Protective Presence Against Occupation of Palestine

Calendar

When:

November 14, 2025 @ 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm

2025-11-14T18:30:00-08:00

2025-11-14T20:30:00-08:00

Where:

Online audio or in-person

Event

Protective Presence Against Occupation of Palestine – Conversation with Will (in-person in East Bay; audio online option)

In person East Bay CA; details w/ RSVP (option for audio online)

From Will:

I just returned from three weeks in the occupied West Bank during the olive harvest, where international volunteers were invited to do nonviolent protective presence work with Palestinian farmers resisting military and paramilitary violence. Settling civilians in occupied territory is a war crime (Geneva articles 49, 85; ICC article 8) backed by US empire; nonviolent presence imposes privileged western bodies in conflict zones to support indigenous resistance to ethnic cleansing.

Soldiers and settlers repeatedly claimed false legal grounds to demand expulsion from ancestral indigenous lands Palestinian families have harvested for generations. Many of the trees we harvested were hundreds of years old, carefully cultivated by people who have lived on this land for millenia – some olive trees can live to be more than 2,000 years old.

The farmers we helped protect were repeatedly harassed and intimidated by armed settlers and the military. 32 members of our group were deported, I was detained for 2 hours as one of our hosts received a death threat if he stayed in the area, and we faced many other incidents of imperialist and zionist violence. We were attacked by settlers several times including when settlers armed wth clubs burned a car; video recorded a Palestinian woman being beaten nearly to death in media coverage that reached a global audience. Several situations became so life threatening we had to flee the areas we were trying to harvest in, sometimes with sudden calls of “Run!” as armed settlers arrived. Many Palestinians were killed in the occupied territories while I was there, and the sham “ceasefire” continues to provide political cover to US politicians during an ongoing genocide….

I was invited to offer an informal conversation with people about what I experienced – I’m not an expert, and I want everyone to listen to Palestinians and people more knowledgable than me directly, but I’ll do my best to share some of what I learned and what it means for me and host a discussion. I’m very much a learner here and trying to make sense of how to live in integrity in a world that is completely crazy. I don’t have answers but I will encourage you if you can to consider joining protective presence brigades, as well as consider other ways to support indigenous resistance including material aid, prisoner support, the BDS boycott campaign, direct action disruption, and solidarity movements against zionism and US empire. And above all speaking the truth.

Truth, risk, and sacrifice seem to be the most important meditation prompts for personal action.

(Content may be upsetting; this event is for good faith dialogue and learning, not a space for denial of ongoing US imperialist and zionist genocide.)

Event will be in Oakland or Berkeley, exact event location when you register.

Registration and more info is here: https://luma.com/yalevhzz

78440