Madison-Rafah Journal

Opinion/Kathy Walsh
Isthmus, April 29, 2005

How Madisonians helped create a respite from violence for Palestinian children

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 January 31 to February 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 Madisonís 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.

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Jennifer Loewenstein, ZNet, April 26, 2005

I. Introduction

Shortly before midnight on July 22nd, 2002 I heard an unusually loud roar from an aircraft flying low above the skies of Gaza City. Because the sound of Israeli warplanes is commonplace in the area, I didn`t feel particularly alarmed and went to sleep as usual. I was awakened less than a half hour later by a call on my cell phone: An F-16 fighter jet had just dropped a one-ton bomb on an apartment building in one of Gaza City`s poorest and most crowded neighborhoods, about 15 minutes from where I lived.

Ambulances, fire fighters and the press were already on the scene. Salah Shehadeh, leader of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, was dead. So were 14 others, we learned later on, most of them women and children. Later that morning, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would proclaim this event “one of [Israel`s] greatest successes.” I wandered through the wreckage of the bombing the following afternoon, practically numb to what I was seeing, what struck me most was that I could have been almost anywhere in the Occupied Territories: Jenin, Ramallah, Khan Yunis, Rafah… The familiarity of the destruction was, for me, the most disturbing thing because it had begun to symbolize the success of a much greater goal: the fragmentation of Palestinian nationhood into ruined, localized identities. As the popularity of Hamas continues to rise and the media blindly herald the coming “disengagement” from Gaza, I remember the freshly painted graffiti on a wall near the site of the blasted-away building that hot July day. “This is the Israeli Peace,” it declared.

The head of the Israeli Air Force, the man who ordered the bombing, was Major General Dan Halutz. In an interview nearly a month later, when asked about charges that he was a war criminal who should be tried at The Hague, Halutz commented, “[W] e operate according to an extremely high moral code. And since that is what guides us, I don`t think that there is any court to which we have to give an accounting…. Personally, I have a deep feeling of justice and morality. And as for how I feel - I feel just fine, thank you. I really meant it when I told the pilots that I sleep very well.”

Pressed to comment on the fact that so many innocent civilians died in the bombing, Halutz remarked that he was “sorry” that “uninvolved civilians were hurt” but added “I deliberately say `uninvolved civilians` because we know for a fact that even the greatest terrorists are sometimes cloaked in a civilian guise.” With such equivocation, he rationalized the indiscriminate killing of Palestinians.

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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.

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