have known me since I was born. I care deeply about my family who lives here. I don’t want them to suffer; I want them to live full, long, beautiful lives just as I want for myself. 
To me, my Israeliness means that I am influenced by Israeli kin in my life. It also means that I feel a responsibility to take care of something about this place, just like I do in America. However, as I’m learning more and more about this place and the people who call it home in order to better uphold that responsibility, everything I touch when it comes to nationality seems to turn to dust. 
This week, it seems extremely clear that nationality - Israeli or Palestinian - is a pretty devoid way to understand a person’s experience on the land they are on. Just on this trip to the South, we have interacted with so many people who don’t fit nearly into categories of nationality and other identity markers: a Black Bedouin Muslim woman, a Palestinian Bedouin citizen of Israel who lost family on October 7th, a Mizrahi Israeli leftist, a Bedouin Palestinian woman living in area C of the West Bank. 

Cohort 25 hearing from Elham El-Kamalat, an afro-Bedouin activist in Rahat
These individuals don’t just hold multiple identities, their nationality operates on other aspects of themselves in different ways at different times to different degrees. This is not to say that there is no point in analyzing group dynamics and societal patterns; individual experience overlays with group experience. However, especially regarding this land, we are consistently force fed the message that your nationality is, in a way, who you are. “Israeli” and “Palestinian” is treated as shorthand for your religion, race, political perspectives, and rights.
What I’m seeing is that the type of passport or national ID that an individual holds is just one piece of a much larger story of identity and group belonging. When I look at my own story and try to poke at my own nationalities, they quickly feel unhelpful. 
The state and my passport say I belong here, and they do everything they can to make it feel like I should belong here. I exist under civil law no matter where I am from the river to the sea. But socially, I feel conditional belonging. (should we cut this one? I am protected socially by my Israeliness until I question what Israel means and what it does. Then I transform into a self-hating Jew, a leftist traitor).
The state’s idea of belonging has meant that I should be blindly supporting the Israelis who beat and attacked my friends on Monday; somehow, they are expected to be “my people” and I am to feel some sort of allegiance. I feel no allegiance to them. I feel understanding and deep sadness and disappointment and rage.
But I am not their kin. That being said, I will never be separate from this place. I don’t want to separate from the people that I love. But I also feel a massive, gaping void between us sometimes in terms of our understanding of this place.

Havdalah with Cohort 25 on the South Trip
This week, my nationality as a binding agent feels just as mythological as religious ideology feels to my secular Israeli family. 
Who is claiming me, then? I am claimed in a tight embrace under the stars. My kin make kiddush in homes under demolition orders. Kinship is a bag of fresh chamomile I bring from an activist in one village to another. 
The world is going to continue to be scary and maybe get scarier in some ways. I’ve been tasting it this week and last, especially since the ceasefire has broken.
However, it’s only making me feel more incentivized to nurture than a sense of belonging for myself and others. 

Maya
Achvat Amim Cohort 25 

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WHAT WE'RE READING
Headlines from some of our people: 
New York Times:
My Oscar for ‘No Other Land’ Didn’t Protect Me From Violence By Hamdan Ballal
Substack:
In Masafer Yatta, every last joy is being stolen from us By an anonymous resident in Masafer Yatta  
972 Magazine: 
In Masafer Yatta, we need more than awards — we need protection By Ahmad Nawajah - Young Susya Resident/participant of Storytelling Project 
 Vashti Magazine: 
"An act of deeply structural state violence"By Kate Greenberg - Director of Storytelling Project and Achvat Alumni 
Substack: 
Reflections from the Frontlines By Raviv Rose - Current Hineinu Participant
Miami Herald: 
Postpone Miami Beach ‘No Other Land’ vote | Opinion By Bryan Oren - Current Achvat participant 
New Voices Magazine: 
From the Eyes of an American Jewish Activist in JerusalemBy Elly Oltersdorf - Achvat Amim Outreach Director​

Who We Are Achvat Amim is a movement-building platform that provides frameworks and programs for people of all ages to engage in meaningful partnerships with Palestinians and Israelis. Achvat engages with community justice struggles at the intersections of Jewishness, feminism, racial justice, and solidarity. Interested? Apply today or connect with our Director of Outreach and Communications, Elly ([email protected])

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