“The Checkpoint Women: Memories” – Documentary Shines a Light on Israeli Activism
For American Jews who are uncomfortable with questioning the Israeli government, the Gaza War, and the Occupation, “The Checkpoint Women: Memories” demonstrates how courageous individuals on the ground in Israel, moved by their doubts about national policy, have become actors in the fight for Palestinian equality. It was a featured documentary in the 2024 Other Israel Film Festival.
Director Eliezer Yaari focuses on the specific stories of women, primarily over fifty-years-old, who became part of an organization known in Israel as Machsom Watch. In 2001, a group began going to checkpoints and crossings to monitor the behaviors and actions of IDF soldiers as they oversaw Palestinians trying to enter Israel from the West Bank for work, medical appointments, or necessary tasks.
Yaari sets the stage with information outlining that after a “wave of terrorism” resulted in hundreds of Israeli deaths and thousands of injuries, Israel began the erection of a separation wall between the “territories of the Palestinian Authority” and itself. Restriction of movement for Palestinians within the West Bank became a way of life.
Interviewing these activists, Yaari intercuts footage of their efforts with their testimonies. Each woman profiled shares her backstory and why she felt it was essential to become part of the struggle against entrenched policies on the ground.
Yehudit Elkana, now in her late eighties, had heard negative stories about what was happening at checkpoints. She started Women In Black. “You couldn’t stand idly by,” she recounted. Her father was a journalist for a liberal newspaper in Berlin. After reading Hitler’s Mein Kampf, he saw the writing on the wall and departed for Israel in 1933. Based on her family background, Elkana said, “It made it natural for her to engage in political activity against the Occupation.” Arriving in Bethlehem in the pre-dawn darkness when Palestinian workers arrived at 5:30 a.m., Elkana filmed interactions, made calls, and questioned tactics. When lucky, she would run into someone she knew, facilitating the challenge for a Palestinian with medical issues.
Commenting on the Separation Wall as one of the “cruelest undertakings” of the Occupation, Hanna Barag discussed the “shock” of how Israel forces Palestinians to live. She stated, “There is no freedom of movement. Palestinian ambulances can’t move in the streets of Jerusalem.” Her reaction to the situation was “shock and horrification.” There is a definitive irony in seeing a guard in tefillin praying next to barbed wire, while below him school children are having their backpacks searched. Barag overhears a soldier saying loudly to a colleague upon seeing her, “Here’s another of Arafat’s whores.” Waiting until a few hours later, with her emotions calmed, Barag approached the young man and asked, “Would you talk that way to your grandmother?”
These women are not to be trifled with or easily intimidated. Dafna Banai has been a Machsom member for twenty years. She came from a staunchly Zionist and military background. Banai spoke about how the subtext of the Occupation became evident to her. Rather than being an issue of security, she realized the impetus was to “break Palestinian society and to hurt people and entrench a sense of Israeli “superiority.”
Banai has a run-in with a woman who confronts her about her activities, asking, “Are you Jewish? Whose side are you on?” before continuing her missive, insisting that “Jews are on the side of God.” When Banai inquires, “What about Mitzvot between man and his fellow man?” the response is swift and uncompromising. “No, no, no,” the woman stipulates. “Torah says we must wipe out our enemies.”
That philosophy is revealed to Banai when she travels to the Jordan Valley, where the Fassayil village of 5,000 people gets water only four days per week, and homes are demolished with regularity. Banai comments, “You can’t see such distress and remain indifferent to it.”
Natalie “Natanya” Ginsburg, 82-years-old, grew up in a small village in South Africa and emigrated to Israel in 1964. It took almost four decades for her to gain “clarity” on the situation in her adopted country. A chance encounter with a Machsom member handing out literature was the moment when she realized she needed to become engaged. Since that time, Ginsburg was present for weekly actions. Footage shows her visiting a Palestinian farm while the owner plowed his land. Everything was low-keyed until a settler with a walkie-talkie and a gun showed up. The IDF wasn’t far behind. A female soldier told the Palestinian he could only plow in areas where “he can’t see the neighboring settlement.” While smoking a cigarette with the farmer, she tries to smooth things over, fully aware of the Kafkaesque situation and nonsensical rules. Ginsburg remarks, “Settlers are running the army. If this isn’t apartheid, I’d like to know what is.”
Jerusalem-born Neta Efrony was a television film editor for three decades. When a friend told her about Machsom Watch, she immediately knew it was what she wanted to do to “oppose the Occupation.” Efrony speaks about using her camera like a “bulletproof vest.” One soldier informs her menacingly that if she gets in the way of their work, he’ll arrest her. He punctuates the threat with the derisive comment, “Go to B’Tselem (a human rights organization), go wherever you like.” At the Atara Checkpoint, she meets a father trying to escort his young daughter to a doctor’s appointment. He is repeatedly refused, but finally gets permission after numerous attempts.
Another checkpoint, another day.
The uniform in charge announces that only Palestinians with a blue identification card will be approved. All decisions rest on his predilections. Even a corpse being transported is subject to scrutiny.
“Man is created in God’s image, and that’s true of all people, whether they’re Jews or Arabs,” states Kibbutz-born 69-year-old Hagit Back. She says, “I’ve been a leftist my whole life, from the moment I opened my eyes as a conscious being.” Through Machsom Watch, Back saw an opportunity to create interpersonal relationships on the ground. Self-describing as a “privileged, Ashkenazi Jew,” Back wanted “to apologize through action.” She traveled around to observe what was happening on the ground, wrote reports, and put them on the Machsom website. If a Palestinian is injured, the group reports it to the civilian police. A clip is shown of an officer thanking them for their efforts. He mentions the homemade weapons he uncovers once a month while admitting that checking 5,000 Palestinians “isn’t justified, but there’s no other solution.” Back emphasized that she saw enlisted men and women trying to act with compassion. Her complaint was with “the regime that sends them there.”
The women see it as their obligation to push back against government policies. Silvia Piterman, 77, came to Israel from Argentina. She joined Machsom after the army entered Jenin.
95-year-old Dalia Golomb spoke about her grandfather, a member of BILU who came to “Eretz Yisrael” in 1882. Golomb’s family has deep roots in Israeli history. Her father, Eliyahu Golomb, was a founder of the Haganah. His story of being whipped and humiliated by the Turkish authorities when he wouldn’t mill flour for them on Shabbat was a narrative that left a deep emotional imprint. Golomb was shocked when she witnessed the treatment of Palestinians at the checkpoints. The degradation of women at the crossing point triggered her. She asked, “Who is doing the humiliation now? It is us, our people, oppressing another people.” When she was younger, she led tours to the West Bank to show where the state of Israel had appropriated agricultural lands. Golomb affirmed that seeing the reality “simply destroyed her.” She concluded, “It doesn’t serve Israel’s security. It has nothing to do with it.”
For Rachel Afek, who grew up in a Kibbutz, the experience of witnessing the checkpoints changed her life. “So much suffering,” she recounts when discussing home demolitions in the Hajjah village. “It should be one land for two people,” she emphasized.
In February of 2023, there was a major attack on the village of Huwara by Israeli settlers after an unidentified Palestinian shooter killed two Israelis. This action would be called a “pogrom” by the Israeli military. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich escalated the situation when he called for Huwara to be “wiped out.”
“Huwara became a symbol,” said Dafna Banai. “I feel responsible. I’m Israeli. The things done here are paid for with my tax money…and if I can’t change them, then I’m also responsible.”
