The women of the Palestinian village of Susya tell their stories through the lens of a camera. A participatory photography project coordinated by Activestills.  By Activestills Around 400 people from 45 shepherds’ and farmers’ families are living in the Palestinian village of Susya, located in Area C (which is under Israeli military and civil control) in the South Hebron Hills. They have lived in this region on a seasonal basis since at least the 19th century. In 1986, the Israeli Civil Administration expelled the residents of Susya from their original village and declared the zone to be an archeological site on…

International volunteers join Palestinians and Israelis to build ‘alternative facts on the ground’ in defiance of Israeli demolition policy. By Activestills Six months after Israeli bulldozers demolished the house of Salim and Arabiya Shawamreh, Palestinian workers, Israeli activists, and international volunteers gathered to celebrate their successful efforts to rebuild it. Dubbed “Beit Arabiya” (“Arabiya’s House”), and used as a peace center by the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) since 2003, it has long been a gathering place for ICAHD’s efforts to resist the Israeli government’s discriminatory housing policies that systematically refuse building permits to Palestinians and then demolish houses…

Oren Ziv is one of the founders of Activestills, the photo agency that +972 has been working with since the site was launched. Activestills' photographers are present in places that other media organizations often avoid: On their flickr photostream you can see images from the front lines of unarmed protest in Palestinian villages, arrests of Israeli activists during J14 demonstrations, evacuations of Palestinians and poor Jewish families from their homes, trials of activists and whistleblowers, and much more. There are more pictures by Oren Ziv on +972 than by any other photographer, including our own bloggers. On Tuesday, Oren was hit…

Over at the Project Democracy blog, which I am writing for ACRI's democracy initiative, I responded to a post Mati Shemeolof wrote last week for +972 Magazine. Shemeolof describes his fellow bloggers' gloom regarding the future of Israel's democracy by putting forward the theory that the situation is not really all that bad. In his response to statements made by Yossi Gurvitz and Dimi Reider to a visiting delegation of Rabbis for Human Rights from North America, Shemeolof  points out that Israel's cultural life - particularly the leftist cultural life -  is flourishing. He offers examples such as ActiveStills, Guerilla…