Solidarity and Accompaniment in the West Bank (CCW Ep 35)
In this episode Brenna, Ben, and Sheila share their experiences about travelling to the West Bank as a Catholic Worker delegation to do accompaniment work with the International Solidarity Movement.
Catholic Workers are kind of made for this work, because it involves a lot of presence, a lot of like skills and de-escalation, a lot of watchfulness, a lot of hanging out and helpfulness, of being able to receive hospitality, of being able to be useful in small and large ways.
Already Catholic Workers have broken from the lies that are told us, so there’s less mental and emotional labor that has to be done to kind of receive the situation that you’re placing yourself in. You’re already primed for that and already understand it
So to echo what [Brenna’s] saying, that with the Metta Peace Team, that it’s a beautiful way to enter into this place, which is very beautiful, and I’m very eager to have visitors come back and, and be there, getting to spend a couple days in Jerusalem and in Bethlehem, and to go to the Sea of Galilee. To be in the places that Jesus was and understand the occupation that He experienced is very meaningful.
— Sheila, on CCW Podcast
Catholic Workers plan to return to the West Bank in the Winter of 2026/2027
The international team is seeking to raise $18,000 to support their solidarity presence.
Please consider supporting their efforts by giving online at givebutter.com.
Read more about the work of International Peace Teams at metapeaceteam.org.
Play Episode 35 or read the full transcript below:
Episode Transcript
The following episode transcript was autogenerated from the audio transcript and subsequently reviewed and lightly edited for accuracy and clarity. Filler words (ah, um, like, etc.) and false starts have been removed to improve readability.
Theo:
Welcome to Coffee with Catholic Workers, a podcast made by and for Catholic workers. I’m Theo.
Lydia:
And I’m Lydia. We’ve both been part of the Catholic Worker for more than a decade, and we’re excited to bring to you different conversations with Catholic workers from around the world.
Theo:
On today’s episode, we’re speaking with Brenna, Ben, and Sheila about their recent trip to the West Bank, the situation on the ground in Palestine, and the accompaniment work they were a part of while there. A quick note on some of the acronyms our friends used during today’s discussion, ISM is short for the International Solidarity Movement, and the IOF are the Israeli Occupation Forces.
Lydia:
Now here’s Brenna, Ben, and Sheila. All right, welcome to Sheila, Ben, and Brenna. I wonder if to get started, if each of you would be interested in introducing yourselves, sharing a little bit about who you are, and then maybe a little bit about how you became interested in going over to Palestine.
Brenna:
I can start. I think all three of us are introverts, so I’m telling you, so never be afraid to call on one of us. I think it might be a good idea, but I can start because I kind of gathered the group.
I mean, I first became interested in Palestine when I first joined the Catholic Worker Movement, St. Francis, this is Brenna, when I first joined the St. Francis and Therese Catholic Worker in Worcester, Massachusetts. Back in 2001, I moved in, and Scott and Claire Schaefer-Duffy had both been to the West Bank, and when I lived there, Scott actually took a trip there. Also Palestinians with whom they had built relationships came to the United States to do supported speaking tours through Catholic workers on the East Coast.
So I got to meet Palestinians, I got to meet US citizens through the Catholic Worker Movement who had been to Palestine. So I heard a lot of stories of the courageous acts of nonviolent resistance that were happening all of the time, and really felt compelled to go myself. So I went in 2004 with other Catholic workers for 10 days, a delegation, and then I returned in 2006 and 2007, both for longer stints with the Michigan Peace Team, now called Meta Peace Team.
While I was living at the South Bend, Indiana, a Catholic Worker MPT was not too far from us in Michigan, and we’re sending longer term delegations to work with both Meta Peace Team and the International Solidarity Movement to do a form of protective or solidarity presence. And then I got to return again in 2009 with Catholic Workers again for a 10 day delegation, and I hadn’t been in a long time, but a priest from Meta Peace Team, Father Peter Doherty, who’s an incredible diocesan priest in I think the Detroit Diocese, I had been to Palestine with him in 2006, and he called me at the beginning of last year, so just at the beginning of February of 2025, and asked if I would anchor a delegation to the West Bank again with Meta Peace Team. So it was the first time I had returned in, what is that, like 16 years, so it had been a long time, but because of everything that had been happening in Gaza, I felt really compelled to say yes. I had been kind of thinking about it, and just waiting sort of for the little nudge by the Spirit, and that felt like a nudge by the Spirit to me, a pretty clear one.
So I said yes, and I started calling everybody that I could think of who might want to come with me, especially Catholic workers, because I already knew Catholic workers are pretty solid and grounded. So I wanted other Catholic workers with me, so we could kind of feel like a pretty unified team. So one of the first people I asked to come with me was Sheila, so I’m going to pass it to Sheila.
Sheila:
Thanks, Brenna. It was sort of from the opposite side, that it was after going to Palestine that the Catholic worker was the only way it made sense to be in the United States anymore. Then I studied abroad in Jerusalem, right on the border of Bethlehem at Tantor as a college sophomore, and came back and pretty immediately went to the Los Angeles Catholic Worker, and knew that that was the only sort of way to be present in this country that was funneling so much into the state of Israel and into the oppression of Palestinians is to be on the side of the oppressed in the United States. So that was really how I got into the Catholic Worker in a major way, was really coming out of being in the West Bank and seeing what was happening there. I spent an extra month in Bethlehem working for a society for the deaf.
So joining in the summer program of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker and staying for the second summer program, I was pretty hooked being in East LA and working on Skid Row. I immediately knew this is what I wanted to do after college, and had the luxury of spending two years just telling people, that’s exactly what I’m going to do after school, is go to the LA Catholic Worker. So I was at the Catholic Worker in LA for a year, and then New York City for three years, but never went back to Palestine.
When I was in LA at the Catholic Worker, then Kathy Kelly was going to Janine, and wanted to join her, and there were volunteers at the kitchen that wanted to support that, but it was kind of a policy at the Catholic Worker to not do these trips, and that’s what put me in touch with the Worcester Catholic Worker, with Scott Schaefer-Duffy, and Claire, because Scott was going on this trip, and invited me to go along. So I started looking at other communities, including the New York Catholic Worker and the Worcester Catholic Worker, and that’s how I met Brenna, is visiting the Worcester Catholic Worker, but I never went back to Palestine until this year at Brenna’s invitation.
So it just shows the power of invitation. We can do a lot with reading and speaking and things like that, but the power of invitation is what is most transformative in life, so to make lots of invitations, and to say yes to lots of invitations.
Ben:
Yeah, thanks, Sheila. My story is also a story of invitation as well. I got invited by a Catholic Worker here, a long-time Catholic Worker that actually went to Palestine with Brenna back in the day, and yeah, I think for me, I had been contemplating I don’t know, I think I was feeling very centered in the idea of accompaniment work already, that had already been something that was really, we were contemplating a lot here in both when I was in the Catholic Worker in New York, that was something we naturally did a lot, and actually just like, we pretty intentionally just wanted to kind of try and broaden accompaniment work and just be with people and create spaces, like third spaces to just be with people, and then, you know, moving to Connecticut, you know, with this, we literally call, yeah, a group here that does like Thursday night outreach that drives around the city, it’s called the, you know, the Accompaniment Night, where we just make space and try and yeah, create spaces of community and relationship building rather than just, you know, Soup Kitchen or like mutual aid stuff, or yeah, actually make it mutual aid, and I also, I kind of distinctly remember, you know, I remember, I still remember the feeling when Ayลenur Eygi died, or was murdered, assassinated, and being very, very moved by that witness, and just feeling like learning from, yeah, learning from Palestinians, because I think was going to be vital for how to build relationships in the, you know, in the global political climate. Here in Connecticut, there’s, the workers here really emphasize the fact that like, you know, we spend so much time like contemplating the end of the world, and it’s best to just spend time, to just like live your life with people where the world’s already ended, whether that be unhoused folks, or Palestinians, so I just, yeah, and then with the invitation, it just felt at the right time, and admittedly at a more transitional stage of my life, where it also felt, yeah, it just, a little bit of invitation, and right time, yeah.
Sheila:
I want to pick up on the idea of the end of the world, and preparing, and things, yeah, I really resonate with that, too, with the election, and as people started to be kidnapped off the street in Massachusetts, then it felt really, I felt a sort of panic that I think I’d never really felt before, like, oh, preparing, preparing to leave, or just sort of seeing the slide into authoritarianism, you know, and there’s a whole kind of prepper culture out there that prepares for this sort of thing, but just sort of seeing the steps, and the way others were panicking, too, and sort of talking about leaving the country, and things, and it really brought me back to, well, where, where are things at their worst, and that was Gaza, so where are people, like, really living in the worst possible situation, and then just realizing, instead of kind of imagining this for ourselves, like, really connecting with people that that is their reality, and of course, as Ben said, people experiencing homelessness now, like, are already living in a dire situation, carrying all their things with them, so it helped refocus my own work with people experiencing homelessness, and the situation of people in Gaza, so the whole first year after October 7th, like, I couldn’t really face what was happening there, because just knowing the way our news in this country is not representative of global news, so just wanted to take a step back from it all, but after a year in, with a failed ceasefire in January, I started really paying a lot closer attention, and started wanting to figure out how I could be of use in that situation, and it was right then that Brenna invited me to come on this trip, so it did come out of this sense of, well, where already are people in the greatest suffering in this country and abroad, so what was it like going over there,
Lydia:
And you all were in West Bank, which is a little bit different, so I wonder if maybe you can also, for people who maybe aren’t aware, give a little bit, a quick summary of how West Bank is a little bit different than Gaza, and then maybe if there’s some stories you want to share of what that experience was like.
Sheila:
I’ll do a quick summary and someone else can jump in with a story. So, with the advent of the State of Israel, then the Palestinian population was pushed to the edges of the country, what has now become the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, so these are occupied territories, occupied by the State of Israel, now for, since 1967, but from people that had been pushed there in 1948. That’s the quick version, so it’s the Palestinian people, and again, because it’s so limited in the news we receive here, given the strong support for Israel, that it was very difficult for people to comprehend that we weren’t going to Gaza, because they immediately equate Palestinian with Gaza, or Palestine with Gaza.
So yes, Gaza is impossible to get into or out of, still today, after the ceasefire, so that was not an option. The ceasefire happened while we were in the, actually, we were in Nazareth at the time, going to visit the church of the Annunciation, and we’re going to the Sea of Galilee, and it was thought that the border might open, the Rafah border might open, and so Ben and I discussed if that happened, would we go just be present for this momentous occasion, where people really kept in a prison for so long, would have a chance at movement. Of course, it didn’t open, and hasn’t still opened, so there’s no way in or out of Gaza, still now. So we were in the West Bank, which is a situation of apartheid, but worse than the apartheid in South Africa.
Theo:
What does that apartheid look like on the ground, for people who aren’t familiar in any way, like what does the occupation kind of look like, or how has it developed since that time you mentioned, when people were pushed to the edges of Palestine?
Sheila:
There’s no area of life that’s not infected by the occupation, so there are different roads. Israelis can use one set of roads, and Palestinians can use another, and the set that Palestinians can use are subject to being stopped for hours at a time, random checkpoints, so freedom of movement is not present, and is severely curtailed. I mean, there’s so many aspects, you could pick any aspect of life, and I think we could talk about it more, I don’t know, giving an overall picture, if someone’s got a few more.
Brenna:
Yeah, since Israel became a state in 1948, Palestinians have way less rights in their own homeland than they did before, and it depends, so like, if you’re a Palestinian still living in, what Palestinians, a lot of Palestinians we worked with, refer to the state of Israel as 48, because they still see it as their homeland, but it’s their homeland that’s been occupied by Israel since 1948, so if you’re a Palestinian who was able to remain in 48, during when Israel became a state, you get to be in, you get to hold Israeli citizenship, but experience a lot of racism, and of course, can’t make it to the highest levels of government, because only Jewish people can in Israel, because Israel, the very definition of Israel as a Zionist state is you need, it has to maintain its Jewish majority as a state, so in that inherent definition, Palestinians have less rights, or you’re a Palestinian who gets to live in Jerusalem, which is supposedly the shared capital, or it was supposed to be the shared capital of the two, but Israel has basically taken it all over at this point.
If you’re a Palestinian, and you live in Jerusalem, you have a special ID, a Jerusalem ID, so that’s a whole different set of laws that you get to have, and you have to like, re-register, and are constantly subject to, re-register for this idea, for this idea to be able to live in Jerusalem, if you’re a Palestinian who lives in Jerusalem, and you want to be married to a Palestinian who lives literally five miles away in Bethlehem, you can’t do that, and then legally reside in Jerusalem the whole year, you have to continually reapply for that, for that living situation to be legal, and you’re never granted the full year, so Palestinians living in Jerusalem have a whole different set of laws that they need to abide by, and they’re, Israel’s rapidly expanding its presence in Jerusalem, really taking it all over, and so a lot of Palestinians’ homes in Jerusalem, Palestinians are not granted permission to build homes in Jerusalem anymore by the state of Israel, and so if they do, their homes are bulldozed, so there’s a lot of home demolition by the Israeli military of Palestinians’ homes in the capital of Jerusalem, and then there’s a whole different set of laws, you’re living under military law if you’re a Palestinian in the West Bank, and under military law, you, it is a, it is literally an Israeli law, something called administrative detention, that at any time, for any reason, they can pick up a Palestinian and put them automatically in prison for six months with no charge and hold them there, where a lot of abuse is happening, because Palestinians live under military law, so they’re just subject to being picked up whenever and wherever the Israeli military feels like it, and put in prison for six months.
Area C, which is 60 percent of the West Bank, which is where Sheila and Ben were working, those villages are being rapidly ethnically cleansed, so homes being demolished by the Israeli military constantly, settler violence constantly, to push those Palestinians that are left in Area C, which is several thousand, like, shepherding and villaging families, they’re very rapidly being pushed into Areas A and B, those Areas A, B, and C were created during the Oslo Accords, supposedly as a pathway to peace, but what it really ended up doing was solidifying Israeli military control of most of the West Bank, so Palestinians are being forced onto smaller and smaller little islands of land that are very overpopulated and very urbanized, so it’s kind of like either live in these densely populated areas or leave the West Bank right now are most of the viable options, though a lot of Palestinians are choosing to stay in Area C, because that’s their home and that’s their land that they hold title to, but those who stay are severely punished by both military and these roving bands of settlers who, frankly, lost their minds and are using ridiculous amounts of violence to get Palestinians to leave, and it’s all state-sanctioned violence, like the Israeli state has distributed these weapons to these illegal settlers so that they can use them against Palestinians.
It’s really, it’s mayhem, but yeah, and then it’s interest in the infrastructure, such as, like Sheila mentioned, like roads and roadblocks, like there’s absolutely no freedom of movement. If you’re a Palestinian living in the West Bank or Jerusalem, it might be a tiny bit better, but not a lot. Yeah, you just, you can’t plan your day.
You can’t plan your day to go to the grocery store or go to work, because you could be held up for hours at a checkpoint. Hebron, which is where I was assigned to work, there’s the, for the month, or Al-Khalil is the Palestinian name for the city. The Israeli settlement is right in the middle, literally right in the middle of this thriving, bustling Palestinian city, and so it’s closed, the settlers are closed in by this series of checkpoints that they don’t have to go through, but Palestinians have to go through multiple times a day, and that often, and they’re often harassed there, or they’re closed, and they just never know if and when they’ll be able to get from their home to school, or to work, or to go get their groceries, or to their shops, because these check, these soldiers, these 18-year-old soldiers with large guns have the power to let, to decide whether or not Palestinians get to leave their houses that day. Yeah, it sounds intense, because it is intense, and it’s even a lot worse. The level of control that the Israel has on everyday Palestinian lives is astronomical.
Lydia:
And so what do you do on a delegation? You mentioned of being assigned in one city, and then in Shiloh, and another, but what did that look like, sort of everyday work for you all?
Ben:
Yeah, so the role of international volunteers is usually to, especially in the villages, to provide what’s quote-unquote called protective presence, which usually just ends up being recording settler violence and settler trespassing on a daily basis with the families that you’re staying with. In some ways, it is there to make families feel less alone. In other ways, it’s to help documentation for court cases, and depending on who you talk to on the ground in other instances, it’s to deter settler violence, although that seems to be working less and less, and even less and less from the reports we’re seeing since we were there, specifically in the southern hills.
And so in other places, I mean in the urban areas, sometimes it’s like counting checkpoints and assisting, you know, on the ground Palestinians, Palestinian organizations in their work, and just also providing another more protective presence, and even roaming protective presence as like Iowa soldiers roam the streets at will. Yeah, I guess that’s what the the day-to-day kind of looks like. It really does, it ends up being a lot of time spent in sleeping at families’ houses, or especially in the more rural areas.
Brenna:
Yeah. Yeah, and I’ll also add, so we in part worked with ISM, and every fall they’ve been asked by Palestinians. So all of this, I will just preface by saying, is at the behest and direction of Palestinians.
There’s a Palestinian coordinating team that’s part of ISM, and they are coordinated all around the West Bank with different, they’re called like popular committees, so popular committees in a certain village or a certain areas of the West Bank organize themselves and decide like who needs what support in each area, and so different families will ask for, Ben was right, ISM used to call it protective presence, and in the last few months they don’t call it that anymore.
They call it solidarity presence in large part because we’re actually, our presence is not that protective anymore. Settlers are just becoming so emboldened to fire at and or beat up anyone, including internationals. Also, it’s actually just, it’s just more accurate all around solidarity presence.
So Palestinians decide where they have asked internationals to come. They’re very clear, they’re very clear about their request that they want internationals there with them. And so we go because we go where we’re asked, and so like Ben said, yeah, sometimes it looks like staying with families who are trying to remain on their land and are being threatened with settler violence or a soldier or home demolition.
I was more in the city doing checkpoint monitoring, that’s where we were asked to be, and we were asked to be there by the community peacemaker teams, formerly Christian peacemaker teams. It’s an all-Palestinian team now, and they wanted assistance with checkpoint monitoring duties. And yeah, being a general all-around presence, like Ben said, in the city for different events, like settler incursions happen every Saturday for the last 15 years, where soldiers and settlers take over the streets and Palestinians are not allowed access to their own streets for about an hour to an hour and a half every Saturday.
So we’re asked to be present and monitor and photograph. But also in the fall, for the last 25 years, ISM has been asked to participate in the olive harvest. So one of Palestinians’ main sources of income are their olives and olive oil, and they have been increasingly, it’s been always that they’ve been prevented by the Israeli military from harvesting their own olives, by the Israeli military just randomly declaring attractive land a closed military zone.
And they usually do it in conjunction with the olive harvest as a tactic to prevent Palestinians from harvesting their own olives on their own land that they hold title to. And settlers, Israeli settlers, will come out and attack Palestinians. And I witnessed this in 2006 and seven when I participated in the olive harvest.
But we might get like spat on or yelled at or slapped around a little. But now settlers are coming out literally with metal pipes and wooden sticks that have spikes on them and with automatic weapons. And they are just beating the crap out of people.
I feel really lucky that none of our team got physically injured while we were there by settlers, but several, some of our fellow ISM volunteers definitely got beat up. And it’s just becoming more and more common for international volunteers to get beat up, sometimes needing to like go to the hospital because they have broken bones or needing stitches in their head because their heads are split open. Like it’s pretty intense violence.
So just going literally with Palestinian families or groups of Palestinian families. Some of the olive harvests I participated in were like a hundred Palestinians going out to their groves all together because the groves are right next to each other. Because you know, like safety in numbers.
And then maybe 60 of us volunteers would go join them. So we’d go in this huge group. And yeah, one of the days settlers just opened fire on us, dozens of them.
They ambushed us. They set eight cars on fire. They were throwing rocks.
And then they just opened live fire on all 160 of us. One Palestinian teenager got shot in the shoulder. Thank God he didn’t die.
But like, I think like 20 people got injured that day. 11 went to the hospital, including one international volunteer who had her arm broken. So, but I think Palestinians feel just even though, like we were saying, we’re not that much of a protection anymore.
Palestinians just feel more emboldened or courageous or yeah, there’s something about a morale boost to have all these people with you that they feel, I think they tell us that they feel less vulnerable when we’re with them. And so, and then it helps them go to actually try to harvest their olives if they have internationals with them. And again, it’s a huge part of their income and a huge part of their culture.
So that’s another part of the work.
Ben:
Maybe to connect this to the last question a little bit about, you know, how do you feel the apartheid? I think one of the things that is hard to, that gets, you know, like it’s really pounded into your head is also like the apartheid can be defined by what it is like, what it seems to be most threatened by, which is like Palestinian self-determination and self-sufficiency on the land through olive harvest, through shepherding, through, you know, supporting its own economy. A lot of, especially in the southern, in the rural areas, you know, this act of settler violence is a lot often sometimes, well, sometimes the Israeli government like explicitly says that the goal of the military actions and then, you know, implicitly their support of the, well, implicit or explicit of the settler violence is to get Palestinians to move to the cities, to urbanize, to move to the larger cities, Yata, and so, or others around there. Yeah, a lot of people ask questions like what’s so threatening about a shepherd or about olive harvest or about, you know, family making, other forms of like Palestinian life making.
And I think it’s important to like, some of the fact that that is threatening to the Zionist regime and that’s like a method of trying to economically control Palestinians through, you know, forcing them to urbanize, urbanization, which then forces them into wage labor and forces them in other ways to be dependent on and be able to be controlled by the Zionist regime. So yeah, especially settler violence around olive harvest and shepherding, it’s sometimes depicted as just like how could these people be so violent? But I also want to just point out that like, Palestinians courageously, like insisting on like self-sufficiency and holding to their traditional ways of life is threatening to the Zionist regime.
And that’s a huge part of the story in a way that apartheid is defined and shows up.
Lydia:
It sounds like, it sounds like there’s this piece of escalation of you know, the violence just, just seeming to increase everywhere and people acting with impunity. And it is, it is interesting that at the same time, we can see Palestinians meeting that with this similar escalation of a boldness and of hope. And maybe that’s, you know, digging into, into something sort of deep within their culture or spirit.
Maybe it’s a piece of desperation of what, what more is there to lose. But it sounds like, it sounds like things were very, very intense over there. How was that for all of you?
I mean, that’s, I’m sure, I’m sure you walked into things with your eyes wide open, but sometimes it’s different to then experience that rather than conceptualize it.
Sheila:
Yeah, see, the last time I was there was before the wall was built. So seeing it in person was really breathtaking, having been there before. And as a student that we attended Bethlehem University, and just kind of the walk there is now interrupted by the wall and the way it doesn’t make a straight, a straight line, but, but takes more territory that was in the West Bank is now part of the state of Israel or is on the other side of the wall.
So just seeing the decisions that people had to make of like, which side of the wall to be on, is it cut through your properties? Just really feeling that in full, full effect being there. And amazing.
To me, the self-possession of the Palestinian people in the midst of this disintegration of their way of life, such that it’s not possible, as Ben said, it’s not, it’s not possible to be a shepherd anymore. You can’t take your sheep out without getting severely beaten. So they’re just kept, they’re just kept in the yard, basically, they’re not able to go, go out onto their own lands, because of the threat of violence is too great.
And it’s all, it’s all by design is the, is maybe the most striking thing for me, I think, even being a bit more tuned, tuned in, having been there. Just the orchestration of all of this is very, is, is, it’s kind of breathtaking to think this is happening. We were, you know, just in, in one small area, and this is happening in dozens and dozens of areas, the same thing is happening every day.
So yeah, like our own experience, I mean, I was quite relieved that we weren’t injured, and no one we were with was injured directly. But it’s, it’s, it is still happening all the time.
Brenna:
Yeah, I’ll say that it’s, how you say, how was it for like, it’s, there were moments where I was very scared. It’s scary. And it’s like anger inducing and depressing.
It’s like all, all the emotions can be very intense. And I think while we were there, there were maybe 60 ISM volunteers in the area in the West Bank. I’m not sure exactly because they have different groups come in and get trained.
But the, like our, our own, our own small team, we kept pretty, even though we were separated, we kept pretty tight communication and took a break together. And those we were with, we were very committed to like debriefing at the end of the day, and sort of centering and grounding. And then the other ISM volunteers, the majority of whom, those I met were, you know, incredible people.
So it’s, it’s, it’s, in another way, just so like booing to be with some of the, you know, just really incredibly solid people who are not thrill seeking or anything, but, but, but solidly willing to risk their well being and their health and their, even their lives to stand in solidarity with people. It’s, it’s not something that you get to do every day. So it’s pretty, like life giving and energy, you know, energy giving also.
And then, and then, of course, that the biggest thing, like what Sheila said, the self possession of Palestinian people who are, just remain continually steadfast. Yeah, they’ve been doing this for decades and decades, and they, they know how to do it. It is, it’s, it’s getting worse, and it’s getting harder.
I think that is shown by Palestinians who are choosing to leave Area C and just go where the Israelis want them to go because they can’t, they can’t put up the fight anymore. But for the most part, yeah, Palestinians, their resilience and their resistance is so, yeah, it’s, just to use Sheila’s words again, like, it’s breathtaking to be a part of that. And it’s a real privilege to get to witness that and be a part of that.
Sheila:
I suppose one important thing to know is, is the West Bank isn’t even the West Bank anymore, as Brenna alluded to, all of Area C, which is most of it, is under Israeli military control. And, and increasingly over these decades, since Oslo, which was meant to create a Palestinian state, the opposite has been in effect, in effect, which is that it’s, it’s already been annexed, it already is Israel. So just to be clear for everyone that what is happening is creating concentrated cities of Palestinians surrounded by Israeli settlements.
So it will, the West Bank as, as a place anymore doesn’t even functionally exist. So the Oslo Accords designated Palestinian cities as Area A, Palestinian suburbs as Area B, under Palestinian authority control with the Israeli military in control, and Area C, which is the more than 80% of the West Bank, which is all under Israeli control. So what’s happened is Israeli settlements have moved in entirely into Area C, so that you’re much more likely now, and this is the case in East Jerusalem as well, which was an all-Palestinian area, that this was actually the most telling sentence of the whole trip, as someone on our, in our group, as we did a tour of East Jerusalem, someone asked, are we in West Jerusalem?
And you look outside, and you would think that you were, because everything was in Hebrew, and everyone walking were Jewish Israelis. So it’s, the Palestinian presence is, yeah, isn’t, isn’t even present anymore. So the purpose of all of this is to congregate Palestinians into cities, and have them entirely surrounded by Israeli settlements for control.
So that it’s, it’s like the reservation system in the United States, that that’s, that’s where everything is heading quite, quite rapidly, as the current Israeli administration approves the expansion of settlements. So that’s really, if you think of it as kind of the Wild West, and in fact, most settlers, many of them speak English, and are American citizens, so it’s a kind of re-enacting of the American West. It’s, in Manifest Destiny, then we, there’s a sense of seeing the United States as the new Israel.
Israel is now seen as the new American West, and so it’s this same, same idea of setting up outposts, and then settlements. So they’re actually, one of the places Ben and I stayed, then you could look out to see an outpost, and it was actually a log cabin, and there aren’t trees like that in the West Bank. So it’s very kind of obviously drawing on this settler mindset from the United States, this kind of expansionist vision.
So it’s, that’s, that’s what’s, what’s happening, is a kind of concentration of Palestinians, as Ben said, people moving from rural areas into cities, because they, it’s just too dangerous to be, to be elsewhere, and the kind of access to water and electricity just isn’t, isn’t present, like that’s all been cut, cut off, so they have to, have to go to cities now for that.
Ben:
Yeah, I think to, to answer the question of like what it felt like to be there, it was incredibly intense, and there was a certain way where everything, you were just kind of slapped in the face constantly with reality. You understood everything because of like, because of the effect it had. It was, it was like these moments of, of crisis in a Catholic worker’s soup kitchen where you were just like struck in the face of the reality of what it is like to live and be with people that are, well, I don’t know, sorry, maybe I’m struggling, or I’ve had too much coffee this morning, but yeah, I just also want to say like there’s this feeling of just everything is, everything is real, that this is actually the most real you’ve ever lived, that this is the truth, this is like the underbelly of society, of the world, this is, this is what our society is based off of, this destruction, this violence, this, this settler violence, that we, this actually what you’re seeing is not some extreme version of the world, it’s actually just the real world, it is, it is what happens when the world is built on this violence, that like when you see the destruction of the world, the burning of trees, the burning of cars, the, yeah, when you see, you know, even in some ways like, you know, all the results of state violence, you know, imprisonment, you know, addiction, all these other things, when it’s just like, it’s, it’s like the moment at actions, when the, the police officer comes in incredibly aggressive and like, and arrest you, and you know, arrest the person next to you, and the bruises start happening, when it’s like the world, like all of the nuance of the world, or these places for like ideology, just like flatten, and actually just, you just get hit in the face with reality, and that this is, they’re like, this is the real world, this is what our society, there’s no more room for, for alienation, for nuance, for believing about people’s like intentions, and things like that, it’s just, this is, this is real.
I think that’s something that is like hit over the face over and over again, and really, I mean, the, the avenue of that is like, it’s the gun, you know, it’s the settler with the rifle over his shoulder, and the IOF soldier with the rifle, you know, hanging from his, his side of that, so I just want to say, it’s also this feeling, and in some ways, that’s like, in some ways, it’s almost like a, I don’t want to say, it just, it just feels more real than like walking through America, and you have all these nuances, and you’re supposed to be, you’re told all these, you know, caveats, and all these things, it’s, yeah, the, the, it just, it just feels real, and it actually just feels like you’re in a real place. I know that’s, the word real is not always the most descriptive, but I hope that, yeah, I think, I think maybe Catholic workers also have a sense of that, like being forced to face reality every day, and every step of the day, and yeah, just what the world is actually like.
Lydia:
There’s a piece where we’re so able to be distracted by things here, I think, that we do get this disconnect from reality, of we don’t have to experience things that are distressful if we don’t want to, we can turn off the news, we can, we can even be disconnected from, from food, or like the very thing that sustains us, and yeah, it sounds like they’re like, all of that is, is stripped away, there’s, there’s no more of the facades that, that we kind of put up in polite society, or the distractions that we use to avoid looking at, at what’s really happening in the world.
Ben:
Yeah, it’s like simultaneously those distractions, and just like one group of people has the ability to put up checkpoints, to choke people, to withhold food from the other people, and so all of these discussions about like, oh, you know, are they actually violent, do they want to kill, you know, like, it just, it all gets flattened, and it’s, you know, same conversation with, you know, our unhoused neighbors, it’s just, it’s like, it’s the music, it’s the cities that show up with the, with the, you know, a hundred thousand dollar police cars, you know, it’s the city that shows up with the bulldoze. You know, the LA Catholic worker just put on Instagram this morning was sharing a video of bulldozers, of LA bulldozing an encampment, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s the city that has all of this money, there’s no justification for that, it just all gets flattened.
Brenna:
Yeah, which is why I might add that Catholic workers are uniquely positioned, I think, to be excellent ISM volunteers, so if anybody is thinking of, like, has been on the fence, and is thinking of perhaps traveling to the West Bank with a group like International Solidarity Movement, or met a peace team, we went with both, because ISM will take individual volunteers, and we, we chose to travel as a team, so we did extra preparation and teamwork before going through the ISM training and going, but then on the ground we worked with ISM, I think I would encourage any Catholic worker to go in one or the other, and feel free to reach out to me, I would be really happy to, to kind of facilitate that process for anybody, but like, while we’re over there, we live in community, we do dishes, we, we, um, we stand in solidarity with people, and are, you know, taking, taking risky moves, not on purpose risky moves, but just doing regular solidarity presence stuff that ends up putting ourselves in risk.
We are, like, facilitating meetings. I feel like all the things that we do, what that we did and are doing in the West Bank, are very much things that Catholic workers do regularly in community here, and something that’s, I think, really important is to be grounded in a spiritual practice and, and faith. Palestinians are especially grounded in the reality of, in religion, there’s obviously a very strong Muslim population, and also a very strong Christian population, Christian Palestinians, and Palestinians understand faith, and I think that’s at the root of a lot of their resistance, is their deep belief in God, and their, like, deep community networks that they have, that are built in both family and religion. So anyway, I think, I think Catholic workers are a very good fit there, and I would very much encourage people to go in one of these capacities.
I know there was another Catholic worker delegation, I don’t know as much about it, last, like, end of November, early December, I think, that went with Sibyul, which is a Christian Palestinian organization, that is a little lower risk than what we were doing, than what Sheila and Ben and I were doing, but there’s also other ways to go with Palestinian-led tours, like tour guides, just to visit Palestinian Christian communities, and see the realities of the occupation, and, and do a lot of learning to come, and with the idea of being, that you come home and talk about it. So there’s other lower risk ways to go, that are also extremely, both are extremely important, and I would also be happy to help hook people up with, with that way to go as well.
Like, I think, Sheila and Ben and I can attest to Palestinian hospitality is like off the charts, it’s like nothing you’ve ever, I can guarantee, it’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced, and they’re, but they’re like guest houses, like because we did take some breaks, there’s even a brewery, a craft brewery that we got to go to, their food is unbelievable, people will bend over backwards to make sure that you’re having a good time, they really want internationals there, and they treat internationals very, very well, and it’s, it’s a wonderful, welcoming feeling.
Theo:
That, that might be a good way to end it, we’re at like an hour, unless, did Lydia have any other questions, or did you all want us to prompt you to say anything else?
Brenna:
And I kind of said that because I was, I saw that we were at an hour, and I was like, I want to tell Catholic workers to go, and Ben was just talking about Catholic workers, so I was like, okay, oh, it looks like Sheila’s coming off mute.
Sheila:
Yeah, just to echo what Brenna’s said, I think there is a particular way that Catholic workers are, are kind of like made for this work, because it involves a lot of presence, a lot of like skills and de-escalation, a lot of watchfulness, a lot of hanging out and helpfulness, of being able to receive hospitality, of being able to be useful in small and large ways, and, and already Catholic workers have, have broken from the lies that are told us, so it’s a way to, yeah, there’s kind of like less mental and emotional labor that has to be done to kind of receive the situation that you’re placing yourself in. You’re already primed for that and already understand it, so I, to echo what she, what she’s saying, that there’s, with the Metta Peace Team, that it’s a beautiful way to enter into this place, which is very beautiful, and I’m very eager to have visitors come back and, and be there, and, and getting to spend, you know, a day in, a couple days in Jerusalem and in Bethlehem, and to go to the Sea of Galilee, and to be, be in the places that Jesus was, and understand the occupation that He experienced is, yeah, is, is very meaningful.
Ben:
I guess it would be okay for me to add one thing to that. I think the other way around, learning from Palestinians and seeing the ways in which, like, settler colonialism is, works and functions and, like, exercises itself there, I think is also very important for Catholic workers in their own acknowledgement, like, or their own, you know, journey, and those experiences are very important for the work that Catholic workers could be doing in their city. Like, when I was over there, I kept on, I also saw, you know, so many of my, you know, again, like, unhoused neighbors in faces, and, you know, it was very quickly after I got back that, you know, I was standing with some friends that, you know, there was just some tents on the city green here, and the cops rolled up, you know, and said, why are you here?
And then, you know, just immediately get out the phone and do that, and then even a month later, like, an encampment was swept here, you know, and evicted here, and the municipality put, replaced where the encampment was with boulders, which was also a move of the IOF, and making that connection really, not only really enlivened people to say, like, to, like, how violent of a move this was, it also, like, helped and aided, like, how can we better resist this? I actually feel like, you know, pointing back to, like, how threatening, you know, the olive harvest and the shepherds are to the Zionist regime can help us better to understand, like, what is actually, what are the most threatening, what are the most threatening things to, like, the American empire in that way? And I, I mean, I think that’s really, at least in my context, and I think in a lot of Catholic worker contexts, and, you know, even in New York, like, I think the unhoused encampment really is a place of resistance to the American empire in that way, and especially to the, you know, the real estate state.
So I say that to say, like, and in that, you know, being amongst Palestinian and Palestinian families, you just got to see social ties and familial ties and the ways in which those functioned in some ways, you know, and to be more sustainable in that. So I just say it also, it enlivens the imagination for what resistance can look like here. So yeah, there’s a lot of, you know, communal thing and living on top of each other and having more capacity for things that make Catholic workers very, you know, maybe, you know, already trained to do some of this work, but there’s also a lot to learn and a lot to imagine, and like that, especially in how we, you know, especially how settler colonialism still runs society here, you know, it’s, settler colonialism never ends. It’s a, it demands to be perfect, and it demands to colonize, like, every aspect of society and people, and I think the work, you know, whether it’s, you know, been named throughout a lot of history, Catholic workers work with people that have been, you know, are victims of that settler colonialism, and, you know, have been marked, you know, for disposal by the state.
And so being around people that are already resisting that can help us to imagine new ways, you know, I think we have a lot to learn from Palestinians. And so, yeah.
Theo:
Well, Ben, Sheila, Brenna, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us today. Thanks for spending a month of your life doing this work. We’ll put contact info for Brenna in the show notes if you want to reach out to learn more, or hear from them more, or get involved.
Yeah, just thanks again for being with us today.
Brenna:
Thank you so much for bringing us together, and letting us talk about this. It means a lot.
Sheila:
Yeah, thank you. Let’s see how things look here.
Theo:
What a great interview. It was awesome to have them. I really liked how they talked about the Catholic workers’ work overlapping with this idea of accompaniment work.
And I was thinking even about, like, historically about Dorothy Day going down to Quinoneah Farm and helping keep watch back in her time, and being shot at. You know, they were an anti-racist, multi-racial community in Georgia in a time where that wasn’t okay. And so they had people stand guard outside all night to try and prevent violence from happening.
And the story goes, Dorothy was just sitting there listening to the radio with a friend when somebody shot through their vehicle. So I was thinking of that when they were discussing how this is, like, really part of our tradition. And I was also thinking about, you know, on Skid Row in LA during my time with the worker there, oftentimes the cops, the LAPD, would just be going around harassing people who live on the street, bothering them for really just being homeless and being there, and us just kind of standing there and being a witness, and maybe even a little bit of a deterrent to that abuse of power.
Lydia:
Yeah. You know, the other thing that I was thinking of during the interview was sometimes the conversation that happens at Catholic workers surrounding, like, effectiveness versus, like, faithfulness. And I think it’s true, you know, there are times when, like, at the Catholic Worker, we aren’t always the most effective.
We haven’t really brought in world peace. There’s still a lot of people who are homeless. And you could see this in some of Dorothy’s writings as well.
Sometimes, like, this piece of, like, yeah, you know, sometimes our guests, they come and they stay and they go and they still have a lot of problems. And I thought of this piece of when they were talking about shifting some of the language from, like, being there to help with protection to being there to be a part of solidarity. And in thinking about how sometimes the solidarity is the work.
And being effective and doing things that are effective is good. I think we should try for that. But that can’t be the only goal.
And things are worthwhile in doing, even if we can’t be effective, that there’s a piece of presence that is also a part of calling. And I do think Catholic workers are uniquely familiar with that, in doing these things day after day, even if we know that things may never in our lifetime fully change. But knowing that it is still, regardless, the right thing to do.
Theo:
Yeah. And it’s scary, too, that, you know, that what used to be an effective international presence in deterring some amount of violence, at least when people of Western and European countries were there, just isn’t a thing anymore. You know, I just saw today, like, the ninth U.S. citizen was killed in the West Bank from the past while. And, you know, our government doesn’t really seem to care too much about that. It just, it made me appreciate that Brenna and Ben and Sheila were willing to go step into that increasingly dangerous situation over there.
Lydia:
For sure, definitely. And I know all of them are really hoping that more people will be encouraged to step into those things, whether taking that same risk level or doing some of the lower risk travels over there. And hopefully some people listening will be inspired to maybe take some of those risks on for themselves or go and sort of do an initial look at things.
Well, that wraps up another episode for us of Coffee with Catholic Workers. We want to thank our Catholic worker audio engineer, Chris, as well as David Hayes for our music and Becky McIntyre for our graphic.
Theo:
Thanks again for joining us for some clarification of thought. We hope today’s conversation has been enlightening and maybe even that you’re encouraged to go out and help build a world where it’s easier to be good.
Coffee with Catholic Workers is a podcast by and about Catholic Workers. Every two weeks, join Lydia Wong and Theo Kayser for a conversation with some of their favorite Catholic Worker folk. Special thanks to sound engineer Chris of Bloomington, IN.
