UWAC & Support for Palestine March update

UWAC & Support for Palestine October Update

At Feeding Ourselves in Cloughjordan this year, we continued with our joint struggle, shared solidarity activities with farmers in Palestine.

We brought Mahmoud Zwahre in from the West Bank via live video link to tell us about farming there with settler attackers constantly increasing. Mahmoud pointed to the real importance of staying on the land – farmers have autonomy and some independence from the Israeli state when they know, grow on, graze and keep accessing their land. Food aid does the opposite – it turns independent farmers into state dependents. So solidarity visits and fruiting tree campaigns remain vitally important even now. This is real food sovereignty – being steadfast in feeding your community on your land.

Mahmoud had the chance to talk with Talamh Beo members who answered the call at least year’s Feeding Ourselves, and travelled to help with the Olive Harvest 2025. Mahmoud is involved with Faz3a which helps facilitate this annually. For more see https://www.defendpalestine.org/

Our Q and A with Mahmoud came after the film On my Land which features three generations of the Zwahre family and their work to stay on the land. Decades of stories from pre-colonisation life to weekly protests, weekly house raids, and the importance of continuing with planting and ploughing and building on your land emerged. The everyday resilience and resistance on display was of a level hard to comprehend in the west. Here’s just one example of many from the film. Setters attack school children as they try to walk to school – the system of roadblocks and checkpoints increasingly imposed upon Palestinains – and only Palestinians in the West Bank – makes this ever longer and more perilous. The army does nothing to protect them.

Because of this, Palestinian communities sometimes build their own schools to reduce the risks of attack. In the film, they build a school over a single night under cover of darkness. A single night! Of course soon after the Israeli’s demolished the school – heart-rending heaps of white rubble created by an occupying force – so the community put up a hardy tent and carried on. This everyday steadfastness is at a different level – fully human, fully alive, every day an epic undertaking in the face of constant processes of colonisation and occupation.

We’d a packed house for this Q and A and film, and are bringing Mahmod back to Ireland via video link in April and in person in May. For the video link, the event is to coincide with International Day of Peasant Struggle. More here – https://sioltachroi.ie/product/webinar-food-sovereignty-farming-palestine/ where Mahmoud will be joined by Ahdam Karajah, a young farmer in Saffa near Ramallah.

At Feeding Ourselves, We also gathered seeds for the next 1000 Madleens flotilla to Gaza. This is another attempt to break the illegal siege of Gaza with dozens of boats from all over Europe. Governments are being derelict in their duty so people are stepping up – again and again. Here is the message a farmer from Gaza sent us:

“To be honest, we are facing many difficulties. First and foremost, farming is very limited right now, as Israel does not allow agricultural supplies to enter Gaza. We are currently planting seeds that we’ve extracted ourselves from vegetables. We hope that you can bring seeds with you; we need seeds for peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, cauliflower, and zucchini. We also need seeds for leafy greens like molokhia (jute mallow), chard, spinach, arugula, and parsley—anything that can be grown to help the people in Gaza. I also want flower seeds. I miss natural flowers so much, and they are currently unavailable in Gaza. This is a personal request, but I truly miss them”

As they prepare to set sail, we wish everyone on board the very best in their brave efforts to break the immoral and illegal siege.

Talamh Beo seeds and stickers will be on the agricultural boat on the flotilla. We also raised €500 for Palestinian farmers in the West Bank.