For those of you who don’t know her, Starhawk is the best-known Wiccan author alive today. She’s published eleven books, including The Spiral Dance, which introduced many of us to Wicca. And from the beginning of her career, she’s been very involved as an activist, most recently supporting Palestinians in the occupied territories.

After spending last week with Starhawk, I realized that she’s a “meta-activist,” a node of many different types of activism, and a font of knowledge about how to act most effectively when demonstrating, educating, and building a new world. She’s been active in the women’s movement, the anti-nuclear movement, the anti-globalization movement, in creating greater sustainability and a permaculture for the Earth, as well as in supporting Palestinian non-violence for the creation of a Palestinian state. Fortunately for all of us, as an active workshop presenter, Star has been passing along what she’s learned in all these areas. I interviewed her about two of those movements, the two p’s: Palestine and permaculture, and want to share those interviews over the next few days, beginning with her thoughts about Palestine.

This past December, Star planned to participate in the Gaza Freedom March, a demonstration of 1,400 people from 38 different countries that included a large contingent from France. The purpose of this gathering was to bring in much-needed humanitarian supplies as well as to call attention to the inhumane conditions in Gaza after the yearlong Israeli blockade that followed their bombing of Gaza.

As you may recall, Israel attacked about a year ago in response to rockets that Hamas shot into Israeli settlements. As Star reiterated in her comments, the international demonstrators came to support Palestinian non-violent resistance to Israel, and in no way condoned Hamas’ hostility. But Israeli aggression a year ago worsened an already difficult situation in Gaza, killing 1400 people, destroying 4,000 homes and 88 public buildings. Since then the Israeli blockade has kept needed supplies from reaching Palestinians in Gaza, resulting in abject poverty, malnutrition, and bad drinking water, as well as a lack of building materials and equipment to rebuild the devastated area. The state of affairs has deteriorated to the point where Gaza has become essentially an open-air prison with little to keep it going.

Gaza has only a few more days of fuel, and the payment agreement the Palestinians have with Israel that keeps the Gaza power plant in operation runs out very soon, so there’s no reason to believe that things will get any better. Since no Palestinians can move across the border, there is essentially no work (most Gaza residents worked in Israel). Even students who have received scholarships are unable to leave the territory. None of this is serving Israeli security, because it leads to more and more resentment on the part of all Palestinians in Gaza.

Unfortunately, the planned march never materialized, because on arriving in Egypt, the demonstrators weren’t allowed to travel into Gaza. Only 80 people eventually crossed the border, and what they experienced was eye-opening for many of them. From what they report, life in Gaza is grim today.

Tomorrow I will post the second part of this interview, so stay tuned.

Editor’s Note: This is the first of three posts by Nancy Vedder-Shults about the activist work of Starhawk. Check out the second one about Starhawk’s experience growing up Jewish and seeing Palestinians as people, and the third one about powerful grassroots demonstrations and how we can take part in the nonviolent resistance.