PODCAST TRANSCRIPT: Documenting the settler takeover of the West Bank
This transcript was generated using an AI transcription service and lightly edited for readability. Please consult the corresponding audio before quoting.
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Jennifer Cutler
Welcome to the +972 Podcast, your direct line to the journalists, thinkers, and activists struggling for justice in Israel-Palestine. I’m Jennifer Cutler, Podcast Producer at +972 Magazine, and your host for today’s episode. Our podcast grounds the discussion in lived realities to bring you closer to the issues that matter most between the River and the Sea.
Before we dive in, a quick reminder that what we do would not be possible without you, our readers and listeners. If you believe in our mission and would like to support our work, head over to 972mag.com/members and find out how to become a member of +972 or make a one-off contribution.
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Jennifer Cutler
Across the occupied West Bank, entire Palestinian communities are being pushed off their land at a dizzying speed. Settler attacks, coordinated and violent, are increasingly routine—and yet, in Israel, they are frequently treated as a non-event, often supported by the authorities and deliberately ignored by the vast majority of the media. Israeli media has long operated with severe limitations, obscuring the daily realities of occupation and rendering Palestinian life abstract and violence episodic. Since October 7, 2023, these constraints have tightened, shielding the Israeli public from the routine injustices and indignities of military-settler rule over over the lives of 3 million Palestinians. This evasion puts those reporters who do cover what’s happening in the West Bank at heightened risk.
For two decades, Oren Ziv has made it his mission to document the communities and struggles that much of the Israeli press has long marginalized or ignored. A cofounder of the Activestills photography collective and a reporter for Local Call and long time contributor for +972 Magazine, Oren often seems to be in three or four places at once, arriving on the scene of protests, demolitions, and expulsions to capture what Israeli society is conditioned not to see — or cannot bear to confront.
Today, we’re catching him in Tel Aviv to talk about his recent West Bank reporting, how he sees the growing collaboration between settlers and the state, the role of photography as a tool of resistance, and what forms of dissent are still possible.
Before we jump in, just a note to listeners that this episode was recorded before Israel’s political-security Cabinet approved a series of measures on February 8th further expanding Israel’s bureaucratic control over the West Bank. Oren’s insights show how, on the ground, this process of annexation has been decades in the making, and its acceleration under the current government will only intensify the reality he describes.
Thanks for joining me on the +972 podcast.
Oren Ziv
Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Jennifer Cutler
Let’s start with your new piece on settler outposts. This is a big investigation, and it uses your photography and reporting, as well as satellite images, maps, testimonies from landowners and victims of violence, Palestinian officials, testimonies of soldiers, and internal settler documentation. What made you take this broader approach? And what larger story are you telling?
Oren Ziv
Before October 7, we were documenting the process of settlers’ effort to push Palestinian communities out of their land. Of course, it’s not happening by itself, it’s with the support of the army, the police, and of course, the government — the extreme ministers — to push Palestinians in the beginning from Area C in the land between the Jordan Valley and Ramallah, in agriculture communities, shepherding communities, that are the weakest and the poorest communities. Many of them don’t own the land. They lease it for many, many years.
Many of them are refugees from ‘48, from the Negev/Nakab. Then later, another wave, they were evicted after ‘67, after the occupation of the West Bank, and now when they’re being evicted, it’s the fourth or fifth time they’re being moved. So this process started before October 7, but after the war began, it escalated.
We’re talking about almost 100 communities that were pushed away. And the new piece is talking about the next steps. So, after the settlers are finished with most of the herding communities across Area C, and just earlier this month we saw the eviction of the largest herding community in Area C, Ras al-Auja, near Jericho, that suffered for many years from escalating violence. When the rest of the communities around them were evicted, all the pressure was on them and they were forced to leave.
While this is happening, the settlers are already thinking one step further: they’re aiming to the palestinian towns, the palestinian villages in Area B, even in Area A. So the herding communities that were evicted, many of the landowners are in the villages and the cities nearby and now the settlers are pushing there. The investigation we did, and are still doing, will show how they move by a plan, to the next places, how they attempt — they didn’t succeed yet — but they’re attempting to force a whole community out, but not a herding community, not a bedouin community, but a village with a master plan, with houses and a school and a whole community, a much bigger one than the communities they managed to force away till now.
We’re talking about the town of Douma, we’re talking about Al-Mughayyir, or anything between Ramallah, Nablus, and the Jordan Valley. The investigation will show how they’re surrounding them by outposts and pushing the agricultural communities that were in the edge of the villages and now focusing on the villages themselves.
Jennifer Cutler
This process of pressure and expulsion is not new, as you mentioned, but what was once seen as sort of a tacit cooperation between settlers and the Israeli state and military is becoming increasingly intertwined. Under the current government, outposts that were technically illegal under Israeli law are rapidly becoming recognized legally, and the military can increasingly be seen as standing aside or even participating as settlers attack Palestinian villages and force them out of their homes. Can you speak a bit about how this pressure and how this political cooperation between settlers and the state is actually playing out on the ground?
Oren Ziv
Much before the war and this extreme government, the army and the police were assisting the West Bank settlers. But this, of course, escalated. It became much more efficient since the beginning of the war, in a few ways. One of them is, for example, that many, many settlers, even the most extreme ones who live in farms or illegal outposts, even according to Israeli law, were recruited to reserve service in the Israeli military, meaning many Palestinians telling us that before the settler would come with civilian clothes and push them away, block them from walking with their sheep in the open areas around the villages, now the same person comes with a uniform and with a task force and with weapon and with much, much more authority. This is one thing.
The other thing, for example, is that many of the settlers got equipment through the government, different programs, different ministers — the ATVs, equipment to see at night. In general, even more than that, you have a feeling that the army, if in the past some soldiers, some units, some people, people would try not, of course, to help Palestinians, but would try to maintain the status quo, the situation as it is, now that doesn’t exist. I talked for this story, but also to previous stories with soldiers who tell us we don’t get any orders on how to protect Palestinians. Although Israeli soldiers are allowed by law to detain Israelis and foreigners, as we see, when it comes to settlers, the soldiers really, at least on the ground, the commanders don’t tell them they’re allowed to detain them until the army comes in.
That’s another issue that the West Bank police as a police doesn’t exist anymore. We republished it many months ago that the commander of the West Bank police said in a conference that for them, it’s much more important to protect the settlers. He didn’t use the word settler, to protect the Israeli citizens there, than to maintain law and order, meaning to prevent attacks. Even in the crazy reality we live in, it’s a very, very, very crazy thing to hear from a police officer.
This is somebody that Ben Gvir has put in place, and you can really feel it in all the levels. You can see how the police are acting against solidarity activists. Ben Gvir and the police have set a task force to deport solidarity activists from the International Solidarity Movement and other groups. It works two ways: one is that they say that they are creating the provocation and without them, everybody would get along. Of course, they’re also worried about the people documenting and spreading it outside Israel. We’ve seen more than 20 or 30 activists have been detained and deported.
Only in the olive harvest season, there were another 32 activists arrested in one incident in Burin and deported. Many times Ben Gvir would publish their photos on his social media and brag about it. But in general, to go back to your original question, even the small bits of protection — or not even protection — of some assistance Palestinians could get, disappeared completely. The feeling is that settlers from the adults, the ones who have coordination with the army and police, and the very young ones, the ones the Israeli media call the extremes, have full freedom of operation. They could do whatever they want. The police will not investigate. The army will not stop them. They can go into villages, set on fire, and attack people. Nothing is off limits.
I’ll just give a small example. When something happens in Tel Aviv or in Jerusalem, a crime, a murder, a severe attack, the police would send a message to the reporters: this happened, we opened our investigation. In the West Bank, it doesn’t exist. Not only to us, to all the reporters. The police, when it comes to crimes against Palestinians, don’t issue statements. You have to approach them and also the army. The IDF spokesperson is a very big unit and they publish things all the time about Iran, Lebanon — we did this, in Gaza we killed two people — I am not even talking about the political language and the propaganda side, but they send messages in Hebrew, in English, in Arabic.
But when it comes to settlers in the West Bank they won’t publish statements, you have to approach them. They won’t say this happened, soldiers arrive and prevent and or didn’t prevent. They just don’t give the information. So of course, us — +972 and Local Call — we have many connections on the ground. We have reporters who actually live there. We know many people, but for the mainstream media, both Israeli and international, you have to follow Palestinian social media or media to understand what happened. You’re not going to get it from officials.
That shows you also that for them, it’s a non-event, even if it’s setting houses on fire. Just last week it was published that the Shin Bet, the Shabak, kind of changed the way they classify severe attacks regarding Israeli terrorism, Israeli settler violence. They said that it’s like how they count internally the things they consider a severe attack, only if somebody was injured or there was somebody in the house. So if an empty house is being set on fire, it’s not considered a severe attack. All this process together with the atrocities in Gaza, where many soldiers and settlers have been serving or working in Gaza, and then they come back to the West Bank, created a completely different reality in the West Bank.
Jennifer Cutler
You spoke a little bit about coordination among the settlers. What do you know about how they coordinate internally?
Oren Ziv
It’s another important point, because as we know, Palestinians on social media, or even on WhatsApp or other groups — Telegram, Signal — the minute they publish something, they can be arrested for incitement. We hear from many Palestinians that in checkpoints, in roadblocks, that their phones are being checked to the level that Palestinians, many Palestinians don’t have Telegrams, so they won’t be accused of being on some channels, on political channels, on news channels.
As some Palestinians told me, they don’t want you to read news and to be informed. They just want you to go work, home, and that’s it. With settlers, of course, they have the open channels — Hadashot HaGvaot, the news of the hilltop, and other groups — there they brag openly about attacks, celebrate them, promote them after. Many times they will copy from Palestinians the videos or photos or photos of their own, then they will celebrate these things, and then they have as well internal groups, although I have to say that a lot of the communication, as we understand, is done by phone calls. Many of them don’t have smartphones when they go to those attacks, they have radios or old phones.
But to be honest, today, it doesn’t even matter because it’s very rare that somebody’s arrested and even processed, and it gets to court. For example, I did a story at the end of the Olive Harvest season with 15 cases of settler violence. I interviewed 15 or 16 people only in one case, in the case in Turmus Ayya in the olive harvest where a settler severely beat a Palestinian woman and this was on camera and became a big story. So also there, the attack was documented, there were around 40-50 people, including some security guards and soldiers in the background. In the end, they arrested that specific person and accused him. Even when they charge somebody, they always focus on the specific incident — not even the incident — the specific moment, not looking at the big picture. There’s two different crimes: one that is done alone and one in a group, of course it’s more severe if it’s an organized attack. They didn’t do it.
So to be honest I think today they don’t have to be scared and so secret like maybe they did 10 years ago. I think also many times the attacks are organized, sometimes they will find some excuse, saying “a Jewish shepherd was attacked, we went in to look for stolen sheep.” Many of these will be invested for a reason. Or they will come into a village, nowadays, they bring their sheep and their cattle into villages. When it’s Area C, near outposts, the Israeli army and police will say, “No, they’re allowed. It’s an open area.”
They see Area C as completely Israeli. They say they’re allowed to walk there. Then they will try to mix their animals, their livestock with the Palestinians and then say that some are stolen. So many times, I think, they call, send messages, “some sheep so far were stolen.” Then many people will gather, and it will unfold into an attack. So many times they will have a form, like an excuse or reason, to raid Palestinian communities and sometimes not.
I don’t think with governmental support and the fact that police is barely functioning in the West Bank, I don’t think they have to be scared. I’ll give another example, when Mughayyir al-Deiranother community between Ramallah and Jordan Valley was evicted — was forced to leave in May 2025 — one of my colleagues was attacked there. They stole his cameras, they stole his car keys and took his laptop. He went to the police and he could track his laptop with Find My Mac and he’s a Jewish Israeli activist.
He was severely beaten there, he had to go to hospital. Of course, Palestinians were also attacked. The police didn’t even bother to go and look for his laptop. In general, even the physical assault, they closed the case very quickly after a few days, or weeks later. After it was published, they had to reopen it. But you can see they really, they don’t even do the bare minimum to show if they’re investigating.
Jennifer Cutler
You mentioned Area C, and this is an important feature in your reporting, especially recently on the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, that expulsions are no longer limited to Area C, the roughly 60% of the territory that’s under full Israeli control. Can you explain why this is significant politically, and how this impacts the people that you’ve spoken with in the course of your reporting?
Oren Ziv
Area C, it’s a place settlements are, but not only the settlements themselves, but also all the open areas around them that they’re very successfully taking control over in the last two decades. According to the Oslo Accords, Area C is under full Israeli control, of course, temporarily until an agreement. Area B is under civil Palestinian control, meaning they can build houses there without permission from Israel, but security control of Israel, and Area A is under theoretically full Palestinian control.
Now, before going into the details, Israel, for many, many years, is violent in this and goes into Area A, conducts arrests, raids, as we’ve seen, like all the operation in Jenin camp, in Tulkarem camp, in Nur Shams camp, all this happens in Area A and also in Ramallah, the Israeli army goes regularly. Now, for the settlers and for many people, even in the center-left, Area C will always remain Israeli. We’re talking about the Jordan Valley. In mainstream Israeli society, that would remain Israel, even if one day there’s some kind of a political or diplomatic agreement.
Now, the settlers, as I said, are pushing forward. They’re going into Area B. There’s at least 10 outposts in Area B. So these outposts are not recognized by Israel, like other many, many illegal outposts that started illegally, quote-unquote, but with time Smotrich and the government are recognizing them. In Area B, no, sometimes they’re evicted, they come back, and the settlers are saying in the opening they published a map, they’re showing how all the outposts and the farms are making a line from south to north to really push the Palestinians into cantons.
It’s something also Smotrich spoke about last year with his plan, that there will be like six cantons of Palestinians and the rest would be Israelis. So you can really see the operation on the ground. It’s important to say that you have outposts that it’s a few youths that build a tent or a shack, but then you have the farms. So a few years ago, the settlers understood that it’s much, much more efficient to use farms. You bring some caravans, legally, you take a few acres of dunams with herding. They’re basically copied from the Palestinians with sheep, with cattle, with camels sometimes, one family with a few volunteers.
And of course, with all the support, drones, army, police, they can control tens of thousands of dunams or acres, like huge territory, with one family. Of course, with violence, with forcing the Palestinians out. Also, usually the agreements of which land they have are classified, so you cannot really understand. But usually, and we heard it from different communities a lot, that when the outpost or the farm is set, they come and tell the Palestinian, this is the line and then it goes further and further till they’re stuck in their houses.
Of course, it’s also an economical problem. In the past, people could take their livestock out to eat and nowadays they have to buy food most of the year and of course water and so on. But it’s also, it’s a bigger process of pushing everybody towards the Palestinian cities, towards Nablus, towards Ramallah. Today you have outposts a few aerial kilometers from Ramallah, from Birzeit. Settlers, two of them walking in the outskirts of Ramallah, it’s something you couldn’t imagine before. Of course, Palestinians are scared. If they even talk to them, shout at them, try to pass, they can be either shot or the settlers can call the police and the army will come immediately.
Many of these settlers are minors, some of them brought by different welfare groups to the West Bank, kind of troubled youth, some of them are minors, so you can definitely not argue with them or even speak with them when you try to take photos, they will say we are minors, you’re not allowed to take photos of us, this is happening systematically. So it’s here and there, but in the end of the day, it’s pushing the Palestinians into the cities and it’s aligned with the governmental plans to prevent any Palestinian state, but not even a state, even autonomy, even something that has connections. It’s really to separate the different cities and to make sure there’s no Palestinian authority.
Jennifer Cutler
The people that you’re speaking with and working with, they’ve been expelled before. Now, again, it’s…
Oren Ziv
Definitely, I think in Area C, many, many people have been refugees a few times, and they call it the third Nakba when I spoke to people in Ras al-Auja last week. In the bigger piece we’re doing now about Area B, so I spoke to a family, they were from Ein Samiya, a small community near Kochava Shachar, again, between Ramallah and the Jordan Valley. Before October 7, they had many, many attacks and harassment, just daily harassment. A lot of this thing — it is not the big attacks when things are set on fire or people are injured — just coming settlers day after day, coming into the garden, coming into the yard, taking pictures, harassing the children. Sometimes maybe somebody will try to push them back and then they call the police, but it’s kind of a daily harassment, very slow violence and many times not documented or photographed.
The residents of Ein Samiya left, or were forced to leave, in May 2023 before October 7th and they moved to a nearby village to Mughayyir and they rented there a small plot of land in Area B when they thought they would be allowed to build there, they rented legally in a valley not close to any outpost. They were living there, not in great conditions, of course, they had to bring solar panels and have to bring the water from the village by trucks, but they had their relatively quiet life there as refugees for the third time, I believe.
Now in the last year, this village of Al-Mughayyir has been the target of the settlers. It’s surrounded by eight outposts from all directions. A few months ago, in the summer, the Israeli army, in an official kind of operation, uprooted thousands of trees after they suspected there was an attempt to attack settlers there. When it started, I contacted the army. I thought it’s settlers taking bulldozers. But the army said, “no, we’re doing it to clear the land so people cannot hide and throw stones or attack the settlers.” We’re talking about land that belongs to the village of Al-Mughayyir.
Now these few families from El Samiya are surrounded by outposts. There’s literally one outpost overlooking them, like 200 meters. Settlers come again into their yard, into their property. Underneath them, there’s a valley that Palestinians have farming area there, olive groves. Also settlers go there. Just last week I was there, you have a few teenage settlers with an army hammer, a jeep, patrolling and protecting them. Everybody who comes by they shoot tear gas or live ammunition. In those incidents already last year a Palestinian was killed when settlers kind of raided the village with their sheep. Palestinian youth went to push them back and the settlers shot one of them. In later incidents also the army shot people.
And this is a Palestinian village, some of it Area C, some of it Area B, but in general it’s a sad example of how Palestinians, especially from the most weak communities, cannot find anywhere quiet. And many people told us if we move, the settlers will come after us. It’s like they don’t leave us to live quietly.
Jennifer Cutler
Are there any strategies or options that Palestinians have to resist against this violence and expulsion? Can international or Israeli activists play a role in that struggle?
Oren Ziv
All the communities I’ve been to, people said that without the Israeli international activists that were present there, they wouldn’t survive until this day. In Ras al-Auja, there was presence of activists from the beginning of the war, 24/7. Activists have even rented, with a lease, a house there to stay from a family that was living somewhere else. And, of course, it didn’t help. They had at least settlers and right-wing activists break into this place, pepper spray people, and when they would call the army and the police would say, “you’re not from there, you don’t have any reason to be there.”
But my point is that when settlers together with the army and the authorities decide to focus on a community, it’s very hard to prevent it and it’s very sad. But activists managed to delay it and to give some sense, even a very small feeling of some kind of security for people and for children there. You can see that despite the fact it’s not working all the time, many communities are asking for protective presence. Today, some people don’t call it protective presence, because it’s just presence, it doesn’t always protect, but people really ask for it — it does give them some sense of security that people can call in Hebrew or English, speak to the police, speak to the army, can film, many times soldiers nowadays think they’re allowed to say to Palestinians, “you’re not allowed to film me.” If as a Palestinian, if you film soldiers, they can say that you’re collecting information.
Even for me, I was filming somewhere and a soldier approached, I filmed it with a cell phone, they said, “you have to give me the cell phone.” When I said, “no,” you saw their surprise. They’re used to you giving them the phone and they can delete it, they can do whatever they want. I was kind of fighting back against it.
So this presence is still very important in the communities that are struggling to stay. And from the Palestinian side, I do hear from a lot of people that say, “the only thing I can do to resist nowadays is to stay in my house,” to insist to stay, doesn’t matter if it’s in Area C or Area B or Area A, many people say, “we cannot do anything.” Of course, protests became very, very dangerous after October 7. The few protests I’ve been to were dispersed with live ammunition, of course, tear gas, stun grenades and arrest. We’ve seen administrative arrest of grassroots activists like Ayman Gharib and other people who are just nonviolent activists, staying with the communities, trying to organize, trying to push back against the settlers’ attack to kick them off their land.
They’re in administrative detention nowadays for six months, but usually it’s extended. So it’s not that people cannot protest, many times people cannot even go to the field and document and do grassroots — not even activism — grassroots work. It’s a conversation all over the West Bank. They say, “the only thing I can do is stay in my house and insist on staying.” Because literally also in Area B, soon in Area A, settlers are getting to the doors of people. It’s not only the fields or the gardens, it’s literally to the doorstep and you have people guarding at night together. Again, if settlers decide to come and shoot, or the army, they cannot do much but they’re trying to patrol with flashlights and create some sense of security in other villages. You have WhatsApp groups that when a settler attacks, people go and try to push them back.
Of course, it’s very dangerous there. Last year in the summer, I came back from a funeral in Kafr Malik, again in the same area between Ramallah — East Ramallah, — between Ramallah and the Jordan Valley. As we were coming back from this funeral, three Palestinian youth were killed by soldiers during a settler’s raid. We were passing in the village of Turmus Ayya, where many of its residents are Palestinian with American passports, and we heard a siren, an alarm. It was kind of weird because we used to hear it in Tel Aviv or in Jerusalem during the war with Iran or from missiles from Gaza and Lebanon.
So we heard the siren, and we asked people who say, no, “it’s a siren to alert settlers who are invading the village.” So we rushed there and we saw 15 settlers masked with sticks with other weapons kind of trying to raid the village. Luckily that day many people were also on the way back from the funeral so many people went out and pushed them back but they managed to set one field on fire and you could see at some point they retreated back and you saw the army coming, of course not detaining anyone, not checking, just like kind of helping them to go back to the settlement.
Jennifer Cutler
So in our conversation, you’ve mentioned that you’re in these communities, and oftentimes you’re filming. Photography is at the center of a lot of your work, including through ActiveStills, the collective you co-founded in 2005, that documents Palestinian resistance and other struggles against oppression. Looking back, what first drew you to photography? How did you start thinking about it as something that could be used for reporting and activism?
Oren Ziv
So I grew up in the city of Haifa in the early 2000s. When the Second Intifada broke out the Israeli public went massively to the right after Ehud Barak, then the Prime Minister, came back from Camp David and said the famous words that “there’s no Palestinian partner and they I offered everything.” I started to get interested in politics and at the same time, I was also studying cinema in high school, and video cameras were too expensive. So I bought a film camera and I started to go with it to different small demonstrations, vigils.
But the first news event I filmed was, if I’m not mistaken, 2002, when it was the time of the suicide attacks in buses in Israel. I heard about an attack a few kilometers from my house and I just went with my film camera and photograph. When I was 18, I did a gap year before refusing to join the army. I did a kind of volunteering year in Sadaqah-Reut, a Jewish-Arab organization in Jaffa that was doing educational work. I already had a digital camera and I started going to demonstrations, both in Tel Aviv against the occupation, and also I started to go to the West Bank.
It was the time of the beginning of the building of the separation wall — the apartheid wall. Back then I was not a professional photographer, but these demos, of course, were very, very scary with tear gas, with stun grenades, with arrests, with live ammunition. I really felt the camera gave me some kind of protection, but also kind of a sense of something to do there, because in the field, mostly it’s like every demonstration, people are running from here to there. The camera kind of gave me some security, because I’m not a brave person.
I started photographing the protests against the wall, and in 2005, we’re going in 2004 or 5, we’re going to different villages. At some point, I got to the West Bank village of Bil’in, where they decided to do weekly demonstrations. They understood that the media and activists together gather attention. They decided to do the demos on Friday, although many times the construction of the apartheid wall was not happening on Fridays, but they decided to gain momentum.
But I met three other people — Yotam Ronen, Keren Manor and Eduardo Soteras — that we kind of understood we’re all there both for activism, but also for photography. And we documented the village, the demonstration, but also the daily life and not like the journalists that were there, we tried to stay after demonstrations, sleep there, come before, and many times the army would block the village or even announce curfew to try to prevent the demonstrations.
After a few months, we decided to do an exhibition and we had two problems. (A) we didn’t have any money or connections to do a proper exhibition in a gallery or in a museum, and the second and more important question is that we wanted to get to the Israeli public. We didn’t want to show our friends or to lefties or to people who agree with us. So we did a street exhibition in the street. Again, it was before Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. So we actually had to print postcards with the address, and every night go to renew the exhibition. We signed with the name ActiveStills (a) because nobody knew us, and (b) because we didn’t want to get a fine from the municipality for putting posters without license.
For me, I started journalism with photography. But later on, I started to write because many times, as a photographer, you have to be in the field. Many times reporters would call me — also when I worked for mainstream media — would call me and ask, what happened? Can you describe what happened? Can you take a quote? Can you record this? Then I thought, okay, I’m already there, I can write. Because of the shift in the media to create interesting material, you have to know how to do everything, or at least a few things. So it’s photography, it’s writing, it’s video, sometimes audio.
I think today when we’re working on a story, we’re trying to think about the different angles. If it’s forensic work, for satellite imagery or maps, if it’s photography wise, if it’s video interviews or audio, you have to look at the story as a complete piece. I think today you don’t have the privilege to say, “I’m just doing that” or “that.”
Jennifer Cutler
Something that you mentioned was the idea of getting to Israeli society. Foreign journalists still cannot report independently from Gaza, and legal challenges have failed to change that. We’ve seen different activist groups holding photos of Gazan children in public spaces, vigils, and street protests to try and break through in this visual intervention. Do you think that there’s a way to shift public perception this way, change the conversation?
Oren Ziv
When we started ActiveStills, one of the first exhibitions we did was about Bil’in. So we were there, documenting the fact that the separation, apartheid wall was built not on the green line, on the ‘67 border, but deep inside the West Bank. But we were very frustrated because every time we came back from Bil’in, on the Israeli radio, they would report “riots in Bil’in, stones throwing,” but they didn’t even say the protests were against the wall or the fence. I’m not even going to mention that the fence or the wall is built inside the Palestinian land, cutting off and annexing, de-facto, land. They didn’t even say in a protest against the wall or the fence.
This is why we did the first exhibition, because we were really frustrated that Bil’in is a few dozen miles from Tel Aviv, from Jerusalem. It’s very close, it’s a 40 minutes drive if you’re Israeli international, of course, not for Palestinians. Still it’s so far, and we wanted through the street exhibition, and by our work in general, to kind of cancel this gap or make it smaller. When we started, I’m talking over 20 years ago, and before social media also, we thought that if we bring the reality from there to here, from here to there, at least some people will get interested, will get convinced, and will get informed. This is why we also had the website activestills.org.
In the first exhibition, we also put maps from B’Tselem and all the information about the wall. This was at the end of 2005. Nowadays, as somebody who writes in Hebrew a lot and speaks to Israeli society, I think the problem has changed. It’s either people know and don’t care, or people choose not to know. So it’s much, much more challenging — it’s not just like a gap of information, it’s much more complicated.
Regarding Gaza, luckily we have our reporters there. I think both in English and in Hebrew, we were one of the first ones to bring voices from Gaza after October 7th. In Hebrew for many, many months we were the only one. It’s Gaza, but it’s also the West Bank — I think it’s a huge challenge specifically for the Israeli public. So in other topics we cover, there’s the mainstream media, people, there’s the reporting, good, bad, mostly bad, mostly shallow, and then we come, we say, I don’t know what, the crime inside ‘48 for Palestinian citizens of Israel. So, we have been writing it for a decade or more, but now we can come to the Israeli public and say, this is what mainstream media is telling us and here’s the more interesting story or the more deep story or the real story.
With the West Bank and Gaza, it’s a whole different level because people — much before October 7th — the Israeli media, since the building of the fence and the wall, the Israeli public kind of put this place far away. We’ve seen that even center-left parties didn’t speak about the Palestinian issue in the elections. You could think that after the horrific events of October 7 and the genocide following it, this would change. But still, it’s interesting that even inside the collapse of the status quo Netanyahu and the media and the public are managing to create kind of a smaller status quo and still not look at what’s happening.
I think in the first year, or year and a half of the war, the Israeli media decided — it was long before — but since October 7, they decided on purpose to recruit completely to the war effort, quote-unquote, and not show anything from Gaza. And I’m not talking about even questioning some of the narrative — they didn’t pick up stories from AP or Reuters. I’m not talking about complicated stories — just those about water, how people daily get water, how people charge their phones — all the daily life stories you have on the wires and you can just download, translate, and show; people speak in English sometimes. They didn’t show any of that.
And this is why I think also people in Israel were caught with surprise when the protests broke out in the US and Europe against the genocide, when the international court started to investigate, open the files. This is why in Hebrew our work is very, very hard, because it’s to crack this kind of silencing or ignorance or choice of the media and the society not to look at what’s happening in their name.
Jennifer Cutler
You mentioned earlier that you refused the mandatory military service in Israel. And in your work, you feature portraits or different documentation about the young Israelis who are refusing to comply with their mandatory military service. Why is this something that’s important to you to document so regularly?
Oren Ziv
I think I was lucky to learn, as I said, at a young age about what’s happening on the other side, and to refuse and to have the support from my family and friends. I think it’s an important story from a few levels. But first of all, it’s because those young Israelis challenge the maybe the most sacred and holy thing in Israel. So yeah, with the years more and more people don’t go to the army, we know from statistics that 30% of the soldiers who begin don’t complete the service. It’s not a taboo, like it was — of course, depending on which background and economical background they come from. For many people, it’s kind of the entry ticket to Israeli society, either from being accepted or just to find a job.
But I think refusing the army, and this is why also I think these articles get a lot of hate also, especially in Hebrew, because it’s really challenging something that is in the core of Israeli society, that kind of quote-unquote unites everyone. It’s something very sensitive, especially during a time of war, almost 800 soldiers have been killed since October 7th. It’s something different. We’ve been following it for years.
I think it’s interesting how they got to the decision, how they’re dealing with it, and more importantly, why they’re choosing to do it publicly and to go to prison, because many of them could go out for a different reason. But they choose to do it as a public statement in order also to try to convince other Israelis, at least send a message — for people who are going to Gaza or going to the West Bank or serving in the army, it doesn’t matter where — to rethink it. I think it also gives some hope especially in a reality where most of the time — and I’m not a very optimistic person — we document so many atrocities and tragedies. It’s something that gives a bit of hope, although I mention in the article that it’s a very small group.
Then, of course, it’s important to say that there are people who don’t have the privilege to go to prison, even if they cannot send incitement, they don’t have support from their families, and they go out for different reasons. They find ways to go out without stating they’re refusing, but it’s also important to mention that. I think it’s also a story we follow because — it’s maybe more technical — but in Israel, usually when people refuse, so they’re not trialed in the military court for refusing and get a punishment, they come to the army base and the commander on the ground kind of sentences them for two weeks or a month in prison. Not for the general refusing, but for not going on the bus, not for a specific action as any commander can trial you for doing this or that in the army and then they get released and they have to come again and again so of course according to international, but any law, you cannot be sentenced again and again for the same crime but the army doesn’t seek like that.
Since October 7, we’ve seen escalation. People are being imprisoned for more than 100 days, sometimes almost 200 days, before they’re being released, if they are being sent to a committee. So we also follow this kind of technical aspect of how the army is trying to escalate the punishment against those young Israelis.
Jennifer Cutler
Even though you’re not a very optimistic person by your own admission, you’ve been doing this for a long time and you’re continuing to document. What drives you to continue documenting?
Oren Ziv
Yeah, I think it’s a good question. Many times I ask myself, I think, to be honest, it’s the people I document that I see, despite the fact, many times depressing, tiring, and sometimes dangerous. When you see the people on the ground insist to stay — in conditions we cannot imagine, we come there for a day or two, even if we come every week, if they stay there, sometimes I sleep in different communities — but people who stay under constant danger, risk, and really horrible conditions that just became worse in the last two years. It does give you some energy.
Also, fellow journalists, Palestinian journalists and activists insist on being on the ground despite the prices and the risk, it’s something that does give you some hope. Sometimes when you come there, you do feel it matters on the ground. In the past, when we started ActiveStills, I would come to places and document because I would hope the photos would go out and make some change, affect somebody.
Today, I have less hope. So I come to places I want to be, as a person, as a journalist, as a photographer and then if something happens with the materials, it’s kind of a bonus. But I come just because I think it’s important to be there, to be on the ground with the people. I don’t have a big expectation that the photos or the reports will make a change or a difference. Sometimes they do, sometimes they reach a bigger audience. Of course, it’s a nice feeling. But when I plan to go to the ground, I don’t have high hopes and in this way, it’s easier to continue.
Jennifer Cutler
I think that’s a really good note to wrap up on. Thank you so much for talking to me today, Oren.
Oren Ziv
Thank you for inviting me.
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Jennifer Cutler
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