Elevated

In the Golan Heights, Mount Hermon has become home to Israel’s only ski resort, a site that has galvanized Israeli public sentiment. While the resort is owned by a small group of Israeli families, its operation and maintenance rely on the labor of several hundred Syrian villagers—those who remained in the Golan after its occupation in 1967. Rather than viewing the mountain as “the eyes of the nation,” as it is often described in Israeli discourses, the photographs in this essay invite readers to embrace the perspective of the workers themselves—the mountain’s natives—and to uncover the realities that this snowy landscape often conceals.