9 September 2023
Dear Friends,
I want you to know how you and many from around the world encouraged us in the days before the September 6th re-registration hearing. Your prayers and messages of support lifted our spirits.
During the hearing the Committee heard two more of our witnesses. Both of them provided very strong evidence about our ownership of the land. One, a 95 year old man, was questioned for 2.5 hours. He knew my father and uncle, and provided details about their ownership and work on the land back to 1930: Another hearing is scheduled for the 4th of December 2023 at which the Committee will hear my witness and that of a land expert. Please keep us in your prayers.
While the legal struggle continues to take a good deal of our energy, we continue to focus on our vision, and to transform our pain into a constructive power that will make a big difference. We are right now in the middle of the grape and fig harvest season. Please know we welcome visitors and volunteers; and make sure that the everyday work of harvest, watering, and -repair of the land continues; and that we continue to dream towards our goals of self-sufficiency and sustainability. We are grateful for your presence with us and for all your prayers and solidarity.
We will keep you posted. Thank you so much for accompanying us on this very long journey for justice. And our journey continues with faith, love and hope.
Welcome to the Tent of Nations (ToN) website
We would like to inform you about our mission and work. We would like to invite you to visit the ToN and to share our story of faith, love and hope. With this, we would like to build a bridge between people and people, and between people and the land.
The ToN – an educational and ecological family farm
In 2019, we hosted about 13,000 people who visited the Tent of Nations and heard its story. We hope that those people from over 40 countries who came to see, went back home motivated and told the ToN’s story of hope, faith and love.
We also hosted many volunteers from around the world who stayed on the ToN for a week and up to three months. Others came to help for a day or/and participated in one of our work camps we are running on yearly basis. We would like to invite you to become a friend and be part of our work. Together we can accomplish a lot, and together, we can make a difference.
We hope that more people will visit us this year and in the coming ones to come as they did before the Corona pandemic.
We have made it our mission to build a bridge between people and between people and the land. We bring people together to create an understanding and respect to the environment. Therefore, we run educational projects at the ToN, our family organic farm in the hills southwest of Bethlehem in Palestine. The ToN family farm is becoming a center where people from many countries come to learn, to share and build bridges of understanding and hope.
What we do
We offer work camps and volunteering activities, run children’s summer camps and a women empowerment program, and welcome groups and visitors.
Throughout the year, we host several work camps which help to maintain the farm and support the ToN mission. Our goal is it to help people understand the importance of the land and to feel more connected to the ground and to our environment. The dates of the workcamps can be found below.
We run empowerment programs for women and children from the Bethlehem area. And the purpose is to let them discover their talents, increase their confidence and self-esteem, to focus on their positives, and to believe in themselves that they are able to shape their future even in their difficult daily struggle that they have to face. Please look into our programs and activities.
We welcome international volunteers to join us on a short or/and long-term. People from all over the world are welcome to ToN, to use this opportunity and also to help in our projects.
We welcome individual visitors and groups to learn about our history, experience our active and peaceful resistance on the ground, and to learn more about the general situation in Palestine.
Please note that we are not an NGO. We are a small educational and environmental family farm that welcomes individuals and groups to visit, to volunteer and to be encouraged to hear our story of hope in the middle of this darkness. We are not affiliated with any organization and we are supported by church groups and other international private friends of ToN.
Our goals
We want to develop a positive approach to conflict management. In the face of great injustice, we know that we should not hate, despair or flee. We refuse to be enemies and we try to transform our pain and frustration into positive actions that will help us to create a better future.
We want to help the oppressed and the marginalized to realize that they are powerful, and that they can also do something positive, even if they have to live under difficult conditions. We all have the task to create the future with our own hands and not to wait for others to do it for us. At the ToN, we want to work with others and to build the foundation for a better future – believing that justice and peace should grow from the bottom and up. At ToN, we connect people with the land and to our common environment. We need them to appreciate this wonderful gift that GOD gave to humanity, and to help protecting it for the generations to come.
Vision for the land
Although we have still a long way to go with many challenges, we are working towards towards being self-sufficient in terms of food, water, and electricity. One day we hope to be able to cover the costs of our programs and activities through what we generate from the farm. Our long-term vision is to develop an Environmental Educational Center on the farm where children and youth can learn about sustainability, alternative energy, organic farming and community building. We hope to prepare young people to make a positive contribution to their future and to their culture by introducing values of tolerance and understanding. We want to help in creating a new generation that can bear the responsibility and care about the environment. We look forward to continuing to welcome many volunteers and vistors to the ToN, and to keep hope alive.
