Daphne Leef's Speech Translated to English

An English translation of Daphne Leef's speech last night in Tel Aviv's Kikar HaMedina can be found here. (h/t Carolyn O.) Here's an excerpt:

We’ve created  a new discourse here. This is the new discourse: We’ve replaced the word pity with the word compassion. We’ve replace the word charity with the word justice. We’ve replaced the word donation with the word welfare. We’ve replaced the word consumer with the word citizen. We’ve replaced the verb ‘to wait’ with the verb ‘to change’. We’ve replaced the word alone with the word together. This is the greatest thing that we’ve done this summer. I don’t know about you, friends, but it’s already irreversible. We’ll not agree to go backwards! We are striding forwards, to a better future, to a more just country. Social Justice!

We’re all of us imprisoned somehow in our social status, in our neighborhoods, in our religion, our gender. And then I realized that we’re not imprisoned – it’s that we’re imprisoning us! We all have an overdraft, but the overdraft is in the interest of the banks, it’s in the interest of the entire financial system of the state. They want to keep us constantly at a certain level of distress. Because where there is distress there is no hope, and where there is no hope there is no chance of change, and where there is no chance for change there is nothing to live for. But this summer, day after day, week after week, we went out to the streets and clarified not just to the government, but also to ourselves, that there is something to live for! The moment we realized this, the moment we began to think about a shared tomorrow, we all set out to freedom!

What will tomorrow bring? We’re all asking what tomorrow will bring. What will happen to the tents, what is happening with the protest, where next and what to do and all that. All this demand for the fateful day, for the victory photo, for the decisive moment – there’s no such thing, my friends. Was there one fateful day when the social gaps became unbearable? Did swinish capitalism mark a particular moment of victory? Can we put our finger on that one privatization too many? There was no such moment. There was a process. Likewise now there is no moment – there’s a process. This process of ours is just beginning now. We have demands of the government and its head because things must change.