Achvat Amim: Building Solidarity in Time of Crisis

Over the past few months, our work at Achvat Amim has taken on renewed urgency. This fall, two participants in our educational-justice program were detained and deported after accompanying Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest—part of our long-standing solidarity efforts in the South Hebron Hills. This moment revealed exactly why our programs matter: because young Jews are showing up with humility and commitment, and because communities under threat continue to ask for international presence and partnership.

Since our last update, our participants and alumni have been on the ground supporting families in Masafer Yatta facing home demolition orders, accompanying local activists during documentation shifts, and volunteering daily with organizations providing community services. 

At the same time, interest in Achvat Amim’s programs has grown dramatically. Dozens of young people from around the world have reached out in the last few weeks alone, eager to volunteer, learn, and join the movement. Your support has allowed us to meet this moment—covering emergency legal costs, sustaining our partnerships in the South Hebron Hills, and ensuring that our staff can safely guide participants through an extremely complex period.

Thank you for standing with us during a time when this work is both more difficult and more necessary than ever. Your support allows us to continue walking alongside communities who invite us in, preparing the next generation of committed movement-builders, and holding onto the belief that solidarity can shape a different future.

Links:

• https://forward.com/opinion/783919/west-bank-israel-teen-deported/?utm_source=Mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=sundayedit
• https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/settler-violence-is-out-of-control-how-a-perfect/id1440719849?i=1000736572439

This summer brought with it unbearable violence, impossible choices — and still, moments of clarity, connection, and commitment. The escalation with Iran feels so far away, but the stress and pressure has buried itself into our bodies and tested the resilience and adaptability of programming and partnerships.

Faced with impossible choices - uncertainty and closed airspaces - we were forced to cancel the Summer Program. In spite of all the careful planning in the world, war and occupation will always force us to pivot our work.

So we pivot. We made a promise to stand alongside our partners in Masafer Yatta, and when our cohort couldn't join us, we ran English language workshops for children in Umm al Kheir. The most urgent demand from communities in Masafer Yatta is to join them: support sumud by standing with people on the ground and seeing the situation for yourself. When you step into these relationships, you don't watch displacements as if they're happening someone else somewhere separated by screens, walls, language, and distance. You take it on as your own struggle, happening to your friends and kin less than an hour away, to a place that's welcomed you like home. 

No matter what, we made a commitment to building education and community together, of nourishing each other and not turning our backs. This is what it means for co-resistance to be grounded in community, a practice that is only as strong as its relationships.

“International support is one of the most important factors helping these endangered communities stay put. English classes in the South Hebron Hills aren’t a cute co-existence effort - they’re a crucial way to help the youth of the community share their struggle with the world" - Eliana Padwa

Impossible choices opened our eyes to the need for a permanent Winter Program - we wanted to make sure our Summer participants could still have an opportunity to join us on the ground and so we are reviving last year's pilot program with Rabbis for Human Rights and hosting the 3 Week Winter Solidarity Visit.

Solidarity, community, and education should never be gated by wealth or circumstance. Human rights work demands a diversity of voices - we work hard to make our programming as accessible as possible, and we need your help building an educational model that brings in the people our movement needs. Your donation goes directly toward reducing financial barriers for activists and learners who make up the heart of community organizing.

Your support builds a movement that reflects the justice and equality we seek.

It feels like a betrayal to admit that war and occupation is not going anywhere for the time being, and that does not make us any less willing to do educational and community building work for the world and values we believe in. It makes us aware of the growing limitations on all of us and the need to keep pushing and adapting. It connects us to the growing number of people plugging into solidarity work and education with passion and dedication, and the urgency they feel. That's why we're building online programming to help connect and empower activists across the diaspora when they can't join education and solidarity building on the ground.

Last but certainly not least - we're excited to announce that Becca Strober, our cherished friend, mentor, and long-time Oversight Committee member, is joining us as Interim Executive Director. For over a decade Becca has been a community organizer, educator, and political strategist, working with organizations like Breaking the Silence, Sadaka Reut, Gisha, ORAM, and Mahapach-Taghir, combining community building, accessible learning, and anti-occupation activism. This work is a lighthouse to the organizing we strengthen through our volunteer placements, learning days, and solidarity work, and the connections we build across our movement, so we're incredibly grateful for Becca to be joining us, and for their expertise and vision to strengthen this work. Becca is also the co-founder of our sister organization Midreshet Dror.

These pivots are not easy and we need your support to close the gap of lost funding in order to continue running groundbreaking programming, and keep building the infrastructure for solidarity and education.

Please give and share to allow us to sustain these educational initiatives and programming pivots.

We are the only program of its kind - offering education, community building, and solidarity work rooted in Jewish tradition, while connecting activists from around the world to grassroots movements that affirm Jewish-Palestinian partnership and self-determination for all peoples in the place they call home.

War and polarization is not going anywhere just yet, so neither is the demand for our programming. We've made a commitment to continue empowering and standing alongside our partners and communities, but we cannot do this without you. 

Your support makes it possible for us to adapt, grow, and continue offering accessible, justice-driven programming in a moment that calls for nothing less. Thank you for your commitment to this work. It means the world.

In solidarity,