Skip Schiel, a Cambridge, Mass.-based photojournalist, will present his movie-in-progress, “Gaza’s Israeli Neighbors: Courageous Israelis advocating for talks, not tanks, diplomacy not war” on April 3 at 7 p.m. The film and talk will be held at Northern Light United Church, 400 W. 11th St., Juneau, and is sponsored by Juneau People for Peace and Justice.
Schiel is a participatory photographer, working while also engaging in struggles for social and environmental justice. His primary current projects include a photographic examination of conditions in Palestine and Israel, “Searching for the Seeds of the New Detroit Miracle” and “Twilight,” an exploration light. Earlier projects included retracing the Transatlantic African slave trade journey (“A Spirit People”), the earth (“Scent of Earth”), prisons (“Imprisoned Massachusetts”), and a Buddhist-led pilgrimage from Auschwitz to Hiroshima (“Passing Through”). He has taught photography at Boston College, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and the Cambridge Center for Adult Education.
After photographing in Gaza over a 12-year period, Schiel learned about a group of Israelis living within one mile of Gaza who sought to bring another voice into the dynamic. Challenging Israel’s policy of siege and violent retaliation to rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza on civilian Israelis, the organization, Other Voice, seeks cross-border dialog and negotiations between the ruling party in Gaza, Hamas, and the Israeli government.
Nomika Zion, a leading member of Other Voice, brought national attention to the group in January 2009 when she published “War Diary from Sderot”, an open and sharp response to those who were glorifying the war in the name of the people of Sderot, a town near the Gaza border, according to Schiel. In the same year, she was awarded the Niarchos Survivorship Prize with the Gazan physician, Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish whose three daughters were killed by the Israeli army during the Gaza War, for their courage to raise another voice publicly during the conflict.
“I am frightened that … we are losing the human ability to see the other side, to feel, to be horrified, to show empathy,” Zion wrote.
Maha Mehanna, also involved with Other Voice, spoke at a Washington, D.C, J Street conference in March last year, “Whatever happens now in war or diplomacy, whatever territory is won or lost, whatever accommodations or compromises are finally made, Arabs and Jews will remain locked together in this weary land, enmeshed in each other’s fears. They will not escape from one another. They will not find peace in treaties, or in victories. They will find it, if at all, by looking into each other’s eyes.”
Skip Schiel is a photojournalist who is presenting in town on the Palestine-Israel conflict.
