Carr-Ryan Center Fellow (2026-27)
Mattan Berner-Kadish is an Israeli-American human rights practitioner, documentarian, and nonprofit founder whose work focuses on the occupied West Bank, the communities living under its realities, and what it means for Americans to engage seriously with those realities from afar. Since 2021, he has maintained a sustained presence in Masafer Yatta, building relationships with Palestinian residents, doing protective presence work, and documenting settler and military violence for public audiences in the United States. He is the founder of From Here Forward, a grassroots documentation, education, and leadership-building project affiliated with Nonviolence International. He is based in Brooklyn, New York.
Fellowship Project: Mattan Berner-Kadish's fellowship project examines the forms of solidarity that have developed between Palestinians and Jews in the occupied West Bank, with a particular focus on protective presence as a model of co-resistance. Drawing on years of firsthand experience in Masafer Yatta, the project asks what has made that solidarity durable, where it has broken down, and what conditions allow it to be most effective. A central component will be extended time across different regions of the West Bank, examining how protective presence work varies in character and impact depending on context and community. Building on interviews with practitioners and firsthand observation, the project will culminate in a report useful to organizations and individuals doing this work on the ground.