Avi Shlaim: Withdrawal is a prelude to annexation

US hypocrisy is not new but Condi Rice has taken it beyond chutzpah

Avi Shlaim, The Guardian, 21 June 2005

Condoleezza Rice hailed the understanding between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on the need to destroy the homes of the 8,000 Jewish settlers in Gaza as a historic step on the road to peace. This is a fatuous statement by one of the most vacuous US secretaries of state of the postwar era.

American foreign policy has habitually displayed double standards towards the Middle East: one standard towards Israel and one towards the Arabs. To give just one example, the US effected regime change in Baghdad in three weeks but has failed to dismantle a single Jewish settlement in the occupied territories in 38 years.

The two main items on America’s current agenda for the region are democracy for the Arabs and a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. America, however, insists on democracy only for its Arab opponents, not for its friends. As for the peace process, it is essentially a mechanism by which Israel and America try to impose a solution on the Palestinians. American hypocrisy is nothing new. But with Dr Rice it has gone beyond chutzpah.

With Ariel Sharon, by contrast, what you see is what you get. He has always been in the destruction business, not the construction business. As minister of defence in 1982, Sharon preferred to destroy the settlement town of Yamit in Sinai rather than hand it to Egypt as a reward for signing a peace treaty with Israel. George Bush once described his friend Sharon as “a man of peace”. In truth, Sharon is a brutal thug and land-grabber.

Sharon is also the unilateralist par excellence. The road map issued by the quartet (US, UN, EU and Russia) in the aftermath of the Iraq war envisaged three stages leading to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2005. Sharon wrecked the road map, notably by continuing to expand Jewish settlements on the West Bank and building an illegal wall that cuts deep into Palestinian territory.

He presented his plan for disengagement from Gaza as a contribution to the road map; in fact it is almost the exact opposite. The road map calls for negotiations between the two sides, leading to a two-state solution. Sharon refuses to negotiate and acts to redraw unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel. As he told rightwing supporters: “My plan is difficult for the Palestinians, a fatal blow. There’s no Palestinian state in a unilateral move.” The real purpose of the move is to derail the road map and kill the comatose peace process. For Sharon, withdrawal from Gaza is the prelude not to a permanent settlement but to the annexation of substantial sections of the West Bank.

Sharon decided to cut his losses in Gaza when he realised that the cost of occupation is not sustainable. Gaza is home to 8,000 Israeli settlers and 1.3 million Palestinians. The settlers control 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and most of the water. This is a hopeless colonial enterprise, accompanied by one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times. Bush publicly endorsed Sharon’s plan to withdraw from Gaza and retain the four main settlement blocks on the West Bank without consulting the quartet – a reversal of the US position since 1967 that viewed the settlements as an obstacle to peace. Last year Sharon proposed handing the remaining Israeli assets in Gaza to an international body. Now he proposes to destroy the homes and farms.

The change of plan is prompted by Israeli fear that Hamas will claim credit for the withdrawal and raise its flag over the buildings vacated by the settlers. This is inevitable both because Hamas, not the PA, is the liberator of Gaza and because Israel is refusing to coordinate its moves with the PA. Another fear is that Hamas, supported by 35-40% of the Palestinian population, will emerge as a serious electoral challenger to Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement.

This is Condi’s conundrum. If she is serious about spreading democracy in the Arab world she must accept the outcome of free elections; in most of the Arab world they would produce Islamist, anti-US governments. Israel has contributed more than any other country to this sorry state of affairs. Condi and the American right regard Israel as a strategic asset in the war on terror. In fact Israel is America’s biggest liability. For most Arabs and Muslims the real issue in the Middle East is not Iraq, Iran or democracy but Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people and America’s blind support for Israel.

America’s policy towards the Middle East is myopic, muddled and mistaken. Only a negotiated settlement can bring lasting peace and stability to the area. And only America has the power to push Israel into such a settlement. It is high time the US got tough with Israel, the intransigent party and main obstacle to peace. Colluding in Sharon’s selfish, uncivilised plan to destroy the Jewish homes in Gaza is not a historic step on the road to peace.

· Avi Shlaim is a British Academy research professor at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.

Avi Shlaim: Withdrawal is a prelude to annexation

US hypocrisy is not new but Condi Rice has taken it beyond chutzpah

The Guardian, 21 June 2005

Condoleezza Rice hailed the understanding between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on the need to destroy the homes of the 8,000 Jewish settlers in Gaza as a historic step on the road to peace. This is a fatuous statement by one of the most vacuous US secretaries of state of the postwar era.
American foreign policy has habitually displayed double standards towards the Middle East: one standard towards Israel and one towards the Arabs. To give just one example, the US effected regime change in Baghdad in three weeks but has failed to dismantle a single Jewish settlement in the occupied territories in 38 years.

The two main items on America’s current agenda for the region are democracy for the Arabs and a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. America, however, insists on democracy only for its Arab opponents, not for its friends. As for the peace process, it is essentially a mechanism by which Israel and America try to impose a solution on the Palestinians. American hypocrisy is nothing new. But with Dr Rice it has gone beyond chutzpah.

With Ariel Sharon, by contrast, what you see is what you get. He has always been in the destruction business, not the construction business. As minister of defence in 1982, Sharon preferred to destroy the settlement town of Yamit in Sinai rather than hand it to Egypt as a reward for signing a peace treaty with Israel. George Bush once described his friend Sharon as “a man of peace”. In truth, Sharon is a brutal thug and land-grabber.

Sharon is also the unilateralist par excellence. The road map issued by the quartet (US, UN, EU and Russia) in the aftermath of the Iraq war envisaged three stages leading to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2005. Sharon wrecked the road map, notably by continuing to expand Jewish settlements on the West Bank and building an illegal wall that cuts deep into Palestinian territory.

He presented his plan for disengagement from Gaza as a contribution to the road map; in fact it is almost the exact opposite. The road map calls for negotiations between the two sides, leading to a two-state solution. Sharon refuses to negotiate and acts to redraw unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel. As he told rightwing supporters: “My plan is difficult for the Palestinians, a fatal blow. There’s no Palestinian state in a unilateral move.” The real purpose of the move is to derail the road map and kill the comatose peace process. For Sharon, withdrawal from Gaza is the prelude not to a permanent settlement but to the annexation of substantial sections of the West Bank.

Sharon decided to cut his losses in Gaza when he realised that the cost of occupation is not sustainable. Gaza is home to 8,000 Israeli settlers and 1.3 million Palestinians. The settlers control 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and most of the water. This is a hopeless colonial enterprise, accompanied by one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times. Bush publicly endorsed Sharon’s plan to withdraw from Gaza and retain the four main settlement blocks on the West Bank without consulting the quartet – a reversal of the US position since 1967 that viewed the settlements as an obstacle to peace. Last year Sharon proposed handing the remaining Israeli assets in Gaza to an international body. Now he proposes to destroy the homes and farms.

The change of plan is prompted by Israeli fear that Hamas will claim credit for the withdrawal and raise its flag over the buildings vacated by the settlers. This is inevitable both because Hamas, not the PA, is the liberator of Gaza and because Israel is refusing to coordinate its moves with the PA. Another fear is that Hamas, supported by 35-40% of the Palestinian population, will emerge as a serious electoral challenger to Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement.

This is Condi’s conundrum. If she is serious about spreading democracy in the Arab world she must accept the outcome of free elections; in most of the Arab world they would produce Islamist, anti-US governments. Israel has contributed more than any other country to this sorry state of affairs. Condi and the American right regard Israel as a strategic asset in the war on terror. In fact Israel is America’s biggest liability. For most Arabs and Muslims the real issue in the Middle East is not Iraq, Iran or democracy but Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people and America’s blind support for Israel.

America’s policy towards the Middle East is myopic, muddled and mistaken. Only a negotiated settlement can bring lasting peace and stability to the area. And only America has the power to push Israel into such a settlement. It is high time the US got tough with Israel, the intransigent party and main obstacle to peace. Colluding in Sharon’s selfish, uncivilised plan to destroy the Jewish homes in Gaza is not a historic step on the road to peace.

· Avi Shlaim is a British Academy research professor at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.

Incitement in Palestinian Textbooks a “Myth”

Palestine Media Center (PMC), June 11, 2005

In a report titled “The Myth of Incitement in Palestinian Textbooks”, the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education has refuted as “unfounded” the Israeli and US allegations that Palestinian textbooks incite hatred and violence, ahead of attempts by some US Congressmen to attach conditions to direct US aid to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), including changes to the Palestinian syllabus.

US Congress is taking the unprecedented step of establishing an in-house oversight apparatus to monitor daily how American aid money to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) is being spent.

Following is the text of the ministry’s report that was distributed to the foreign diplomatic corps in PNA as well as to the US institutions, Senators, congressmen and women:

The Myth of Incitement in Palestinian Textbooks

Allegations Unfounded

There has been a flood of accusations for several years over the content of Palestinian textbooks; that the textbooks incite children to hatred and violence towards Israeli Jews, and fail to promote the values of peace, tolerance and coexistence. This claim has been widely accepted as a fact mostly in the United States and Israeli official circles. Such claims are largely based on reports by the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP), a Jewish organization with links to extremist and racist Israeli groups that advocate settlement activities in the Palestinian territories, expulsion (transfer) of Palestinians from their homeland, and claims that Palestinians are all “terrorists” that peace with them is not possible. Israel’s supporters now are intensifying their orchestrated crusade against Palestinian education, in preparation for the House International Relations Committee’s planned consideration of the Foreign Relations Authorization bill, FY 2006-2007.

The issue of Palestinian incitement “is going to be a very big issue for Congress as we move ahead to the next few years,” said Ester Kurz, legislative strategy and policy director of the influential pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), according to Jewish American paper The Forward, 27 May 2005.

Senator Hillary Clinton has continued to criticize Palestinian textbooks since her first Senate campaign. “All future aid to the Palestinian Authority must be contingent on strict compliance with their obligation to change all the textbooks in all grades ‘not just two at a time,’ she insisted five years ago. Unfortunately, she fails to realize that leading the campaign against what she calls “new generation of terrorists” is in itself an act of incitement to hate and racism. (“Hillary Clinton: Link PA Aid to End to Antisemitism,” Jerusalem Post 26 September 2000)

A member of the Unite! d States Congress wrote to The New York Times: “According to the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, today’s sixth-grade Palestinian students are required to read the textbook ‘Our Country Palestine,’ which has a banner on the title page of Volume I that reads, ‘There is no alternative to destroying Israel.'” (Steve Israel, letter to The New York Times, 10 June 2001, Section 4, p. 14). Had Congressman Steve Israel checked his sources before making his declaration, he would have found that there is no such banner in the textbook.

However, in their rush to judgment, some American politicians repeated the allegations without bothering to verify such claims. Thus, and consequently, victimizing the Palestinian people and children further. In the words of Alice Rothchild, co-chair of Visions of Peace with Justice, in a speech given at World Fellowship Center August, 2001: “The campaign of the CMIP has created a self-fulfilling prophecy that is devastating to the peace movement.” And she asked: “What does this tell us about our own stereotypes, racism, power relationships and knee jerk responses.”

Criticism of Palestinian textbooks has been largely based on claims by Israeli government sources and CMIP, who’s work has been criticized as “tendentious and highly misleading” by Nathan Brown, Professor of Political Science at George Washington University, and Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who has also published his own studies on this subject. According to Prof. Brown, CMIP’s “method was to follow harsh criticisms with quotation after quotation purporting to prove a point.” In short, the CMIP reports read as if they were written by a ruthless prosecuting attorney anxious for a conviction at any cost. Exaggerated rhetoric, charges of anti-Semitism and racism, and denial of the significance of existing changes in the curriculum will hardly convince anyone further improvements are worth the effort.” (Nathan J. Brown, “Getting Beyond the Rhetoric about the Palestinian Curriculum,” 1 January 2002)

CMIP’s claim that the European Union was funding Palestinian textbooks with anti-Semitic content infuriated Chris Patten, on the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, and External Relations Commissioner. He declared: “It is a total fabrication that the European Union has funded textbooks with anti-Semitic arguments within them in Palestinian schools. It is a complete lie.”

The European Union, responding to the false allegations, issued a statement on 15 May 2002 which asserted that: “Quotations attributed by earlier CMIP reports to the Palestinian textbooks are not found in the new Palestinian Authority schoolbooks funded by some EU Member States; some were traced to the old Egyptian and Jordanian text books that they are replacing, some to other books outside the school curriculum, and others not traced at all. While many of the quotations attributed to the new textbooks by the most recent CMIP report of November 2001 could be confirmed, these have been found to be often badly translated or quoted out of context, thus suggesting an anti-Jewish incitement that the books do not contain. Therefore, allegations against the new textbooks funded by EU members have proven unfounded.”

In “A Study of the Impact of the Palestinian Curriculum”, commissioned by the Belgian Technical Co-operation at the end of 2004, and conducted by education experts, Dr. Roger Avenstrup and Dr Patti Swarts, they found that: “In the light of the debate stirred by accusations of incitement to hatred and other criticisms of the Palestinian textbooks, there is no evidence at all of that happening as a result of the curriculum. What is of great concern to students, teachers and parents alike is that although they wish it, students find it difficult to accept peace and conflict resolution as a solution to the conflict, and teachers find it difficult to teach, while soldiers and settlers are shooting in the streets and in schools and checkpoints have to be braved every day. It would ! seem tha t the occupation is the biggest constraint to the realisation of these values in the Palestinian curriculum.”

In his evaluation of Palestinian Civic Education, Dr. Wolfram Reiss, University of Rostock, Germany, at the Conference on “Teaching for Tolerance, Respect and Recognition in Relation with Religion or Belief,” Oslo, 2-5 September 2004, Wrote: “[I]t must be said first that, in general, the Palestinian textbooks cannot be considered a “war curriculum”. At least these textbooks of Civics Education convey visions of society, in which tolerance to other religions, human rights, peace, pluralism, democracy and other values are encouraged and fostered much. There is no hatred or incitement against Israel, the Israeli people or Judaism. The textbooks do not contain anti-Semitic language.”

Dr. Reiss added that “civics education textbooks do not only avoid hatred and incitement against the West, but foster very much Western values: democracy, human rights, the individual rights, the education for peace and tolerance of all religions, the rights of women and children, the civil society and the protection of nature. From a Western perspective the civics education textbooks therefore have to be highly praised indeed.”

Finally, the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI), in their June 2004 report, “Analysis and Evaluation of the New Palestinian Curriculum” (30 books for Grades 4 and 9), commissioned by the US Congress and submitted to the Public Affairs Office of the US Consulate General in Jerusalem, concluded that: “There is, moreover, no indication of hatred of the Western Judeo-Christian tradition or the values associated with it,” and that “the textbooks promote an environment of open-mindedness, rational thinking, modernization, critical reflection and dialogue.”

The report also confirmed that the textbooks “promote civil activity, commitment, responsibility, solidarity, respecting others’ feelings, respecting and helping people with disabilities, and..! . reinforce students’ understanding of the values of civil society such as respecting human dignity; religious, social, cultural, racial, ethnic, and political pluralism; personal, social and moral responsibility; transparency and accountability.”

Palestinians welcome having their own textbooks examined and scrutinized from an academic, not prosecutorial stand point, but it is also fair and legitimate to ask those rushing to prosecute to look at Israeli curricula and compare how each side views the “other”. Incidentally, the United States Congress has an ongoing program to fund research on Palestinian school books, but is on record as refusing to pay a dime for research on Israeli school books. Concern about Palestinian education and curricula, however, can gain credibility if it is not seen as blatantly one-sided and totally political.

Israeli Incitement

Those who are critical of what Palestinian children are learning should try to find out how Israeli children are taught to hate Arabs, and trained to kill them.

Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronot, May 7th 2002, published a letter titled “Dear Soldiers, Please Kill a Lot of Arabs,” that came from Israeli children who sent such letters to Israeli soldiers serving in the Tulkarm area during the so-called “Operation Defensive Shield”. The letters sent by Israeli school students encouraged soldiers to disregard rules and regulations and to kill as many Arabs as possible. According to Yedioth Ahronoth dozens of the letters were sent to soldiers, mostly from children in the 7th through 10th grades, attending religious schools.

Egyptian researcher Safa Abdel-Aal studied the Israeli curriculum and media, and published her findings in a new book entitled Racist Education in the Israeli Curricula in which she found that Israel’s educational curricula incite the new generation for war, and racism against the Arabs. Abdel-Aal’s book analyses eleven history and five geography ! books fo r elementary school from grades three to six.

She thought that these books deliberately paint distorted pictures of the Arabs, giving them such derogatory descriptions as “Arab thieves” or “embezzlers”, and saying they are “bastards, thirsty for Jewish blood” or that they are “underdeveloped Bedouins” and “vagrant highway robbers,” and “house of Arab reptiles”.

Abdel-Aal said that Arabs are maliciously described as murderers and thieves. In one example she quoted the following from one Israeli textbook, “despite a harsh climate and strange environment full of attacks by Arab embezzlers, thieves and terrorists”. And in another citation that refers to the city of Tiberias where “a feeling of insecurity and fear of the Arab murderers spread among the residents of the city.”

Ruth Firer and Sami Adwan, an Israeli and a Palestinian scholar, who conducted research comparing Palestinian and Israeli textbooks, March 2002, wrote that the Israeli books “strongly emphasizing the collective values connected to the history of the Jewish nation in ‘their land’ and God’s promises to the Jews that give them an absolute right on the land. The land of Eretz Israel described in the books includes the territories of the PNA from 1967.”

A study by Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel-Aviv University reviewed 124 Hebrew language books approved for use in 1994 by the Ministry of Education. The study concludes that “the majority of [Israeli school] books stereotype Arabs negatively.” In one children’s book, Bar-Tal offers this sampling, “We were lonely pioneers surrounded by a sea of enemies and murderers.” In elementary school books, according to Bar-Tal, Arabs are often stereotyped negatively and portrayed as “uneducated people and enemies.”

In a report titled “Israeli Textbooks and Children’s Literature Promote Racism and Hatred toward Palestinians and Arabs,” journalist Maureen Meehan concluded that “Israeli school textbooks as well as children’s storybooks, portray Palestinians and Arabs as ‘murderers!’, ‘rioters’, ‘suspicious’, and generally backward and unproductive. Direct delegitimization and negative stereotyping of Palestinians and Arabs are the rule rather than the exception in Israeli schoolbooks.” (Washington Report for Middle East Affairs September 1999)

In a study presented at the hearing of the political committee of the European Parliament, 24 October 2003, titled “The attitude towards Palestinians in Israeli textbooks,” Dr. Nurit Elhanan, of the Hebrew University, revealed that “the Palestinians are absent from all textbooks, The Occupation is never mentioned, and the area where Palestinians live is presented in the maps either as an empty space referred to as ‘an area without data’ (Man and Space maps) or it is incorporated into the state of Israel (The Geography of the land of Israel maps). In both cases use of the term ‘occupation’ is out of the question, since you cannot occupy illegally what is yours anyway and you cannot occupy illegally an empty space.”

Dr. Elhanan added: “When reference is made to date in the West Bank it is only to Jewish colonies or to main cities like Nablus, Hebron or Beth Lehem as Israeli tourist sites. In Israel today there is already a second generation of children who don’t know there are occupation, illegal domination and illegal settlements.”

A report by an Israeli research institution, The New Profile, entitled Child Recruitment in Israel, 29 July 2004, by: Amir Givol, Neta Rotem, Sergeiy Sandler, reveals the extent of the militarization of the Israeli education system. It states:

“To begin with, militarised education naturally feeds on the militarism prevalent in society at large. In a country where various kinds of weaponry are permanently displayed in public places and the status of the military is used to promote anything from cheese to political candidates, militarised education comes natural. One absorbs militarism at home and on the street. The military is physically present in schools and school activities. Soldiers in uniform are stationed in schools, many of them are actually teaching classes. Other teachers, and especially principals, are recently retired career officers, without proper teacher training. High schools normally have a display on one of the walls in the school building with the names and photographs of “the fallen” among their graduates. School field trips, at all ages, are often made to military memorials set up on former battlegrounds.
“Official curricula and textbooks also reflect the militaristic attitudes inherent in the Israeli educational system, all the way from kindergarten to the last years of high school, where there is a mandatory programme for all Jewish state-run schools called “preparation for the IDF”, that in most cases includes actual military training. Whole curricular subjects are often described to the pupils, and in official documents, as having the aim of preparing pupils, or some of them, to military service. Glorifications of the military and military conquest, and negative or skewed representation of Palestinians, are to be found in many Israeli textbooks.”

Education Under Occupation

Roger Avenstrup, who is an international education consultant and has worked in various countries in conflict and post-conflict situations, wrote in the International Herald Tribune, December 18, 2004, that the “biggest constraint, in the words of a Palestinian parent, is that Israeli tanks and soldiers are shooting in the streets outside while teachers are trying to promote peace in the classroom.”

Since Septem! ber 2000 , according to the Palestinian State Information Service (SIS), Israel has killed over 4,032 Palestinians, including 750 children; and wounded over 45,000 as of April 30, 2005. Denial of access to medical facilities at checkpoints caused the death of 131 civilians. Of a population of 3.5 million, the Israeli occupation still imprisons 8,500 Palestinians, including 350 minors; 69,843 homes were damaged, 7,438 of those were completely destroyed.

Haim Yavin, Israeli Popular TV Anchor since 1968, commenting in the first segment of a five-part documentary he produced, after listening to settlers insisting that God gave them the lands, admitted: “Since 1967, we have been brutal conquerors, occupiers, suppressing another people. We simply don’t view the Palestinians as human beings.” And “At one point, according to AP report “Yavin shifted the camera toward the Israeli soldiers to ask why they weren’t letting people through. ‘I look for danger in these people and I can’t find it,’ Yavin said in the film.” (Associated Press, May 31, 2005)
Fouad Moughrabi, director of the Qattan Center for Educational Research and Development, Ramallah, Palestine, wrote “I find no evidence of brain washing or anti-Jewish incitement in the new texts produced by the PA.” He noted that “Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands breeds more hatred and mistrust than any schoolbooks can.”

The Convention on the Rights of Child of November 1991, Article 2, obliges State Parties to “respect and ensure the rights set forth in the present Convention to each child within their jurisdiction.” Israel has repeatedly violated these rights and ignored it obligations. In its 20 November 2004 press release, Defense for Children International (DCI), appealed “to the international community and world leaders to abide by their declared commitment to protect the rights of all children, including the children of Palestine. We urge them to bring pressure on the Israeli government, to abide by international law and end the occupation which is incompatible with any declared commitment to promoting and protecting the basic human rights of all.”

In the same press release (20 November 2004) DCI reported that: “Since the start of the second Intifada on 29 September 2000, Palestinian children have borne the brunt of the upsurge in Israeli violence. Over the course of the past four years, more than 660 Palestinian children have been killed and almost 9,000 injured — hundreds of whom have been left with permanent physical disabilities. Many thousands more are suffering psychological trauma from the daily horrors they witness. An estimated 3,000 children have been arrested during this Intifada, while currently there are still 335 children being held in Israeli prisons and detention centers.”

Conclusion

The First Palestinian Curriculum Plan of 1998 stated that the principles of the Palestinian curriculum are that Palestine is a democratic state, ruled by a democratic parliamentary system; Palestine is a peace-loving state, working towards international understanding and cooperation based on equality, liberty, dignity, peace and human rights; Palestinian national and cultural identity must be fostered and developed; social justice, equality and the provision of equal learning opportunities for all Palestinians, to the limits of their individual capacity must be ensured without discrimination on grounds of race, religion, color, or gender; opportunities must be provided to develop all Palestinians intellectually, socially, physically, spiritually and emotionally, to become responsible citizens, able to participate in solving problems of their community, their country and the world.

Palestinian opposition to Israel must be understood in the context of their opposition to Israeli occupation and oppression, their quest for freedom and self-determination, self preservation, and national liberation. Ruth Firer, of the Hebrew University, who carried out research on Palestinian textbooks was quoted in Americans for Peace Now p! ublished interview as saying “we were surprised to find how moderate the anger directed toward Israelis in the Palestinian textbooks is, compared to the Palestinian predicament and suffering.”

Experience has shown that changes in school textbooks and syllabi are not at all the necessary ingredients for the fulfillment of a meaningful peace agreement between states in conflict, but rather the sincere will and commitment of both parties for achieving such an agreement. For over fifty years Palestinians have tried reconciliation and compromise. They declared a state on 22 percent of their original country for the sake of peace and security, through the Palestine National Council Conference of 1988 in Algiers, and accepted all U.N. resolutions regarding the Palestinian issue.

In 1993 the PLO signed the Oslo Agreement which called for ending the Israeli occupation and implementing the two-state solution. The Israelis responded by expanding settlement activities, in violation of international law and the Oslo Agreements at a frantic rate, with more violence, more land expropriation and house demolitions, incitement, demonization, and eventually the cantonisztion of the Palestinian population in apartheid-like ghettos. More recently, the (apartheid) Wall, which was condemned by the International Court of Justice at The Hague and by the international community, has added to the inciting nature of measure taken by the Israeli government against the Palestinian population under occupation.

As long as Israel continues to look for excuses attacking Palestinian institutions to smoke screen it brutal military occupation, and to deny the Palestinians’ self-determination, freedom, and human rights, in violation of international law, and all U.N. resolutions, the conflict will continue. Palestinians need peace more than any other nation on earth, but peace must be based on mutual respect and justice for all.

Grandpa’s Battered Radio

Ramzy Baroud, AntiWar.com, June 7, 2005

"Ramzy, I must admit it, it’s so hard being a Palestinian these days.” That’s how a friend of mine, a dedicated individual who is spending her days and years advocating justice for the Palestinian people, ended a distressing message to me a few months back. I recall her words often, and as often I recall my grandfather who died in a refugee camp’s mud home, away from his village and land.

My grandpa believed that being a Palestinian was a blessing. “You cannot be entrusted to defend a more virtuous cause than the cause of Palestine, unless Allah has blessed you greatly,” he once told me.

I often wondered what kept the old man going. He lost his home and the pride of his life, his land, and was forced at gunpoint to haul his family away and leave the village of Beit Daras where they once lived happily. He spent the rest of his life getting old and tired in a refugee camp, for many years in a tent, then in a mud house subsidized by the United Nations. He died there, next to a transistor radio.

Grandpa’s radio was once green, yet its color faded to white somehow. It was battered and covered with duct tape, just enough to keep it whole. The old man cared little for the look of the radio. All that mattered was that the radio managed to broadcast the news, the Voice of London in Arabic, the Middle East Radio, or the Voice of the Arabs were constantly on. At night, he tucked the radio beside him and went to bed, to start his next morning with the latest news.

He fancied that one of those days the radio would declare that Palestinian refugees were allowed to go back home. He carried that fantasy until he died at the age of 95, decades after he was forced out of Palestine.

We would see grandpa walking toward the radio briskly from the kitchen, or waking up abruptly from an afternoon nap, fervently asking, while pointing at the radio: “Did they just say something about refugees?”

“No grandpa, they haven’t,” one of us would reply with a juvenile smile. He would return back to his chore, carrying the weight of many years and his unending hope.

But grandpa died a few years before the start of the Palestinian uprising of 1987. He was too old to walk, to argue with grandma for not feeding the chickens on time, or to converse with an equally ailing neighbor. But never too old to hold his little radio, lovingly, with a final desperate hope that the long-awaited news segment about his return to his village would be declared.

When grandpa gasped his last breath, all of his friends and family stood by muttering verses from the Koran as many tears were shed. I, too, stood close to him, frightened of confronting my first experience with death. He made it easy on me, as he had a smile on his face, and near him was a radio with the volume lowered but never muted.

The year of his death was a year that many older refugees also passed away. They were buried in a graveyard surrounded by the graves of younger refugees, mostly martyrs who fell throughout the years.

I wish I could have managed to keep grandpa’s old radio. But when I left my refugee camp, I did manage to smuggle many memories, his undying hope, and his pride at being a Palestinian.

Very often, and now more than ever, I recall the words of my friend about how difficult it is being a Palestinian these days. I recall it with every Palestinian child killed and every home demolished, with every speech that President Bush makes outlining his visionless vision of the Middle East; I recalled it when a Brussels court denied Palestinians the right to try Ariel Sharon for his massacres in Lebanon; I recalled it when a Dutch officer held me for a long time delaying the entire flight while investigating me for the mere fact that I was born in Gaza; I recall it when my father talks to me on the phone just to tell me that the Israelis are bombing his neighborhood; I recall it not every day, but every hour.

But I also recall my grandpa’s words: “You cannot be entrusted to defend a more virtuous cause, the cause of Palestine, unless Allah has blessed you greatly.”

I often wondered why old, dispossessed, and ailing grandpa died in a mud house with a smile on his face. We will all die one day, rich and poor, citizens and stateless, Palestinians and Israelis, presidents and refugees. It’s that final and decisive moment, when grandpa gasped his last breath, that counts. He lived a hard life, a refugee, with his dearest possession a battered transistor radio. But he died a Palestinian who never compromised on his rights. He died proud, with a smile, leaving us with nothing but a transistor and an abundance of hope.

Grandpa never returned to his village of Beit Daras, but I know that one day my children will.

June 24, 2005
“Beyond Chutzpah: The Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History” by Dr. Norman Finkelstein

Grainger Hall, University of Wisconsin
975 University Avenue
Madison, WI
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM

Dr. Norman Finkelstein, Professor of Political Theory at DePaul University and author of Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict will present this keynote address at the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation Upper Midwest Regional Organizing Conference. The event is free and open to the public.

For more information, contact rafahsistercity at yahoo.com.

June 13 – July 4, 2005
Palestine-Israel Discussion Series

First United Methodist Church Parlor
203 Wisconsin Ave, Madison
Sunday mornings at 9:30 am

This is a three-part discussion series on Palestine-Israel, and one on Iraq, sponsored by the First United Methodist Church. Participants include Jennifer Loewenstein, founding member of MRSCP, George Shalabi, and MRSCP Advisory Committee member Cecil Findley.

A theme text is from the words of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem: “Oh, that you would recognize the things that make for peace.”

June 13
Tina Lang on the wall being built by the Israeli government.

June 20
Jennifer Loewenstein on the plight of those in Rafah and throughout Gaza.

June 27
George Shalabi and the personal and historical reflections of a Palestinian-born American Christian.

July 4
A patriotic add-on, a special report from Iraq by Fred Brancel, who was part of a peacemakers’ team who visited there this spring.

As a part of this series, Cecil Findley will preach at all three services on June 20 (8:15, 9:30, and 11:00 a.m.) on the same Israel-Palestine theme and text, with the title “Weeping Over Jerusalem.”

All are invited.

Cecil and Helen Findley (hcfindley at charter.net)

June 24 – 26, 2005
U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation Conference

Upper Midwest Regional Organizing Conference

Madison, WI

Join the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project for a weekend conference to network, strategize, and build skills to end U.S. support for Israel’s military occupation.

See the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation for information on conferernce registration, agenda, logistics, housing, and rides.

There is a conference registration fee, but evening forums are free and open to the public.

For more information, contact rafahsistercity at yahoo.com.

June 25, 2005
Rebuilding Homes in Rafah, Rebuilding Hope in Palestine


Panel Discussion with Craig and Cindy Corrie
and Khaled and Samah Nasrallah

Saturday, June 25, 2005
7:30 PM – 9:00 PM
The Crossing, 1127 University Ave., Madison, WI
(corner of University and Charter)

Cindy and Craig Corrie are the parents of U.S. peace activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip. Khaled and Samah Nasrallah lived in the house that Rachel died defending. They will present the story that links their families, and speak about their involvement with the Rebuilding Homes Alliance.

The event is free and open to the public. There will be fundraising for the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project.

This event is part of the U.S. Campaign Upper Midwest Regional Organizing Conference. For more information, contact rafahsistercity at yahoo.com.

Mezan Center is Key Partner in Palestine

Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, May 9, 2005

Madison — The Madison-Rafah Sister City Project (MRSCP) has enlisted the Mezan Center for Human Rights in Palestine as its key partner in maintaining peopleto-people relations with the citizens of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. The Mezan Center is a non-profit, non-partisan, transparent and accountable human rights organization with the mandate “to promote, protect and prevent violations of human rights in general and economic, social and cultural rights in particular,” and “to enhance the quality of life of the community in marginalized sectors of the Gaza Strip.” Core donors are the Netherlands Representative Office , the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, the French Consulate, and the Ford Foundation.

In the past, Al Mezan has been instrumental in acting as an intermediary between MRSCP and grassroots organizations in Rafah including the Rafah municipality under the mayorship of Said Zoroub, the Palestine Health and Education Ministries, the General Union of Palestinian Women, the Gaza Community Mental Health Center-Rafah Branch, the Palestine Children’s Parliament, and the Palestine Center for Human Rights.

Based in Gaza City, the Mezan Center has recently opened a branch office in Rafah. Since communication with the Gaza Strip is extremely difficult, this extension presents MRSCP with an unique opportunity: acting as a local liaison, Al Mezan can provide assistance in establishing new sistering ties, facilitate delegations from Madison, coordinate humanitarian and cultural projects between MRSCP and other parties, offer translation assistance and logistical advice, and maintain regular contact and records with its Madison-Rafah counterparts. Annual meetings and delegations to and from Rafah are among the primary goals of both MRSCP and Al Mezan in the coming years.

In April 2005, MRSCP has successfully completed its Playground for Rafah campaign. Two delegations from Madison have traveled to Palestine, one with Playgrounds for Palestine (PfP) to Rafah, another with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions to Israel and the West Bank. In its current project, MRSCP plans to purchase Wisconsin powdered milk and deliver it by September 2005 to the people of Rafah.

Israeli Extremists Lose, as a New Generation of Palestinians Wins

Mohammed Omer, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May/June 2005

THEY BREATHE the same air, drink the same water, are covered by the same blue sky, yet the extremists among the Israeli settlers in occupied Palestine live in a different universe from that of their Palestinian neighbors.

Ariel Sharon, who originally championed the settler movement in defiance of international law, is now determined to evacuate the 8,000 Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip this summer. President Mahmoud Abbas and all the Palestinian militant factions agreed to a cease-fire to expedite the Gaza evacuation and restart peace negotiations. In a move designed to re-ignite the intifada and destroy the Gaza withdrawal plans, however, extremist Israeli settlers declared their intention to attack the al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem on Sunday, April 10.

The Haram al Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, is actually a 35-acre compound which includes the Dome of the Rock, the al-Aqsa Mosque, and many other cultural and religious treasures. All Palestinians feel an obligation to safeguard these Islamic holy places—not just for the world’s Muslims, but for all people of good will. Thousands of Palestinians remained within the Sanctuary after Friday prayers on April 8. Israeli police forbade the Sunday demonstration, arresting some of the extremist settlers who defied orders to disperse.

“We will sacrifice our blood and bodies for the sake of our Holy Land,” said 41-year-old Abu Adham from Gaza’s Khan Younes refugee camp, “and we will never, never, never allow those people to attack our holy places.

“We are standing alone in front of this injustice,” he added, “but we will never give up when it comes to [attempts to] destroy our holy places.”

Abu Adham’s exact feelings are shared by hundreds of people in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and even in Jerusalem itself, where eyewitnesses emphasized that thousands of Palestinians who remained as residents after 1948 were able to move inside Al Haram under very difficult security obstacles and spend Saturday night inside the mosque, so as to protect it from any harm by extremist Jewish settlers the following morning.

Even more important than the physical victory, however, was the moral victory of young Palestinians, who understood that Al Quds — the Arabic name for Jerusalem, which literally means “The Holy” — has been historically Palestinian for centuries. Fair-minded people everywhere saw how the right-wing Israeli extremists are desperate to destroy any chance for a just peace. That Sunday, university students throughout occupied Palestine mounted peaceful demonstrations to protest “Al Quds in Danger.”

The previous day, Israeli troops again violated the cease-fire being observed by the Palestinian resistance when soldiers killed three teenagers who had chased a soccer ball into a “forbidden zone” in Rafah, near the Gaza-Egypt border. Although the Israeli occupiers apologized and militant leaders attempted to preserve the calm, other Palestinians militants fired Qassam rockets at illegal Israeli settlements. Apologies weighed against murdered children—is there any balance to such an equation?

Mohammed Omer reports from the occupied Gaza Strip, where he maintains the Web site <http://www.rafahtoday.org>.

SIDEBAR

Rachel Corrie: The Beautiful Face of America

March 16, 2003 was like any afternoon in Rafah’s Block O near the razed border with Egypt. Huge American-made Caterpillar bulldozers were threatening civilian homes, while a group of peace activists from the International Solidarity Movement wearing bright orange vests and shouting through bullhorns asked the Israeli army driver to observe international law and spare the civilian dwellings. As she had done many times before, Rachel Corrie, 23 years old, took her turn directly in front of the bulldozer. That day, however, as her friends screamed in horror, the driver, the sharp blade of his machine lowered, drove over her. Then, without raising the blade, he reversed the machine over her buried body as her ISM comrades raced to dig her out.

Screams, shouts, sirens—all of Rafah turned upside down as word spread that one of the “internationals” had been grievously injured. “No, no, it’s impossible they ran her over!” cried ambulance driver Saed Awadllah—but Rachel’s broken and lacerated body proved the “impossible” had happened. Dr. Samir Nasrallah, whose house she had been trying to protect, rushed to assist. Her only words before passing out were, “I think my back is broken,” and she died before reaching the hospital.

“She was a great example for me and my family,” Dr. Nasrallah said about Rachel. “Her death left a terrible emptiness in our hearts. When the Israeli army crosses the line to killing unarmed internationals, surely they kill Palestinians with even greater impunity.”

Throughout Rafah, Corrie was already known and loved for her work in protecting water wells and homes on the border—and especially for her work with children. Her e-mails to her friends and family are eloquent descriptions of the daily war crimes suffered by the people of Rafah. Her body was still en route out of Gaza when shahada (martyr) posters, showing the brutal slash on her face and the bruising around her eyes, appeared on virtually every wall in Rafah. Three days after she was killed the United States invaded Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of Americans were joined by people of conscience worldwide protesting an unjust war. The Palestinian ambassador to Cuba hailed Rachel Corrie as “the beautiful face of America.”

Rachel died without achieving her goal of learning to speak fluent Arabic, and the peace and justice she sought for Palestine is only marginally closer. But her smile, her laugh, her willingness to share the daily dangers of Rafah’s people transcended any language barrier. She was the first international to be killed in Rafah—but not the last. In the following two months, an Israeli soldier shot British photographer Thomas Hurndall as he was moving children out of the line of fire, and British cameraman James Miller, holding a white flag, was killed by Israeli tank fire.

Two years after her death, justice remains as elusive for Rachel Corrie as it does for the people of Rafah. One would think the Israeli government would spare no effort to learn how an unarmed citizen of the U.S., its great friend and ally, had been brutally killed by its army. Instead, despite eyewitness accounts to the contrary, after a cursory investigation, it ruled Corrie’s death “accidental.” To this day, her family has been unable to see the entire Israeli report, a situation the U.S. government accepts without protest.

In Rafah, the second anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s death was marked by children gathering to light candles and plant olive trees in her honor. As the intifada ground on, Israeli authorities refused re-entry to all the ISM volunteers who left Gaza to renew visas, and kept new international volunteers out. But Rachel’s example has inspired even more Americans to work for justice for Palestine. Although she died before she had her own family, her own children, Rachel has earned a lasting place in the hearts of her huge “second family” in Rafah.— Mohammed Omer

A Gift to Rafah

How Madisonians helped create a respite from violence for Palestinian children

Kathy Walsh, Isthmus, April 29, 2005

Children were everywhere. They were standing on rooftops, shooting marbles in the streets, playing “football” wherever there was bare ground, making their way to and from school. And always in the background there was machine-gun fire.

This was a “quiet” time in Rafah. There were no tanks in the streets, no missile-firing helicopters overhead, no Israeli soldiers to be seen. But day and night, there was firing from Israeli towers on the edges of town.

I visited Rafah from Jan. 31 to Feb. 5 with my daughter Karen, a recent UW-Madison graduate. We hoped to help dedicate a new playground built in part with funds from Madison residents and support from the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, a group whose appeal for official city recognition was rejected by Madison’s mayor and Common Council last year.

Rafah is a Palestinian city and refugee camp of about 145,000 people in the southern Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt. More than 80% of its residents are refugees. Many have lost their homes two or more times and lived under the constant threat of losing them again as the Israeli Army razed row after row of homes along the Egyptian border.

The “camp” areas of Rafah where we spent most of our time are concrete jungles. The homes that remain nearest the border are pockmarked with bullet holes. Tanks, bulldozers and missiles have severely damaged many buildings.

Yet people continued to live in them. If they left, the homes were deemed “abandoned” and destroyed, and there was no place to go. Amid this rubble, children continue to play, go to school and live their lives.

Last spring, Playgrounds for Palestine donated a playground to be built in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood of Rafah. One of the poles for the playground was missing from the original shipment, so the playground was stored in a neighborhood home.

Then, in May, the Israeli army launched “Operation Rainbow,” a code name for one of the most devastating incursions ever into Rafah. The Tel al-Sultan neighborhood was hit particularly hard, despite its lack of strategic significance. Ten homes were destroyed, and another 156 were damaged. Roads, water and sewage pipes were ripped up. Twenty-six Palestinian civilians were killed, including nine children. The site of the planned playground was completely razed.

Loss of the park was hardly the worst disaster that befell the children of Tel-al-Sultan. But the park represented a hope for a more normal life. So last summer, the Madison-Rafah Sister City project set out to raise the $10,000 needed to rebuild this park as a gift from Madison to the children of Rafah.

America-Near East Refugee Aid, a nongovernmental organization (NGO), advanced the money so work on the park could begin over the winter. By January, construction of the playground had begun. The missing pole had been shipped and was waiting to cross into the Gaza Strip from Israel.

Karen and I went to Rafah to document the playground installation. When we arrived, children were playing soccer in the park, though it was not much more than a field of sand. The first pole of the playground was in place, and many children were checking out the playground construction team and their equipment.

Later that day, we were exposed to the precariousness of life for the children of Rafah. Two schoolgirls standing in their school courtyard were hit by machine-gun fire, apparently from a nearby Israeli surveillance tower. One of them, 11-year-old Noran Deeb, was shot through the head and died instantly. The other, 7-year-old Aysha Al Khatib, was shot through the hand.

We saw Aysha at the hospital, then stopped briefly at the morgue to see Noran’s body. (The Israelis denied involvement, saying the bullets were from a Palestinian celebrating by firing his gun in the air, although the trajectory of the wounds did not support this.) School officials told us this was not the first time fire from the sniper tower was directed at the school, but it was the first to cause injuries and death. Later, classes were dismissed and children surrounded us, asking us questions, laughing and posing for photographs.

Throughout the week we talked with city officials, health-care workers and members of nongovernmental organizations. We learned more about homelessness, malnutrition and stress disorders among Rafah’s children. At night, we were told, there is an epidemic of nightmares and bedwetting.

Every day, we visited the playground and were surrounded by active, seemingly happy children. We visited Aysha in the hospital. Her father told us that her hand was healing well. Aysha sat up and smiled shyly for a picture.

When we left Rafah, the missing pole was still being held at the crossing into Gaza. But children were playing on the partially completed playground. And, as always, there was machine-gun fire from the direction of the Israeli towers.

Both the fund-raising and the installation have since been completed. The missing pole was finally allowed into Gaza during the last week of March.

The Madison-Rafah Sister City Project is now working with Family Farm Defenders in Wisconsin and the Women’s Empowerment Project in Rafah to send powdered milk from Wisconsin’s dairies to Rafah.

Noran Deeb was the 99th child in Rafah to die from Israeli violence since September 2000, when the Second Intifada began. The toll reached 103 on April 9, when three 14-year-old boys from the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood were shot. I am left wondering if these boys were among the children I met in the park that Madison helped rebuild.

KATHY WALSH, AN EMT, IS A MEMBER OF THE MADISON-RAFAH SISTER CITY PROJECT, MADISONRAFAH.ORG.

Sidebar:
Suffer the children
Since September 2000, a total of 118 Israeli children and 678 Palestinian children have died as innocent victims of the violence in the Middle East. For information on these children, visit “Remember These Children” at www.remeberthesechilden.org. For information on “Operation Rainbow,” visit the Human Rights Watch Web site at hrw.org/reports/2004/rafah1004.


Statewide Academic Union Calls for University of Wisconsin Israel Divestment

Al-Awda, The Electronic Intifada, 27 April 2005

(Madison, WI- 04/27/05) – The Association of University of Wisconsin Professionals (TAUWP) has adopted a resolution that calls on the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents to divest from companies that provide the Israeli Army with weapons, equipment, and supporting systems. TAUWP is a statewide local of the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin representing faculty and academic staff from 25 University of Wisconsin campuses. The resolution was passed at the TAUWP delegate assembly on April 23rd by a vote of 24 to 2, with four abstentions.

Citing the precedent set by the University of Wisconsin’s elimination of investments in apartheid era South Africa, the resolution urged divestment from Boeing, Caterpillar, General Dynamics, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Northrop-Grumman, and Raytheon ‘based on evidence of the active role these companies play in enabling Israeli forces to engage in practices that violate international law and the human rights of the Palestinian people.’ The University of Wisconsin Trust Fund’s investments in the companies specified by the resolution exceed $3.8 Million.

The resolution is part of The University of Wisconsin Divest from Israel Campaign, a project led by Al-Awda Wisconsin (The Palestine Right to Return Coalition), in partnership with several local social justice, student, and community organizations. The campaign gained significant momentum when the Faculty Senate of the University of Wisconsin-Platteville passed a similar resolution at it’s regular meeting on January 25th 2005. The UW-Platteville senate became the first University faculty body in the United States to adopt a resolution calling for divestment from companies providing material aid to Israel. A similar resolution was adopted by the Teaching Assistant Association and called on the Board of Regents to divest from weapon manufacturers.

TAUWP cited reports by independent international, Palestinian, and Israeli Human Rights organizations that document widespread war crimes and human rights violations committed against Palestinian civilians. It was pointed out that in many instances, these abuses are perpetrated using weapons and equipment manufactured by the companies identified in the resolution. Holdings in these companies are therefore contrary to the University of Wisconsin’s code of socially responsible investment, which requires the Board to divest from companies whose corporate practices or policies are discriminatory or cause substantial social injury.

Caterpillar Corporation – one of the companies identified in the resolution – provides the Israeli Army with the D-9 bulldozer and other equipment used to carry out widespread and systematic demolition of Palestinian civilian homes, acts which have been classified by the UN Commission on Human Rights as war crimes.

Numerous civil society institutions have recently voiced support for divestment from Israel. The Presbyterian Church (USA) has resolved to divest its portfolio from companies aiding Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands. Earlier this year, the World Council of Churches recommended that its 347 member churches and denominations follow the example of the PCUSA. Other churches such as the Anglican Church, United Methodist Church, and United Church of Christ are currently considering divesting their investment portfolios from companies with links to Israel. Several US-based labor unions, and organizations such as the National Lawyers Guild, have endorsed divestment from Israel. Last week, the Association of University Teachers, the UK’s largest lecturer’s union, voted to boycott two Israeli universities for their role in facilitating human rights violations perpetrated by the Israel government.

April 30, 2005
Madison Community Seder

St. Mark’s Lutheran Chapel
605 Spruce St., Madison
7:00 PM

This season of Passover is observed with the Seder ceremony, which celebrates the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery. This year we will have the opportunity to participate in a Seder celebration that is open to people of all beliefs and supports two excellent causes.

The Seder service will be held on Saturday, April 30, at St. Mark’s Lutheran Chapel, 605 Spruce St., Madison, beginning at 7 PM and followed by socializing and refreshments. Because our Seder falls during Passover, all food will be Kosher for Passover so that everyone will be able to take part.

The Seder is rooted in the Jewish tradition of celebrating liberation. During a Seder stories are told to teach about the universal meaning of past experiences, and to inspire us in contemporary struggles for freedom from human suffering.

Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman will lead this Seder event, co-sponsored by the Madison-Arcatao Sister City Project, the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, Shaarei Shamayim (Madison’s Jewish Reconstructionist and Renewal Community), and the Wisconsin Coordinating Council on Nicaragua.

The Seder is also co-sponsored by the Romero Celebration Committee, which will put this collaborative event forth as this year’s annual citywide celebration honoring Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, who died 25 years ago in El Salvador on behalf of his people.

During this event participants will have an opportunity to make a donation to two hopeful initiatives. Proceeds will be divided equally between the Oscar Romero Memorial Tree Project, which aims to plant 50,000 trees in environmentally degraded and desperately poor rural areas of El Salvador, and the Rafah Milk & Vitamins Project, which plans to send Wisconsin powdered milk and vitamins to the women and children of Rafah, Palestine, who are suffering from increasing deficiencies in protein and vitamins.

If you would like to attend the Seder, please contact Sr. Maureen McDonnell to reserve your place, by phone at 663-3233 or e-mail at mcdonnelbat at edgewood.edu.

University of Wisconsin Investments and Social Responsibility

On Tuesday, April 12, 2005 the Teaching Assistants Association (TAA) of UW-Madison debated a resolution calling on the UW to divest from companies doing business with the Israeli military. Discussion of this issue had been tabled at the March general meeting when members voted to hold an additional information session on the divestment issue (held on April 5th and attended by 50 people). The proposed resolution had been submitted through the efforts of the University of Wisconsin Divestment Campaign.

The original motion was brought up for reconsideration and was discussed for approximately 45 minutes of debate. Two amendments to the original motion were made, both of which were adopted after considerable debate. The first amendment removed all specific references to the Israeli-Palestine conflict, and called on the UW to divest from all military contracts. The second amendment reinserted the names of specific military contractors known to provide material to many governments around the globe, including those which had been targeted for their role in supplying weaponry to the Israeli military. Once the references to Israel were removed, the amended motion passed by a large margin. The full text of the resolution as finally adopted:

WHEREAS, American principles, values, and traditions emphasize the right of the individuals to basic freedoms without regard to ethnic origin or religious affiliation and support the protections and extension of these freedoms to all peoples around the globe, and where the systematic denial of these freedoms prompted the University of Wisconsin System to affirm its commitment to socially responsible investment by divesting its holding in the Apartheid era South Africa, in accordance with investment policy 78-1;

WHEREAS, independent human rights organizations have documented serious and widespread violations of international law and human rights around the globe;

WHEREAS, there is irrefutable evidence that U.S.-based companies in which the University of Wisconsin is invested provide material aid to military associations around the globe in the form of weapons, equipment, and supporting systems used to perpetrate human rights abuses against innocent civilians, and where knowingly continuing this support implicates these companies in practices that violate international humanitarian law;

WHEREAS, in so far as the effort to divest from these companies has as its foundation a commitment to international law and the fundamental rights that belong to every human being, it lays the groundwork for a just and enduring peace and is therefore an expression of the hope for a free and secure future for all peoples around the globe;

WHEREAS, the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, 22 USC sec. 2304, provides that “no security assistance may be provided to any country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights”;

WHEREAS, University of Wisconsin System Regent Trust and Fund Policy 78-01 provides that “[i]n accordance with Sec. 36.29(1) Wisc. Stats., all investments ‘made in any company, corporation, subsidiary or affiliate which practices or condones through its actions discrimination on the basis of race, religion, color, creed, or sex. . .’ shall be divested in as prudent but rapid a manner as possible”;

WHEREAS, University of Wisconsin System Regent Trust and Fund Policy 97-1 (Investment and Social Responsibility) provides that “the Board acknowledges the importance of maintaining an awareness of public concerns about corporate policies or practices that are discriminatory (as defined by 36.29(1) Wis. Stats.) or cause substantial social injury, and (that) it will take this factor into account”;

BE IT RESOLVED that the Teaching Assistants’ Association of the University of Wisconsin calls upon the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents to divest from U.S.-based companies in which the University of Wisconsin is invested that provide material aid to military associations around the globe in the form of weapons, equipment, and supporting systems used to perpetrate human rights abuses against innocent civilians, and where knowingly continuing this support implicates these companies in practices that violate international humanitarian law, which companies include, but are not limited to, Bell Textron, Boeing, Caterpillar, General Dynamics, General Electric, Hughes, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Oshkosh Truck Corporation, Raytheon, and United Technologies (and its subsidiary Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation);

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Teaching Assistants’ Association of the University of Wisconsin urges all University of Wisconsin System governing bodies to adopt similar resolutions aimed at ensuring the implementation of University of Wisconsin System investment policies and by extension upholding international law and safeguarding the human rights of all peoples.