August 3
GUEST: Zohar Regev Chamberlain, an Israeli citizen, human rights activist, and boat leader for the Al Awda (The Return) during its attempt to break the blockade of Gaza, talks about her life devoted to Palestinian liberation.
Women who build the future
I got to know Zohar when she spent several months in the Mid Hudson area, talking about sailing boats to break the siege of Gaza. She has many stories to tell, both about her growing up on a kibbutz in Israel, and traveling the globe to promote Palestinian rights.
Zohar's moral stances are her own. Life in a kibbutz was never focused on human rights. Whatever was shared never made it to Arab workers who traditionally did much of the agricultural work. According to an article in Haaretz:
And while we’re on the subject of comparing settlements and kibbutzim – the majority of the guests in our “hotel” were from the religious-Zionist movement. Together with the good old kibbutzniks, they constituted and continue to constitute, the spearhead of Zionist ideology. And of course they don’t lift a finger. They’re here to vacation. What are they, suckers? The maids are Arabs, the reception clerks are Arabs, the cooks are Arabs, the waiters are Arabs, the lifeguards are Arabs. The Cookilida seller is a Jewish woman. But the gardeners who keep the grass green – Arabs. Not Palestinians, heaven forbid. They are Arabs because that is their fate. To be erased citizens, devoid of political and social aspirations. Condemned to be hewers of wood and drawers of water. Here you have a brief history of Zionism: be a master, not a slave. That’s the basic principle. All the rest is inventions and excuses.
Zohar is tired of Israel's acceptance of the occupation. She is equally disgusted at how the American people have supported their relationship to the apartheid state. The US pays Israel 3.8 billion dollars a year to oppress the Palestinians, and yet few Americans even think about the fate of these five million captive people. Zohar speaks out because she thinks she has to.
But societies are not so accepting of truth tellers. Look at the decades long torture of imprisonment of Julian Assange. He proved that the US is indeed an empire, with scarcely any limits on the endless wars it pursues in the name of global dominance. Israel is just a piece of the grander imperialist plans, all paid for by the American public. People like Assange and Zohar show us the possibilities of a new world, and they are always in danger from the old.
