Day 15: Om Sleiman Farm

On this day we traveled to Om Sleiman Farm in Bil’in near Ramallah. This farm is a part of a mushrooming network of co-op CSA farms in the West Bank. These farms plant Palestinian heirloom, non-GMO, organic produce as a way to promote the resilience of the Palestinian agricultural sector in the face of the Israeli agricultural industry which is attempting to flood the Palestinian market with cheap, genetically modified produce full of pesticides OR sell Palestinian farmers cheap Israeli seeds and pesticides that are terrible for the environment and destroy our thousands of years of indigenous knowledge on how to grow food and produce in our land. This is part of an Israeli multi-pronged strategy to remove us from our land by either separating us from it, or making us lose our intimate and deep knowledge of our land. What makes Om Sleiman farm unique is that it is located on lands that were reclaimed by the village through weekly civil disobedience and nonviolent action which forced the Israeli military to reroute the wall closer to the encroaching Maale Adumim settlement. The lands on which the farm is nesetled are also the site where the Oscar-nominated documentary, 5 Broken Cameras, was shot.

Campers quickly engaged in the service work by helping divide and organize the piles of wood beams, metal beams, and others items which the farm's team can use for future projects that serve to develop the farm. It was a hot day but the campers worked really hard and were rewarded with some delicious locally-planted mlukhiye.

We returned to campus for a break and re-met later in the afternoon to watch Farha, which narrates the story of a Palestinian girl who survived the Nakba. This was followed by a meaningful discussion and reflection about the film, followed by the importance of making sure that the narratives around Nakba continue to be told and preserved.