Israel’s war on Palestine has now decisively expanded to the West Bank, where the most aggressive IDF military campaign in decades is now underway. Yet not all was well in the West Bank before this most recent invasion. Palestinians in the West Bank have dealt with a protracted war waged by Zionist settlers and the IDF for decades. One method of resistance has been through agriculture, which for many generations in Palestine has revolved around the cultivation of olives. Cyrus Copeland of the organization Treedom for Palestine joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss how the Palestinian Farmers’ Union uses “freedom farms” to sustain the livelihoods of Palestinians and resist the Israeli onslaught.

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Hi. I’m Marc Steiner, host of The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. If you’re watching or listening to this now, we know you appreciate the stories we bring to you. We need your support to continue producing uncompromising, movement-building journalism that reaches ordinary people. We don’t accept advertising, sponsorships, or use paywalls. We rely entirely on supporters like you.

This is a critical year and a pivotal moment in history. From Paris to Gaza to Baltimore, we’re covering it all, but we cannot do it without you. If you feel the urgency of the moment and believe in the importance of independent journalism like TRNN, please donate today at therealnews.com/donate. Thank you for your support. Solidarity forever.

Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us.

And in our continuing look at what is happening in Palestine-Israel, this horrendous war that is taking place, we are going to cover it in a different way today. The other day, I looked at a film called Where Olive Trees Weep, and I was really taken by that film. This series of conversations are borne of that film, and you will hear many people from that film as well as the directors.

And today we’re talking with Cyrus Copeland, who is executive director of Treedom, T-R-E-E-D-O-M, it’s not me slurring, For Palestine. And Treedom for Palestine is a nonprofit that works in the West Bank and works in collaboration with the Palestinian Farmers’ Union — We’ll be talking to one of the leaders of that union coming up soon — And Treedom wants to cultivate 1,000 Freedom Farms all through the West Bank, and we’ll talk more about that in a moment. And it is part of their struggle. It is going on there now, and even though it sounds like a wonderful, nice project, nothing is easy in Palestine.

Cyrus Copeland, welcome. Good to have you with us.

Cyrus Copeland:  Marc, awfully good to be with you. Thank you, sir.

Marc Steiner:  So, let’s begin. Tell me a bit about the history of this, first, Treedom, and how that came to be, and what it is.

Cyrus Copeland:  So I didn’t start as a nonprofit pioneer. I began and still am a writer, and the subject of the book that I’m working on right now took me to Jerusalem in exploration of this idea of tikkun olam, which, I don’t know, do you know what that means?

Marc Steiner:  Tikkun olam, yes, repair —

Cyrus Copeland:  Tikkun olam, it’s this idea of repairing the earth or healing the earth. I’m fascinated by it. I love it for all the obvious reasons. But I had precious little experience with it and with olive trees in general. I had planted one tree over the span of my life, in memory of my dad. When he passed away, we planted an oak tree in Valley Forge for him.

Marc Steiner:  Huh.

Cyrus Copeland:  After doing that, I would go back to the tree to see how it’s doing and how tall it had grown, what its leafage was looking like, and realized that, for better or for worse, I was now in a relationship with a tree [Steiner laughs]. It struck me as an odd and simple and beautiful thing.

Marc Steiner:  Right.

Cyrus Copeland:  But it wasn’t until I got to Palestine, and specifically the West Bank, and I looked around and realized how deeply multidimensional the Palestinian relationship is to their beloved olive trees, and I was very humbled by that and very touched by it. It’s legal, it’s environmental, it’s economic, it’s religious, it’s spiritual, it’s communal, all these ways that a tree influences a society and culture. And I was very impressed by that.

But it wasn’t until I landed on a small farm in the middle of the West Bank that was started by a gentleman, Motaz, who was the very first Treedom Farmer, that I looked around and realized the simple enormity of what he had managed to do on this small tract of land in the middle of all the complications that come of being a farmer in Palestine. And I was really touched by it, Marc, touched in a very profound way.

As a writer, I’m kind of used to using how I feel about stuff to navigate what a good narrative is, and I know when I’ve landed in the middle of a good story, I kind of get that goose bumpy feeling. As soon as I set foot on that Freedom Farm, I knew that I had found it, and it, in some way, had found me.

When I went there, I didn’t intend to start this foundation, Treedom For Palestine, which plants sustainable olive tree farms in the West Bank, but the seed of that idea was born on that day, on that little tract of land, and so that was how this all began.

Marc Steiner:  I was interested as I was looking at this, because olive trees are kind of the center of the Palestinian world in many ways, and I also happen to love Palestinian olive oil that I get regularly from my friends [laughs].

Cyrus Copeland:  It’s awesome. It’s so good, isn’t it?

Marc Steiner:  It’s really good.

Cyrus Copeland:  It’s got a just nice kicky organic earthy flavor to it.

Marc Steiner:  It’s the best I’ve ever had. But having said that, I’m just curious, how long this has been going on, and what is the political effect? Right now we’re facing something that is as bad, if not worse, than what happened in 1967 and what happened in 1948. They’re akin, in terms of the expulsion of Palestinians in the war in ’67, and then the colonization that began to take place in Gaza and in the West Bank. And you’re out trying to help farmers create this economy to build olive oil in the midst of that.

So, talk a bit about that struggle to do that, what you face, and the tensions that must arise in even trying to do that.

Cyrus Copeland:  There are immense, diverse, and deep challenges that come from being a farmer in the West Bank. Those challenges are manyfold, and I’ll just give you a few examples of what that looks like.

Marc Steiner:  Please, yeah.

Cyrus Copeland:  They pay exorbitant prices for water, up to 30 times what an Israeli settler who is farming will pay for water. 30 times. They’re not allowed to use electricity or to build shelters for shade on their land. Their access, you may know that their access to the land is often restricted.

Settler violence is a really big thing. On a good year, before this war began, settlers would routinely uproot or destroy 2,000 olive trees every year. Since the war began, settler violence is up 400%.

All of these challenges add up to a situation which is quite purposeful in that, policy-wise, the occupation has made it very difficult for farmers to do what they do. There are some reasons behind that. We can get into those reasons in a bit if you like.

So what we’ve done, Treedom, along with the Palestinian Farmers’ Union — And the Palestinian Farmers’ Union actually designed the prototype for a Treedom Farm. They came up with a prototype that is specifically designed to address the challenges of what it means to farm under the occupation. That prototype is basically we will plant 250 olive trees on a two-and-a-half acre tract of land. They will be irrigated during the dry summer months, at least, we’ll lay down an irrigation system for them. And, importantly, every single Treedom Farm that we plant is surrounded by steel fencing for the protection of both the farmers and the trees.

So, is it a very difficult situation to plant nowadays? Yes, it is, but our partner on the ground, the Palestinian Farmers’ Union, is exceedingly good at what they do. And the structure that we are working with, this idea of a Freedom Farm, is a workable one right now. It is scalable. Right now, there are a little more than 70 Freedom Farms that have been planted across the West Bank. Every single one of those Freedom Farms is still standing.

Marc Steiner:  It seems, when you mention the Palestinian Farmers’ Union, as I’ve seen, it was written, have 20,000 small-scale farmers who are farming around the West Bank for the most part. But given the politics of this moment, A, restricting water, the ability to water, the ability to really irrigate the way that things have to be irrigated on a farm, this war itself — One of my dearest friends, Ali Zarrab, who is from Ramallah, his nephew, walking down the street during the midst of this war, shot in the back by settlers.

Cyrus Copeland:  Oh [inaudible].

Marc Steiner:  And so, how does this function in the midst of all this?

Cyrus Copeland:  Yeah. Yup. Yeah, sorry to hear about that. There is another story which really hit me hard, which was another farmer, his name was Bilal Saleh. You may have heard about him, if you do, he would’ve been on your radar last October. An olive tree farmer who was shot and killed in cold blood by Israeli settlers as he was harvesting the olives on his farm. That story got a fair amount of play in the media for all the obvious reasons.

But it really took the wind out of my sail, Marc, and it landed very personally with me. And Abbas, the president of the PFU, the Palestinian Farmers’ Union, and I spoke a little bit about what we would like to do in response to that to help ensure that this kind of stuff doesn’t happen over and over and over again.

And so, we ended up planting a Freedom Farm for his widow, Ikhlas, who was now left without somebody who provided for their family and left without a father for her children. So, she was now thrust into the dual role of doing that. We actually, just two months ago, planted a Freedom Farm for her, ensuring that she would be able to carry on the good work that her husband did. Bilal, he loved olive trees. He loved what he did. He loved what he did. But again, we provided her with a safe environment in which to still be able to do the thing that her husband did by fencing in that structure.

How does this happen? How do we continue to do this in spite of what’s going on? That is really testament to the resilience and the strategic creativity that the Farmers’ Union brings to bear in their day-to-day activities. They know where it’s safe to plant. They know how far they can push the envelope. They know the intersection of what it means to plant for people who are in great need, where food insecurity is also high, but to do so in a region which is sufficiently distanced from whatever settlements might be, as to make sure that this is not just a statement that we’re making, but a really sustainable farm that we’re beginning here.

Does that answer your question? I feel like that went off on a little tangent.

Marc Steiner:  It does, but it leads to a couple of other questions for me. One is about you and one’s about the Palestinian farmers at this moment. How many times have you been back and forth to Palestine?

Cyrus Copeland:  One.

Marc Steiner:  One?

Cyrus Copeland:  Just one. I was there several years ago, and it was when, as I mentioned, I went there to explore this ideology for a book that I’m working on right now. My life went off in an entirely different direction. But that one time that I was there was enough to plant the seed of Treedom for Palestine.

Marc Steiner:  No pun intended.

Cyrus Copeland:  Not at all, but thank you for noticing it [Steiner laughs]. As writers, I love wordplay, and so the idea of Treedom, I don’t know. I like the name of our organization so much.

So I’ve been there once. I’ve obviously been in continual contact with our partners on the ground there. He and I speak several times a week, at least. So, while my heart and head is here in Philadelphia, my soul is also bifurcated and is in the very difficult territory of what it means to do what they’re doing in the West Bank right now.

One other thing, I wanted to mention this. You talked about Philadelphia, and I was walking around Jerusalem one day, and I came across a carbon copy of the Liberty Bell in a park in Jerusalem. And it was just the oddest thing, Marc, because as a Philadelphian, I know what the Liberty Bell looks like. It’s very iconic. And they had taken and literally done a carbon copy of this bell.

And so at the time, the war hadn’t broken out, and the issues that you and I are talking about, they were still front and center for all the obvious reasons. But this idea of what real personal liberty means, whether that’s economic, geopolitical, cultural, land-based, it just got amped up for me an additional degree. And to know that there is this other thing, another copy of the Liberty Bell very near many of the farms that we are planting, just makes it an even more, I don’t know, what’s the word, symbolic, I guess.

Marc Steiner:  I’m curious. In your conversations with Abbas and others since this war began in Gaza, how has that changed and altered the dynamic? It was already difficult because Israel has put restrictions on what Palestinian farmers can do, how much water they can get, has made it very difficult for people to survive on the West Bank doing the work they’ve done for generations and generations and generations. So, I’m curious how all the work you all are doing, how has it been affected by this war?

Cyrus Copeland:  We do what we do strategically and with great consideration to what the risks are. And when I say that the PFU is exceedingly good at assessing those risks and operating in spite of them, it’s not an exaggeration. They’re really good at what they do. And so the work of planting goes on, war or no war. We are still planting for the future.

Marc Steiner:  As I watched the documentary, which we’ll be covering, Where Olive Trees Weep —

Cyrus Copeland:  Yeah, Marc, just one little thing. We have planted, over the past two-and-a-half months, 10 Freedom Farms. Each one of those farms is 250 trees that have to be sourced, planted, planned. So many things need to come together to do this. The irrigation system needs to be brought there. There are roadblocks that the IDF puts up daily, and so there are so many factors in play that go into planting a farm, but we still do it. This is what they do.

And they’re used to operating under challenges and obstacles, because this is the Palestinian experience. It’s been the experience for decades now, it’s just been amped up considerably.

Marc Steiner:  So the question is, given the occupation, given this war, given all the obstacles to any farmer who’s Palestinian at the moment to survive, A, how do they survive in this program? And B, how do you get the olive oil out?

Cyrus Copeland:  These are thoughtful questions. Olive trees, it takes a while for them to fruit. The trees that we plant are between two and three years old. It’s going to take them two to three more years for their first harvest. So what we’ll do to make sure that the farmer has sustainable income is use the irrigation systems that we lay down by planting vegetables or herbs in the middle of the tracts of trees that we plant.

So for example, if we plant za’atar, or thyme, for a farmer, that is an herb that can be harvested four times a year, so that farmer can take za’atar to the market and sell it and make sure that they have an income until the point where their olive trees start to fruit. That’s what it means to do this in the short term.

In the long term, when the trees start to fruit and the farm becomes a mature farm, a mature farm will generate, I think it’s 36… $34,000 or $36,000 of olive oil every year. That’s a lifeline for a farmer and for their community. If you actually multiply that out over the 500-year lifespan of an olive tree — Because I don’t know if you knew this, I didn’t realize this until I realized that an olive tree’s natural lifespan is 500 years or more.

Marc Steiner:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Cyrus Copeland:  If you multiply that out over their 500-year lifespan from that single two and a half acre tract of land, you are generating $18 million of olive oil that will feed 15 generations of farmers and their families, bring that many communities together, and also has a really cool environmental impact, because olive trees are also really good for the environment, so that also becomes a form of climate action. The trees on a Freedom Farm will collectively synthesize, I think it’s 9 million pounds of carbon, also, over their natural lifespan.

So the short-term benefits and the short-term challenges, because one day this war will be over, but those trees will still be in the ground and doing the work of what it means to be an olive tree for the farmer who chooses to farm them. And the benefits of that will carry long past the immediate challenges of what it means to be a farmer in this day, in this climate and environment.

Marc Steiner:  And I think another point here to talk a bit about is important, which has been happening a lot in parts of the developing world, but it’s really important here in Palestine at the moment, is that a lot of these farmers and the people involved who are actually doing this are women.

Cyrus Copeland:  Yeah, so that’s the other thing that we do is we do the work of supporting, along with the PFU, gender equality in the West Bank. And 50% of the Freedom Farms that Treedom for Palestine plants are planted for female farmers. And in doing so, we’re strengthening their roles, not just in their families, but also in their communities, and eventually in local government as well.

So the act of planting, just planting a tree, the intention that you bring to it has so much delightful carryover into so many different arenas, and gender equality is just one of those arenas.

Marc Steiner:  One of the things that strikes me as I was reading about this and watching the film is that both Israelis and Palestinians love their olive oil, and the olive tree, the olive branch, has been a tree and branch of peace.

Cyrus Copeland:  Mm (affirmative). Yeah.

Marc Steiner:  And a uniting force, and symbolically even, it’s important. To see when you talk about the future, that if something like this, these trees and the movement around these trees and working with Palestinian farmers can help generate the peace across these lines, it’s turning a symbolic victory into a material victory.

Cyrus Copeland:  Isn’t that lovely? One loves the olive tree for so many different reasons, but amongst those reasons, at the forefront for me, is what they represent in the form of an olive branch, and what it means to extend an olive branch across the world to the West Bank in the act of planting.

The way I think about it, Marc, is that by doing what we’re doing, we’re actually putting the building blocks for a longer term peaceful coexistence into the earth itself. The way I think about it is that we’re taking a polarized holy land and turning it into a thriving and prosperous heartland.

And if we can’t learn to be in this together, do this together, coexist together, looking to the olive tree, which has been on this contentious land that’s been fought over for thousands of years, it doesn’t know geographical boundary. It doesn’t know religious identity or cultural identity. And as trees, they communicate with each other invisibly under the ground. In so many ways, these trees are examples of who we might yet be and become.

Marc Steiner:  That’s a beautiful thought, and I think we’ll be talking very shortly with Abbas Melhem, who is executive director of the Palestinian Farmers’ Union. Thank you, Cyrus, for making the introductions and hearing more about that. Because I’m also very curious about what these farmers are facing now in the midst of this war, 50,000 Palestinians killed, mostly women and children, and what the obstacles that people who are even working with you are facing in harvesting, selling their food, staying alive to do the work. Imagine doing all this in the midst of this war.

Cyrus Copeland:  It’s astonishing. He will be an exquisite spokesperson to talk a little bit more about that in greater depth and dimension than I could ever muster, Marc.

Marc Steiner:  Well, I’m really glad we made this connection. And Cyrus Copeland, I really do appreciate the work you’re doing. It’s really critically important. And people might say, he’s only planting olive trees. What do you mean, only planting olive trees? He’s building a world, helping to build a world, a sustainable world for farmers and for peace in the future. It’s a really critical point.

And before I conclude here, I want you, if you could, and we’ll put this on the screen — Not screen, we’re audio — But we’ll put this down online, how people can be in touch with you and how they can help.

Cyrus Copeland:  They can connect with us on our website, treedomforpalestine.org, read a little bit more about what they do, and if they decide that they would like to join this “tree-volution” and be a force of planting instead of fighting for change, we would welcome that assistance and their donations with great gratitude.

Marc Steiner:  And I’m sure you’re saying Treedom, T-R-E-E-D-O-M.

Cyrus Copeland:  Treedomforpalestine.org.

Marc Steiner:  Yes. Right, right. So don’t look up F, it’s T. But this has been one of the… Cyrus Copeland, thank you so much. We’re looking forward to our conversation with Abbas Melhem and the people who are in the movie itself, Where Olive Trees Weep. And it’s been an important conversation, and we’ll stay in touch. Thank you so much for your introductions. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Cyrus Copeland:  Oh, it’s been a delight. Thank you, Marc.

Marc Steiner:  Once again, let me thank Cyrus Copeland for joining us today. You can be in touch with his organization, Treedom, that’s T-R-E-E-D-O-M for Palestine at treedomforpalestine.org.

And thanks to Cameron Granadino for running the program today, audio editor Alina Nehlich for doing all the work she does to make us sound good, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com, and I’ll get right back to you.

Once again, thank you to Cyrus Copeland for joining us today and the work that he does. And keep listening as we explore the lives of people resisting the occupation, Palestinians and Israelis, who are featured in the film documentary Where Olive Trees Weep. We’ll be talking with Abbas Melhem, executive director of the Palestinian Farmers’ Union, in the coming week, the gentleman we talked about on this program today. So, for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

Related