IsraelCast Episode 116

For people living on the Israeli border towns near Gaza, life is 99% heaven and 1% hell. We've heard the positive stories when it feels like heaven – the community, the agriculture, the beauty – but do we know the realities of life during the 1% of hell? Adele Raemer, mother, grandmother, and patriotic Zionist, joins Steven Shalowitz on IsraelCast this week to shed light on the stress and fear that pervades the region during times of conflict, and also to express the common humanity she and her community share with their Arab neighbors just a few miles away, across the border.

Born in the USA, Adele has lived in a Kibbutz on the border with the Gaza Strip since 1975. She is a mother and a grandmother living and raising her family on the usually paradisaical, sometimes hellishly volatile border. She is affiliated with "The Movement for the Future of the Western Negev", and "Achdut Im Hadarom" for sanity's sake. She also moderates a Facebook group named "Life on the Border". Adele is a teacher of English as a Foreign Language, as well as a teacher trainer and counselor for the Israeli MoE for EFL and a Tech Integration Coach. In addition, she is a trained medical clown and, as any southern clown would do, clowns as often as she can in the pediatric ward in the hospital in Ashkelon. She was invited to Geneva by an independent investigative committee for the UN to bear witness to the border situation in November 2018, and in December 2019 addressed the UN Security Council at the request of the US ambassador to the UN.