From Tamra to Tel Aviv, Nazareth to Jerusalem, listen to members of Mahapach-Taghir (change in Hebrew-Arabic) and Sadaka-Reut (friendship in Arabic-Hebrew), and to women from all communities, to see how they’re working on the ground in marginalised areas.
‘It’s in the community, it deals with women, students and children; and it deals with Jewish and Arab, so I cannot find a more holistic way to make a change here in my society.’ – Fida Nara, the Palestinian co-director of Mahapach-Taghir
In a region renowned for conflict, these women’s struggle for community and solidarity across sectarian lines is even more remarkable.
Broadcast on Documentary on Newstalk with funding support from the Simon Cumbers Media Fund.
TRANSCRIPT:
Music
Fida Nara: It’s in the community, it deals with women, with children: and it deals with Jewish and Arab.
Bairbre: Fida Nara is the Palestinian co-director of Mahapach-Taghir – an organisation working throughout Israel for social change.
Fida Nara: So, I cannot find a more holistic way to make a change here in my society and in the area.
Music
Bairbre: I wanted to learn more about the people involved, the kinds of problems they face and how they work together to overcome these challenges.
Music
Marhaba (hello), women’s voices in the background.
Bairbre I started in Yaffa of Nazareth, a mostly Arab area in Northern Israel. Fida had
arranged for me to the women’s group there.
Chatting in the background
Bairbre: We sit in a large circle as each of the women describe what this group means to them. Fida and Rawan Odeh – a student at Haifa University who lives in
Nazareth and also works in Mahapach-Taghir translate for me.
Woman talking in Arabic.
Rawan: They meet to discuss problems, to discuss their needs.
Fida: She also says, we sit, we meet, we discuss, and we see how we can find a solution
Women talking in Arabic.
Rawan: They are discussing violence against women – from a week ago an Arab girl has been murdered. Now the women are talking about what we have to do to stop this.
Women talking in Arabic.
Rawan: They talk about Mahapach is a platform to Jewish and Arabs people.
Women talking in Arabic.
Fida: This meeting change us, that is what she say. ‘I never thought I will sit and talk with a Jewish.’ The Jewish have a problem with the country, not just me. As a poor people on the periphery, like us. So knowing each other, meeting each other-
it doesn’t happen here. If we don’t have this meeting in Mahapach, they will never
meet Jewish in a personal level.
Women talking in Arabic.
Fida: And she say, in the demonstration we meet and we really –
Rawan: Are together.
Woman talking in Arabic.
Rawan: So Mahapach not also give her the place to find a solution to this societies
problems. Mahapach give her the place to have change for herself, so…
Fida: So it’s important to work with the Jewish, and meet with the Jewish, but the first thing that helped me – she said – my life changed. I feel suddenly I have the power to make a change in my life, in my neighbourhood, and in my community.
Woman talking in Arabic.
Fida: She was very sick, and Mona told her, ‘come to Mahapach, try’. From the first meeting I feel there’s something different here. I get energy. The third Meeting, my daughter came into that meeting because she didn’t do anything in her life, just came to me. And from the first moment that we start to be here, we feel different. I don’t go to the – you know the special centre for old people? – she should be there.
Yesterday in the demonstration she have a very good picture – powerful – and in the Facebook all the people see this picture. And she said, I never thought I will go to demonstration in Tel Aviv against killing woman.
And her daughter now, because of this meeting, is learning in the university.
Woman talking in Arabic
Fida: I come here, I do sport, I’m part of this meeting and it gives me a lot of – not empowerment – but good feeling when I come home-
Rawan: Positive.
Fida: Yeah, positive. And it changed my children. They feel that something changed.
Women talking in Arabic.
Rawan: We are family. We are working to support each other, and we want to make this place better.
Woman talking in Arabic.
Fida: She understands from the meeting with poor people. Because Mahapach-Taghir works just in disadvantaged communities, on the periphery. So we learn a lot from each other. Most of the Jewish here really want to live here together, but the problem is the government.
Woman talking in Arabic.
Fida: Ok. She have a lot of meeting with women in other places, but here is the first time that she feel part of it, and it’s different. And I say, why it’s different. And she said,
that I feel that they really, really hear me. They really talk with me, and they respect me. Because of the way we work: it’s partnership, it’s dialogue. It’s not, we have programme and you will come and this is what will happen. It’s different here.
And she feel really, really happy.
Women talking in Arabic, laughter.
Fida: If you will come the next week, all of us will be here. Nobody don’t come.
Every week, all of them come.
Women talking in Arabic, laughter.
Bairbre: Houria Zoabi is mother to three girls, and is studying special needs education for small children. I asked her why she finds this group particularly supportive.
Houria talks in Arabic.
Bairbre: And Rawan translates for me.
Houria talks in Arabic.
Rawan: They are friends, they are family, they support each other. And this gives her the
push to go and find herself. Also, not in Mahapach, but in her life and societies life.
Houria talks in Arabic.
Rawan: She started her volunteering with children – she helped children in the activities after the school. And Mahapach give her a scholarship to go and learn. Without Mahapach she didn’t have the courage to go and learn: and not the money, which is a very basic thing.
Bairbre: Mona Arok has been involved with Mahapach-Taghir for the past fourteen years and is now co-ordinator for Yaffa-Nazareth.
Mona: At the beginning I was a regular mother. And I have my dreams, but I didn’t know then what to do. And they encouraged me. Wow, you can do it. You must go and continue your school.
My husband, he didn’t agree that I go to talk about these issues: about the rights of women.And he said, no, no you must stay at home and do a lot of things with the house, take care of the daughters, take care of the house – you don’t need that.
But I said no, I have a dream. I want to go for it. And from there I realised that I’m raising five daughters. I realised that they are the future in the community. And I said, ok, if I go back now I will destroy them. So from them I took the energy to continue.
And today my husband, he comes with me to the women’s struggle in Tel Aviv-
Bairbre: The protest?
Mona: Yes. It’s amazing that I succeed to do this change with him. And with my family, and with my daughters.
And from there, we were supporting each other. And I continue to progress, and to grow with the group of women. I begin my work in the community with seven women. Today there is more than forty.
I don’t decide alone. It’s important to talk to them like four eyes.
Bairbre: Like equals.
Mona: Yes.
Not from above – it’s not good, and it’s not working because women will think,
wow, you live in your high palace, and we are the poor people, and you don’t really felt our pain, and what we need.
I see a lot of leadership inside the women. I want them to decide the future of
Mahapach. I want them to lead the work that I do here today. To make another
women-
Talks in Arabic.
Bairre: To influence?
Mona: To influence another women.
Music
Bairbre: Next day, Fida drives me to a town called Tamra, – about half an hour north of Nazareth – where a Learning Community is in action.
Large group of people talking, lots of background noise of busy room.
Bairbre: One of the children, Selim, speaks to me, and Fida translates.
Selim talking in Arabic, clapping.
Fida: I’m here already three years and I get a lot of help in the education, school thing, and I have fun. And I want to say thank you to Suwad Awad, head of Mahapach here in Tamra.
Bairbre: Nasreen Yassin, a student at Haifa University, is a volunteer tutor, and one of the organisers here.
Nasreen: I think that I am connected to the community, and I want to give always, And I believe that if I want to change something in the community, I should begin from our children that surround me.
Suwad: My name is Suwad. I am from Tamra. I’m learning in the Open University.
For me, it’s like something gold, I found it. It changed my life. This opportunity for learning, for studying, it changed my life. Now I am fifty-two years old, but I think when I am coming to the studying I feel like something was lost from me, and I found it.
Ahlam: My name is Ahlam.
Ahlam speaking in Arabic
Suwad: All of us is married. All of us have families. All of us have a lot of jobs to do, you know the Arabic work, yes. For me I’m not working, but I’m all the time at home, and you know, this want this, this want to eat…and she said that there’s a lot of responsibility. All of the responsibility on our head.
Bairbre: Houria Abu Nimir is a science teacher in the local school who also volunteers with Mahapach-Taghir. She feels that, within the group, she has the space to address political issues with the children.
Fida: She will give the example about political activity – for example if we have the Land Day, or if there’s any problem in Jerusalem – in the school we never talk about it because it’s – well she didn’t say why – but we didn’t talk about it. But it’s here, in Mahapach we talk, we understand, we ask the student what you hear in the news.
And give them the opportunity to say what they think about it. And it’s very important to understand your identity. As a Palestinian who live in Israel, to understand your place here, and to have enough time to talk with someone about it.
And it doesn’t happen in the school. She say, as a teacher, they never do it. But in Mahapach it all the time happens.
Houria talking in Arabic
Fida: So she said, it’s work yes, but I don’t get money from this really. But what really gives me a very good feeling – I like people, I like children – to help them, give them a good time here.
Did you see how she did all the menageesh? She shouldn’t do it, but she does it with all her love. Not just for the children: even for the women. She’s the last one
to eat. It’s like her volunteer to the community, being here.
Music
Bairbre: A similar Learning Community is underway in Yad Eliayu, Tel Aviv, where I meet Nurit Barak, the Jewish co-director of Mahapach-Taghir.
Greetings in Hebrew, people talking in background.
Nurit: Each kid comes just once a week, and the tutors meet the mothers in the house to get the mothers and the kids more involved.
Bairbre: We talk to Limaa Hajiaa, one of the university students volunteering here.
Limaa Hajiaa talking in Hebrew
Nurit: Translating: When I realised the scholarship is in Mahapach-Taghir, and I got to know through the seminar what that means – I’m taking part in a Jewish Palestinian organisation that works for social justice and equal opportunities and shared society for all. And I really identify with those values and targets, and am proud to take part in this approach. And I can see how it’s connected with the work with the kids. I’m not coming here to do my work with the kids to do my hours, to get my scholarship and to go back home. No, I’m here and connected to this kind of work because I understand the wider picture. How I can do educational activities to promote those values of equality and shared society.
Limaa talking in Hebrew
Nurit: It’s important to understand that for me as a Palestinian it’s very unique and important for me to be here with the kids. It’s a Jewish community here and the kids here are Jewish, and most of them, maybe all of them, never met, and never communicated before with Arab Palestinian. It’s their first time, so our kind of interaction is also this kind of interaction – to get to know each other as Jewish and Palestinian, and what that means. That we can cooperate here together.
Bairbre: Tikva is one of the organising mothers in this area, and I asked her if she’s looking
forward to the national cnference next week in Nazareth.
Tikva talking in Hebrew
Nurit: The moment I went out from the last seminar I started to wait for the next one. I meet people, I get ideas, I get advice.
When we speak about what we can improve in each community – the differences and the things that are in common – it’s very interesting.
I can meet with other women from other communities, even if they are Palestinian or Jewish. It’s interesting. It gives me new ideas.
Tikva talking in Hebrew
Nurit: If they share a similar kind of problem, how they deal with that. What solution that they find. It’s interesting.
Rachel: My name is Rachel and his name is Aaron. I want that my son is going to learn with me how to give back to the community. If he sees me giving back…
Rachel talking in Hebrew
Bairbre: Nurit continued translating for me…
Nurit: She said, because we want to do a change. We want to see improvement, and we want to see this improvement to happen. So this is why.
Rachel talking in Hebrew
Nurit: We, this year started a new group of mothers. We just started. And this is why I can’t give you a specific subject yet. But I’m very excited. At this stage we’re doing brainstorming.
Vivian: My name is Vivian. I was a journalist and a book editor, and I decided to start something new. So I thought maybe being an educator will be something meaningful.
Look at them. We mainly need to see them. Sometimes nobody sees them. Nobody reads them a story or talk to them, or even tell them something nice, because they’re too occupied – the parents or families – I know it is hard.
Bairbre: After we left, I asked Nurit how she felt this group in Yad Eliyahu was coming along.
Nurit: What I heard today from Tikva and Rachel is a lot of hope, and a lot of strength, a lot of power. First, they did in my point of view, they did the first important step which is to say: I know that things as they are are not good enough.
And the second step is to say: I know that it doesn’t have to be that way. I know that things can be better.
And the third step is: I know I have power to do change, and now I’m gonna find the time to speak with more people, even if it’s hard, and even if I have bad experience in the past, like in school.
This is amazing for me to hear them because this is the kind of space we want to create with them.
Music
Bairbre: In Tel Aviv I also visited the old city of Jaffa to talk to Rawan Bisharat, the co-director of Sadaka-Reut.
Rawan: Sadaka is in Arabic, Reut is in Hebrew, and it means friendship.
Bairbre: It was founded thirty-five years ago by Jewish and Palestinian students in the University of Haifa.
Rawan: And they just wanted to change the reality before thirty-five years. They realised that they lived here, but they didn’t talk together, as Palestinians and as Jewish, and they wanted to change their realities.
We decided also, before ten years I think, that we want to work with marginalised groups – to connect between these struggles. So we work with Ethiopian, with Mizrahi (Jews that came from Arab countries) and we think that they have common things also together.
Bairbre: Sadaka-Reut run programmes in schools and universities, have a youth project for 14-16 year olds, and a community-in-action programme.
Rawan: It’s a leadership programme. It’s for the ages of 18-22. Usually it’s for Palestinians, for after school, that they want to volunteer here in Jaffa. To do a volunteering year before the university. And for Jewish that don’t want to go to the army. They choose not to go to the army.
So it’s a year that we gather sixteen participants to come here together to Sadaka every week they come for two days. One day it’s a dialogue day – more about how to deal with the political situation here inside Israel. And it’s a dynamic group.
Sometimes something happens outside because usually we have a lot of things. So for this group it’s more to do with activism. We think that they can do more activism because they are here all the time also.
It’s a long process. Sometimes you don’t feel the change – or what’s going on – and also there are a lot of political changes all the time, so we feel sometimes that we work, work, work, and we have a lot to do. But as we are still relevant, it’s good thing that we do.
Cafe background, music and chatting
Bairbre: Another area of Tel Aviv that Mahapach-Taghir is active is the Florentine
Neighbourhood, where I went for coffee with Zahava Akneen, Devora Levian and Meytal Strul – women who’ve worked for years in their community. Dana Zarif, the coordinator for Tel Aviv, translates for me.
Zahava: My name’s Zahava.
Zahava talking in Hebrew.
Dana: She work with religion people, with not religion people, with women, kids, old people, with everyone. She’s really everywhere-
Bairbre: An activist?
Zehava: A volunteer.
Dana: A volunteer. In all these places.
Bairbre: No money for it.
Dana: She does things because she has a big heart.
Like yesterday in Yad Eliyahu, so they do the same here and the women of the neighbourhood come and volunteer and help the children. And they’re doing other
things. Also go and help old people.
Devora: My name is Devora Levian. I’m living in Florentine. I’m sixty-three and a half.
Laughter
Devora: My age. I’m in Mahapach maybe seven years. I volunteer for old woman.
Zehava: We go –
Bairbre: Ah ye go together.
Devora: And I volunteer with children in the kindergarden.
If I can help, I help. It’s good for heart –
Zehava: Yes good.
Devora: The Arab wants to live. We Jewish want to live. In not war. Just peace. We want together – speaking with each other and meeting…
Maytal: Hi, I’m Maytal. I’m in the board of Mahapach-Taghir.
I also got empowered by working with the women in the neighbourhood.
I think when the women get together, and go together to the City Hall and demand their rights, it look different than every woman dealing with her social worker alone. It’s not like I’m getting help. I’m getting my rights.
Fade out cafe music and noise.
Fade in to call to prayer, Jerusalem, city noise
Bairbre: From Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is only about half an hour on the bus, but has such a different feel.
City noise
Bairbre: Talpiot is home to successive waves of immigrants from Ethiopia, Russia and North Africa – and now, new residents moving into modern apartment buildings. 75% of people who live in Talpiot didn’t finish school, so a local principal offered
Mahapach-Taghir their premises to set up a Learning Community here.
Nurit tells me how the group has only just started up.
Nurit: The parents were very into it. About fifteen parents came for the first meeting and ten parents came to the second meeting. And they started to think how can they improve the education options in this neighbourhood.
And we will see. It’s the first steps to start to build a group that think and act together.
Another issue here is the fact that, as you can understand, the population is very mixed so I mention the one thing: the locals who live here from the ‘50’s and the new population that came on the ‘90’s and the new population that come now with the new buildings – we want to think with them – how can we act so that those tensions will be…like, what is the shared interest of all, about this neighbourhood.
Background sounds of Talpiot, children playing.
Bairbre: We meet up with Innat Lerner, one of the mothers in the group, and I talk to her and
Yaniv Teiltel, the Jerusalem coordinator.
Yaniv: She is secular, and in Jerusalem there is a big tension between the secular communities and the religious communities.
Innat: Most people who live here, they don’t work, they don’t have education. And we’re trying to change that. We have a parents meeting two times in the month, and we speak about what we want to change. We put it on the table, what we want to change for the children, and for us.
Bairbre: We head inside to chat some more, and I asked Yaniv a little bit about his background.
Yaniv: I worked for several years in education and in the Palestinian Israeli conflict solution. I hadn’t heard of Mahapach before, but I had good luck, good fortune to find them.
Innat: What I love about Yaniv and all that group is that they come with an open mind.
They don’t say: oh like this….No, we work about it, and we speak about it. If I have any problem I tell Yaniv and we speak about it, and try to fix it.
I don’t know exactly what, but we want to do change together.
Bairbre: Was it important that it was a Jewish and Arab group?
Innat: Yes. In Jerusalem yes, because you know, yesterday and today someone shot, and I
don’t know, it’s…
Yaniv: For me it’s important because it’s a big part of my life: the Palestinian and Israeli partnerships, and peace groups, and stuff like that. It doesn’t really get, like…you don’t see it in the day to day work here because each neighbourhood in Israel is very mono – mono something, I don’t know. But Jews live in one neighbourhood and Palestinians live in another neighbourhood and-
Bairbre: They keep separate?
Yaniv: Yes-
Innat: Yes but they’re living here!
Bairbre: So your neighbours are-
Yaniv: Yes, Beit Safafa is right next to here. So Beit Safafa is the Palestinian neighbourhood and Talpiot is the Jewish neighbourhood, and they live right next to each other but they don’t-
Innat: It’s different.
Bairbre: It’s different schools?
Innat: No, it’s different because they don’t – how do I say that? – they not suffer or something. They have a house, they have work. So they don’t hate us. I go to the store and I buy things, and I don’t feel fear or something. It’s different.
When you meet one on one it’s different. Because they have a very big anger about us. And they hear things, but they don’t really know about us. And they’re given ideas. A boy, only three years old, that we’re doing like that…and it’s not true. We’re different, and we need to learn – we have to learn – to live together because we have the same country, so we don’t have any choice.
Music
Bairbre: Mahapach-Taghir’s national conference is on this weekend, so I share a bus with the group from Jerusalem, and head back up to Nazareth.
Sounds from the conference, chatting.
Bairbre: There’s a real sense of excitement as the groups get ready for two full days of talks and workshops.
Yousef: My name is Yousef, Yousef Diab. I’m from Tamra, and I find it interesting to help the children, to help the women so they can have their rights. And I like to be in places like this, to help another people. We can’t divide this world to make it women’s have their own things to do, and men have better rights. So, I always love to have justice in the world. I want to work to have justice in this world. And women are close to us. My mother is a woman, my sister is a woman. I will have daughters, and I want them to have their rights too.
Background sounds of conference.
Rosaylo: My name is Rosaylo. I live in Jerusalem, near Talpiot. I’m a student. I learn at the Hebrew University. I heard about Mahapach through Paroch – it’s a scholarship. But more than that I’m interested in the youth movements and so forth, so that’s why I thought I should apply to Mahapach-Taghir. I like changing – and I’d like to have the tools to change. To have other people’s thoughts, and to know what they think, and why, and so forth…
Background sounds of conference.
Bairbre: Helway Asaklay, coordinator of the Maghar group, a mainly Druze town in Northern Israel is giving a workshop.
Helway talking to the group in Arabic.
Bairbre: Helway gives each of us a slip of paper with a character on it. Mine was ‘Arab Bedouin woman’…
Outside noises, Helway talking in background.
Bairbre: So we head outside to play the game…
Nurit: So you should stand with everybody. In the beginning you start on the same line. Later we will see where you get.
Bairbre: We stand in a line, and Helway reads out things like, ‘you can buy land’, or ‘you can work for the government’. And if we can, we move forward one step.
Nurit: Kibbutz? You can’t. No way. You can come to clean there.
Bairbre: There’s another woman who hasn’t moved much off the line, and she tells me she
was a Sudanese immigrant.
More background noise of the game.
Bairbre: Ok, well I didn’t get very far.
Nurit: Yeah, you just stayed on the same place.
Bairbre: Then we all go back inside to discuss the game.
Voices in the background.
Nurit: In this game, you don’t know if you can do the steps or not because you don’t know those societies.
Women arguing in Hebrew.
Nurit: They are arguing about the options of the Bedouin. As you can see, noone is Bedouin here…
I said I’m very happy to hear this argument. I think it’s like red light for us: we speak and speak, and actually none of us here in the room is Bedouin. That means Mahapach-Taghir is not working with Bedouins, and maybe we should consider it, and when we argue about the options of the Bedouin we need to remember that sometimes you have options – like, the government give you options – but it’s notgood options. Because in the Negev, the government is trying to concentrate all the Bedouin in just a few towns, and then they push them to leave the land they’re supposed to own, and to leave their traditional way of life.So it’s not enough to ask do they have opportunities – for whom are those opportunities are good? There is cultural difference.
Bairbre: Later I meet Fida, who’d been watching the workshop outside.
Fida: It’s amazing, that Helway do it. The last year was the first time she do a workshop in her life. For me it’s amazing to see the process in this year! If everybody will get the same opportunity…so we all can do things, you know. That’s amazing what’s happening here.
More room noise, group of women talking loudly in background.
Bairbre: Maghar was one of the few groups I hadn’t managed to visit, so it was great to meet some of the women from there.
Woman talking in Arabic
Bairbre: I asked Zakia Suwad what she likes about the group, and Rawan translates for us.
Zakia talking in Arabic.
Rawan: She said that she like everything. Now she knows more things that she didn’t knew
about it before.
Bairbre: Like what?
Zakia talking in Arabic.
Rawan: She says that all the time she wanted to get the place to talk about her feelings, but
she didn’t have this place. And she thinks that Mahapach gives her the place to go
and find, and discover herself.
Raja talking in Arabic.
Bairbre: Raja Fawaz is also from Maghar.
Rawan: She says that now she’s taking part in the conference, and she got back to finish her
Diploma.
Raja talking in Arabic.
Rawan: She said that Mahapach means change in English. And she feels this change. And
she feels that yes we can do this change.
Bairbre: Angela Sorowisch is involved with the Nazareth Illit. women’s group, and I asked
her what kinds of issues they were working on, at the moment.
Angela talking in Hebrew.
Translator: The subject of violence against women, and the subject of the connection with
another group from Yaffia – the Arab womans. In the Jewish womans, they speak
Arabic because they came from Arab countries, before a lot of years-
Bairbre: From North Africa? Yemen?
Translator: Yes. Iraq and Morrocco, Yemen, Levant…
Angela talking in Hebrew.
Translator: And after the meeting in Mahapach they are still connected with phones – without
Mahapach – they’re connected.
Bairbre: They’re friends?
Translator: Yes, they’re friends. Without Mahapach. Between themselves.
Angela talking in Hebrew.
Translator: I learn in Mahapach how all the people from all the groups can be together with a good atmosphere. Here it’s so nice to be together, and I’m sad that when we get out from here, it’s not happening in the reality space.
Bairbre: Do you think is it getting better, or is it getting worse?
Angela talking in Hebrew.
Translator: I very hope so, that it will be better, and I want to believe that it will be better.
Ghadir: My name is Ghadir. I’m from Yaffa. It’s very empowering to hear the women,
about their experience. Usually, Arab women encourage us to get married at a young age, but this kind of woman – ‘no, go to college. Don’t get married at a young age’. Like the ideas really has changed. From the minute they became a part of Mahapach.
Bairbre: How important is it for you that it’s a Jewish and Arab-
Ghadir: It’s very important. You know, I hate racism. I have felt it before. And it’s so ugly,
the feelings are so, so ugly. And to be part of a group that’s Jewish and Arab – they smile at you, like it’s so simple: a smile is so simple, but it has a lot of meaning…Like, why not? Why do we have to be in Mahapach to meet these people and to be nice with them. Like why not?
Woman singing in Arabic – recorded at the conference
Woman talking to me in Arabic.
Translator: We are woman, we want to change this world.
Woman: To change. We want to change, for the better.
Woman singing in Arabic – recorded at the conference
Music over credits to end.
Bairbre: A huge thank you, shookran jazeelan, toda raba, to everyone who spoke to me for this documentary:
Acknowledgements
Supported by the Simon Cumbers Media Fund.
