Madison Rafah Journal

UW Hospital is treating young man injured in Israeli attack

Esty Dinur, Isthmus, 07/30/2009

Ahmed Abu Salama, at Ronald McDonald House, with his mother, Karima: ‘There's pain in my heart.' (Credit: Mary Langenfeld)

Ahmed Abu Salama is in a wheelchair, in the basement of Madison's Ronald McDonald House. He and his mother have been here since late May, receiving care from UW Hospital. Their ordeal began a year and a half ago and is continuing.

"There's pain in my heart," says Ahmed, 17. "I can't walk. I have limited movement."

Asked to describe what happened to him, he declines: "I can't talk about the injury. It's too painful."

(Read on …)

Seven Jewish Children is Caryl Churchill's response to the situation in Gaza in January 2009, when the play was written. It was performed in Madison on July 26, 2009 by the Social Action Committee of Prairie Unitarian Universalist Society.

Prairie Meeting House
2010 Whenona Drive, Madison [Map]
7:00 PM

The Social Action Committee of Prairie Unitarian will present the play Seven Jewish Children, written by Caryl Churchill.

The play is about children exposed to war, but is not intended for children, and there are no children in the play. It will be performed by members of the Prairie Unitarian Social Action Committee, directed by Andy Somers. The play will be recorded for broadcast by CityWide Radio on WIDE 99.1 FM, a noncommercial low power station in Madison. A discussion open to the audience will follow the play.

Here is an excerpt from the Guardian review:

"Caryl Churchill's 10-minute play was written in response to the recent tragic events in Gaza. The work consists of seven cryptic scenes in which parents, grandparents and relatives debate how much children should know and not know. It moves, implicitly, from the Holocaust to the foundation of the state of Israel through the sundry Middle East wars up to the invasion of Gaza."

(Read on …)

"Unified Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people and the state of Israel. Our sovereignty over it is unquestionable"

Marius Schattner, Agence France Presse, 19 Jul 2009

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israel on Sunday rejected a United States demand to stop a building project in annexed east Jerusalem, in the latest dispute between the close allies over the prickly issue of Jewish settlements.

Referring to the project in east Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the government would not place restrictions on Jewish residents in a city that the state considers to be its capital.

"We cannot accept the idea that Jews will not have the right to live or to build anywhere in east Jerusalem. We cannot accept such restrictions," Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting.

(Read on …)

Josh Mitnick, The Christian Science Monitor, Jul 15, 2009

Tel Aviv – Israeli combatants in the Gaza war against Hamas were told by commanders to minimize their own casualties even if it meant risking the lives of Palestinian civilians, a group of Israeli soldiers have alleged.

On Wednesday, Breaking the Silence published 54 anonymous testimonies from more than two dozen soldiers on its website. The organization, founded for the express purpose of compiling such accounts, accused the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) of sacrificing more rigorous rules of combat engagement for a political end: preventing high Israeli casualty numbers that would have splintered the country's unity over the January war.

During and after the war, Israeli officials often referred to the IDF as "the most moral army in the world."

Israel's army, which received an advance copy of the testimonials on Tuesday – nearly a week after the press – disputed the anonymous accounts as impossible to verify and therefore unreliable.

(Read on …)

Palestinian children wave their national flag near the West Bank city of Nablus on July 8. (AFP/Jaafar …

Marius Schattner, Agence France Presse, Jul 13, 2009

JERUSALEM Israel on Monday rejected a European Union call for the United Nations to recognise a Palestinian state by a certain deadline even if Israel and Palestinians fail to agree on a peace deal.

(Read on …)