Madison-Rafah Journal

Samara Kalk Derby, The Capital Times, February 28, 2008

"My Name Is Rachel Corrie," a play about the 23-year-old college student and human rights activist who was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza while defending a Palestinian home from demolition five years ago, has been staged in so many places around the world that her parents can't keep track.

It debuted at the Royal Court Theatre in London in April 2005. Since then, it's been staged in Peru, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Greece and Canada. Soon it will be seen in Argentina, Africa, Spain, France and Australia.

"There are plans for it on all the continents with the exception of Antarctica," Rachel's father, Craig Corrie, said in a phone conversation from the family's hometown of Olympia, Wash., Tuesday.

Rachel left behind e-mails and a number of journals dating back to when she was 10, which were crafted into a one-woman show by London journalist Katharine Viner and actor Alan Rickman.

(Read on …)

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR)

In order to highlight the impact of the siege and closure of the Gaza Strip on the civilian population, PCHR is publishing a series of "Narratives Under Siege." These short articles are based on personal testimonies and experiences of life in the Gaza Strip, and we hope they will serve to highlight the restrictions, and the violations, being imposed on the civilians of Gaza.

Hassan Sheikh Hijazi Flower Farm, 24 February 2008

Ard El Insan Child Nutrition Centre, 12 February 2008

Rafah Fishermen's Syndicate, 04 February 2008

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Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters, 28 Feb 2008

Israel unleashed a barrage of air strikes on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing 20 Palestinians including several civilians and children as well as Islamist militants behind rocket attacks on the Jewish state.

Despite international calls for restraint, the death toll over the past two days rose to 33. These included an Israeli man, whose death from a rocket attack on Wednesday was the first such killing since May. Among the Palestinian dead were a baby and four boys who medical staff said were playing soccer.

It is the bloodiest phase of the conflict in months and a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of trying to wreck a new U.S.-backed peace process ahead of a visit next week by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

As Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other officials sent out mixed signals on whether there might be a full-scale ground offensive, Gaza residents said troops raided homes in the south and tanks were seen inside the border in the north. Blasts rocked Gaza City and militants fired at Israeli helicopters.

Three people were wounded in Israel on Thursday and the security minister, visiting the area, had to scramble for cover.

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So how, at just 23, did Rachel Corrie become a Palestinian martyr? Five years on, her diaries are being released.

Louise France, The Observer, March 2 2008

It is impossible to underestimate quite how much life for Rachel Corrie's family has changed since she was killed by an Israeli army Caterpillar D9 bulldozer in the Gaza Strip on 16 March 2003. As Rachel's elder sister Sarah puts it: 'What was normal doesn't exist for us now.'

'After Rachel was killed.' When I meet the Corries, it swiftly becomes clear that there is a great deal they want to speak out about, but it is these four words, heavy with loss, that they have repeated most over the past five years.

Before Rachel was killed trying to prevent a Palestinian home in Rafah from being demolished, they were a pretty ordinary West Coast American family. It has been said in the past that she came from a left-leaning, alternative background, but this is not strictly accurate. Craig Corrie is an insurance executive, who has spent 24 years of his career working for the same firm. Cindy Corrie is a musician and teacher. Since the mid-Seventies they have mostly lived in the same slate-grey house in Olympia, a small town with many coffee shops an hour's drive out of Seattle, and it was here that they raised their three children, Chris, Sarah and Rachel. True, the Corries liked to debate politics around the kitchen table. They also liked to talk about the cats and the chickens, going skiing at the weekend, the vegetable plot, the family holiday cottage in Minnesota. Whenever the conversation did turn towards the Palestinian issue, Craig and Cindy's sympathies would instinctively fall on the Israeli side.

After Rachel was killed, life changed abruptly. Over the past five years they've had to deal with the loss of their youngest daughter, at the age of 23. Cindy, a quietly spoken woman not given to over-statement or, indeed, self-pity, describes a period of mourning that will never really end.

(Read on …)

Apartheid Israel’s Gaza Concentration Camp & Palestinian Genocide

Gideon Polya, MWC News, 01 Feb 2008

For over 40 years the World has watched the increasingly abusive imprisonment of Occupied Palestinians (now 4 million) by Racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel in what is described as a “Prison” by  anti-racist, humanitarian Jewish scholars such a Professor Noam Chomsky (MIT, Boston, USA) and Professor Ilan Pappe (Israeli academic now in the UK).

In the last weeks we have seen the increasing desperation of the Palestinian inmates as Apartheid Israel continued its targeting of 1.5 million Gazans for the crime of returning a huge majority of Hamas representatives in the 2006 Occupied Palestinian elections held under racist Zionist guns – desperation that lead to the breakout from the Gaza Concentration camp at the Rafah weak-link of the border with US-complicit Egypt.

The Answer to why Palestinians would be so desperate to break out of the Gaza Concentration Camp is only 2 mouse-clicks away - you have only to click onto the UNICEF website and thence to the Occupied Palestinian Territory entry where you will discover that 3,000 under-5 Occupied Palestinians die each year. Comparisons with other countries will reveal that about 2,400 of these infant deaths are avoidable, that Zionist-run Apartheid is deliberately, remorselessly (albeit passively) murdering 2,400 Occupied Palestinian infants each year through deliberate, intentional and war criminal NON-provision of life-sustaining requisites unequivocally demanded of Occupiers by Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.

However the bigger picture derives from UN Population Division and UNHCR data that reveal that post-invasion Occupied Palestinian excess deaths total 0.3 million, post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.2 million and that there are about 7 million Palestinian refugees (see “Zionism, Occupation & Palestinian Genocide” on MWC News). This constitutes a Palestinian Holocaust and a Palestinian Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention.

(Read on …)

Dear Members and Friends of MRSCP,

March 16 will mark five years since the death of Rachel Corrie in Rafah.

We are pleased to announce that there will be a local production of the play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, in Madison.

The play will open on Friday, March 7 at 7:30 pm at the Orpheum Theater, 216 State Street. Admission is $5.00.

Rachel's parents, Craig and Cindy Corrie, will join us for opening night as the featured guests at a benefit fish fry dinner at the Orpheum Lobby Restaurant, beginning at 5:30 pm. Dinner tickets will be $25 per person or $40 per couple, including play admission. Net proceeds will go to a humanitarian project in Gaza.

The play will be performed again on Saturday, March 8 at 7:30 pm at the Orpheum Theater.

On Friday, March 14 and Saturday, March 15, the play will move to the Overture Center for the Arts, 201 State Street. Both shows will be at 7:30 pm. A donation is requested for admission.

(Read on …)

7 pm at Escape Java Joint, 916 Williamson Street, Madison

Occupation 101 clip

February 24: The Worst of All: Gaza Strip and Rafah
"Gaza Strip" (2002)
"International Solidarity Movement (ISM) Rafah" (2006)
The Gaza Strip, and our sister city Rafah on the border with Egypt, have suffered almost unimaginably and in every way, with the Palestinian struggle for survival there largely ignored by the Western media.