January in Review: It’s Almost Over!

Happy New Years! We hope this newsletter finds you well. In here, you will find lots of content- some of it fun, some of it practical, none of it all too serious. The nature of involvement with activism here means voluntarily exposing yourself to one of the worst ongoing human rights crises in the world today, and it’s been a rough few weeks.
We don’t expect that this newsletter will end the occupation, but the horoscopes are fun, centralized communication is good, and its been a fun little project for all of us involved. We hope you enjoy!

With this section, we hope to give a space for looking back, reflecting, and giving a small pat on the back for the accomplishments of the collective.

New Year, New Strategies
This Month, ATL members came together to assess the crucial process of onboarding to see how it could be improved. After weeks of deliberation and planning, they were able to create a new, expedited process to welcome new members in the warmest way we can. Want the details? Sign up to come to the Big Meeting on January 27th!

All That’s Online
This month was another great month for ATL’s online presence, following and helping shape online discourse trends as they come. At the beginning of the month, when the hot discourse was Emma Watson’s Instagram post, ATL member Em Hilton wrote a great piece about it. If you don’t already, follow ATL on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

January in Umm al-Kheir
Our partners in Umm al-Kheir have been facing a particularly difficult month and have been requesting an international presence in the village. Throughout the month, members of ATL have been volunteering to show up and do overnights at the village through this difficult time. This request is continuing into the coming month- for more info, view the Signal groups for postings.

January 18, and Sheikh Jarrah
The crisis around the eviction of the Salhiye family was another one of the harder struggles ATL members were involved with this month. Throughout all of it, members of ATL did their best to show up in whatever ways they could- answering calls to appear at the house when it was under threat, protesting in the days before and after, and spreading the word on social media to elevate it to awareness on the international scale.

Especially of note is the speed and care that was put into fundraising for the Salhiye family after the demolition. When there were problems with Paypal, members of ATL rushed to seek out alternative ways of receiving donations while the topic was still in the public eye. The communal effort for fundraising, clothing donations, communications, protest, and documentation is this year’s first example of the ATL community coming together to help fill needed roles in the struggle against occupation. To everyone involved- thank you.

To donate to the family, go to the fundraising page on Non Violence International.

On The Ground: All That’s Going On

Want to sign up for something but can’t find the link? Did you mute the Signal groups and missed out on something important? No problem! With the ATL Newsletter all your organizing needs can be found right here, in one centralized place!

The first Big Meeting of 2022 will be on Thursday the 27th in Jerusalem. Sign up here, and we hope to see you there!

Achvat Amim engages with community justice struggles at the intersections of Jewishness, feminism, racial justice, and solidarity. Join Achvat’s Experiential Sunday Learning Group, a community of activists exploring home, peoplehood, and liberation. Find out more at the link here or email julie@achvatamim.org.

Part 2 of the Community Safety and Sexual Violence Training with the Jerusalem Rape Crisis Center will be held on February 4th. This training is an important opportunity for each one of us to receive tools and knowledge to be better community members and to build a stronger, safer collective. Register at https://forms.gle/3n8RKju1EBhFvFD76

This Is Not an Ulpan: Registration is now open for TINAU’s Winter Semester! Learn Hebrew or Arabic in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, or from the comfort of your home with online classes. Go to thisisnotanulpan.com for more information. Use the code ATL10 when signing up for a 10% discount!

Coffee Dates: Are you new to ATL and wondering how you can get involved? Have you been with ATL for a bit now and feel like you can provide some answers? Alternatively, do you like coffee? Help bring community to the collective and sign up for a Care Committee
Coffee Date!

All That’s Write, the official blog of All That’s Left (this website) is back online and accepting submissions! Anyone can send a piece they’ve written, of any kind, to be posted on the blog. Details about submission, content, and non-hierarchical editing structure at the Big Meeting 🙂

January Horoscopes (sponsored content)

An Interview With Daniel Roth: Activist, Leader, Nerd

After weeks of coordination, we managed to secure a sliver of time to interview Jerusalem’s heartthrob, Daniel Roth. We asked him a bunch of topical fun questions. 

Questions:

Sadly for all of us, you’ll be leaving Jerusalem for a few months. You’ve been here for a while- what should be on everyone’s Jerusalem Bucket List?

• Things that I try to do often: sit at Cafe Betzalel when it’s not too cold, spend time just walking aimlessly in the old city looking for new vantage points to see different views, and continue to be a part of organizing anti-apartheid, anti-occupation solidarity. I’ll also add that I think a few more Shabbat dinners and a few more quiet Saturdays would be wonderful. Those are things I very much appreciate about this place.

What is a good memory you have from your time in ATL?

• It’s hard to limit to one. I’ll say one very recent great memory was the last Big Meeting. I really am a fan of Big Meetings; I think they’re incredibly important places for people to see each other, to talk, to get a sense of where everything is at internally, externally – projects, partnerships, actions. It was just really beautiful to see such a packed room by incredible activists and organizers, learners, teachers. People coming together to build a movement was really a wonderful, wonderful thing… I also thought of a particular time, early early on in 2013, we did a few actions that were particularly aimed at connecting the anti-occupation organizing – the organizers, the group of people we were in – with the sort of Jewish-diaspora angle in a very clear and prescient way for me. That was an action where we sort of drew the Green Line in public in the middle of Jerusalem and engaged people on the street in what we called a Public Education Action or something like that. And another where a group of us went to Hebron to Shuhada street and read from Chayei Sarah from the parshah for what we thought would be a couple of minutes before we were attacked or arrested. It ended up being half a minute before we were hauled up by the guards, but both of those spoke very deeply to my identity and my commitment to building justice here. 

What is an accomplishment you’re proud of, in life and in organizing?

• I think that in the last decade or so I have felt like I’m doing an okay job of living my life according to my ideals, according to the world I want to see. Not entirely – I still take airplanes for example, and we’re facing a climate crisis. But I’m proud of being a part of building this movement and I think that Achvat Amim is a big part of that; being in the world for the past nearly 10 years, it’s very much an expression of my participation in building this movement… I am proud of doing my best to learn new languages. Yeah!

Any secret phobias?

• Not spiders in general, because I don’t jump back at spiders, but specifically the giant spider from Lord of the Rings… There are a few moments in Lord of the Rings where I find myself saying “I might have made it that far, but not any further.” I probably would have just turned right around. 

Justin Bieber or One Direction?

• I truly don’t know. I know that Justin Bieber is a Canadian. And I know lots of their songs I’m sure, both [of them]. But I think I have to go with One Direction because, if I understand correctly,  they’re a group and I think people organizing together is a good thing.

Explain the Israeli Occupation of Palestine in 30 seconds.

• The Occupation is, typically, a military rule over millions of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. But, between the river and the sea, Israel controls everything and everyone at the end of the day. There is a deep inequality that looks different in different parts of this region. What we’re doing is building a movement for equality and justice so that it’s no longer the case that Israel is controlling millions of people.

That was so well said. Next question- FMK: Bush, Obama, Trump.

• I think my answer has to just be, like, oof. Like a side-stepping and sad Israeli noise. Like oof, I can’t answer that. 

Favorite Niche Historical subject? (unrelated to I/P)

• I was glad you asked this one… I am truly interested in the following, which is how day-to-day things have worked in previous civilizations. So things like food and restaurants – I have often wondered if some kind of restaurant has existed in most civilizations or if it’s a relatively modern thing. But also how people slept in previous civilizations.  And also water in particular, how drinking water and sewage and agriculture worked. I think we have this sense that we have advanced in a steady way, particularly on water, but really in many respects – zooming in on day-to-day things that people have used for centuries and millennia – it’s really interesting to see how that’s not entirely true or maybe not true at all. 

Hobbies you currently do or would like to do?

• The only thing that comes to mind is movies. I love movies, I love talking about movies and seeing movies and thinking about movies… particularly sci-fi and comic book movies.

One nerdy movie for non-nerds?

• That is the hardest question! My assumption is that most people have seen the first Matrix, but that might not be true anymore so I think I would say that – but with the caveat that people try to imagine what it would be like before the Matrix existed in the year 1999, before a lot of the special effects that they used existed (because they invented them), before anyone had heard of this now deeply ingrained cultural probe. Going to see that movie for the first time in a theater, after their advertising campaign had been a mysterious “What is the Matrix? Come see this movie.” So I’d say try to get into that mindset and then see it, knowing that it’s impossible to really travel back to that pre-Matrix moment. 

Life Advice? 

• So, life advice. My mom used to tell me that life only speeds up as you get older. That’s not always true of everyday, but it is true overall of our life trajectories. So I try to remember that everytime I’m making a choice about how to spend my time here, knowing that time is only speeding up for me. That’s helped me, I think, to make important choices. Not always good choices! But choices that I think have been important in my life. 

Parting Words for the adoring masses of ATLiens?

• See you soon! We’ll be back in October and we’ll see you then. So keep organizing and building this movement to win.