By the time the documentary Five Broken Cameras came out in November 2011, the Palestinian village of Bil'in in the occupied West Bank had already become the symbol of Palestinian non-violent resistance to Israeli occupation, Israeli settlements and the separation wall/barrier. It had already celebrated six long years of weekly Friday demonstrations led by the residents, joined by Israeli and international activists and aggressively repressed by the IDF; it had already seen several of its residents killed after being shot by IDF soldiers during these demonstrations (among them, Bassam Abu Rahme and his sister, Jawaher Abu Rahmah); and succeeded in pressuring the government to alter…

Next month, the Palestinian non-violent resistance movement will take center stage at an art gallery in New Mexico. Mati Milstein, an Israeli photojournalist, has spent the last year documenting the activities of a group of women activists fighting the occupation. He discusses "Nesa'iyéh (a woman thing)," his exhibition of their struggle as depicted through his lens, in an interview with Noa Yachot.  How did you get involved in the project? I was in downtown Ramallah on March 15, 2011, photographing Palestinian demonstrations calling for unity between disparate political factions. I noticed that many of the protest leaders were, in fact,…

When we allow non-violence to be distorted as illegitimate, we fail to uphold our most cherished principles. It is not a strange phenomenon for morality to be the object of contestation. Competing groups often battle for the moral high ground when presenting their case to the outside world in a customary appeal for support. Far from being an exception to this rule, Israelis and Palestinians are its standard bearers, constantly providing their accounts for the entire world to see, hear, and sympathize. The tragedy is that this game has been played for so long, with arguments crafted in such minute…