In this episode we present excerpts from the recent conversation (June 2024) between Ashira Darwish & V as part of SAND’s “Conversations on Palestine” around the premiere of the film Where Olive Trees Weep hosted by the directors of the film and co-founders of SAND, Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo.

https://whereolivetreesweep.com/

You can watch this full conversation and 22 others. SAND has created a program with leading historians, spiritual teachers, trauma therapists, poets and performers to complement the themes explored in the film and provide a larger historical, cultural and social context to the plight of the Palestinian people.

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In this conversation, prepare to be moved and inspired by the stories of Palestinian women's sumud (steadfast perseverance) against the violence of occupation, patriarchy and dehumanization. Their narratives expose how colonial occupation is a gender-based crime inextricable from the repression of female self-determination. This conversation promises to be a tribute to the unbreakable spirit of Palestinian mothers who nurture profound love, clandestine schoolhouses, and revolutionary consciousness — even when all they have is the sanctity of their wombs.

Ashira Ali Darwish worked for 15 years as a TV & Radio journalist and researcher in Palestine for the BBC, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. She is the founder of Catharsis Holistic Healing, a trauma therapy project pioneering a type of Sufi active meditation which draws its roots from ancestral and Indigenous knowledge. Her personal healing journey from full body paralysis with a severed spinal cord in 2012 has given her a deep insight into the process of recovery and healing. In 2021, she received the “ISABS Honours” from the Indian Society for Applied Behavioural Science for her contribution to positive societal transformation.

V (formerly Eve Ensler) is the Tony Award-winning playwright, activist, performer, and author of the Obie award-winning theatrical phenomenon The Vagina Monologues, published in over 48 languages, performed in over 140 countries, and heralded by The New York Times as one of the “best American plays” of the past 25 years and that “no recent hour of theater has had a greater impact worldwide.”

Topics:

00:00 - Introduction
04:53 - Ashira’s Story
11:42 - In an Israeli Dungeon
19:44 - Bodily Harm & Oppression
26:01 - Stigma for Palestinian Women
32:00 - Impact of Occupation on Masculinity
34:18 - Can the Trauma Be Healed?
40:40 - Onus of Resilience
47:43 - Healing in Community
53:20 - The Power of Music
58:34 - Vision for New Palestine

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