Madison-Rafah Journal

The Capital Times :: EDITORIAL :: A7

Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Susan Nossal Madison

Dear Editor: I write in support of Jennifer Loewenstein's call for our elected officials to conduct U.S. foreign policy toward Israel-Palestine in accordance with "the sanctity of human rights, the superiority of democratic government, and the rule of international law."

As in the case of the United States' occupation of Iraq, the Israeli government's occupation of Palestine has led to extreme suffering of those in occupied lands, in the latter case for more than a half-century. As taxpayers, we pay for both occupations, sending more than $2 billion annually to Israel in direct military aid and spending more than $3,000 per second for the Iraq war. As an American Jew, I feel that it is critical that we and our elected public officials work together with others in the U.S. and world community to end these immoral occupations in Iraq and Palestine.

© Capital Newspapers

Jennifer Loewenstein, The Capital Times, May 19, 2007

In a recent Capital Times article, Wayne Bigelow, who chairs the Dane County Democratic Party, is quoted as saying U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin "fits very well with what most … people believe in" and "I think people are generally satisfied with her votes."

Actually, Tammy Baldwin's record on the subject of Israel-Palestine not only belies her progressive reputation, it also keeps many of us dissatisfied with her votes.

Focus on Israel-Palestine is often considered "a single-issue obsession." People aware of the actual and symbolic implications of U.S. support for Israel understand, however, that it is the centerpiece of American foreign policy. Attempts to ignore, minimize or separate support for Israel from the multitude of international issues facing our nation are disingenuous.

Israel is not a "single-issue obsession." Support for Israel has become the litmus test for our convictions regarding the sanctity of human rights, the superiority of democratic government and the rule of international law.

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Israeli forces, with U.S. backing, are punishing Madison's unofficial sister

Jennifer Loewenstein, Isthmus, Dec 21, 2006

Recently, I switched on a local public-access channel to see Mayor Dave Cieslewicz greeting a delegation from Madison’s sister city, Obihiro, Japan, with graciousness and pride. The mayor praised Madison’s rich sister-city relationships, which extend across the world to places like Ainaro, East Timor; Bac Giang, Vietnam; and Cuzco, Peru.

How different this was from the mayor’s words two years ago, when the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project sought official status from the Madison Common Council. Back then, Mayor Dave proclaimed, “At the end of the day, who cares whether Madison has a sister-city relationship with Rafah?”

Obviously, he cared — enough to threaten a veto should the “controversial” Palestinian city in Gaza win enough votes from council members to become official. Sister cities, we learned, are fine and good — as long as they’re the right cities.

Rafah, the poorest community in all Palestine, is an agricultural community of farmers and refugees, shopkeepers and street vendors. The unemployment rate is 55%, and four out of five families live on less than $2 per day.

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Here are some interesting reports from a Gaza friend.
Jennifer Loewenstein, 18 Dec 2006

Dec. 18th, evening:

Today was not a calm and peaceful one in Gaza as your media suggests. I drove my car as near as possible to Abbas' villa and the ministry of agriculture (3-4 minutes drive from my place). There was a heavy presence of the guards. They are worried/frightened; they behave nervously and violently. In the north (Jabalia) 10 people were kidnapped, 8 injured and one killed (believed to be a Fatah affiliate) in armed clashes.

It is said that Abbas is coming to Gaza tomorrow morning but I doubt it.

Dec. 18th, morning:

Ismael Haniya comes from a poor family living in Beach Camp. He is polite, quiet, well disciplined and he used to be a dove among hawks in the students union at the Islamic University of Gaza. Khaled e-Hindi was one of the three persons that Hamas suggested — two weeks back — for a prime minister in the suggested national unity government. Back to Haniya, I would say that yes, he is like what you know about him. He was the closest one to Ahmad Yassin since Haniya was a child. Yes, Haniya is a GOOD man.

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When Will Kristoff Go to the Occupied Territories?

ALEXANDER COCKBURN, CounterPunch, December 4, 2006

As a zone of ongoing, large-scale bloodletting Darfur in the western Sudan has big appeal for US news editors. Americans are not doing the killing, or paying for others to do it. So there's no need to minimize the vast slaughter with the usual drizzle of "allegations." There's no political risk here in sounding off about genocide in Darfur. The crisis in Darfur is also very photogenic.

When the RENAMO gangs, backed by Ronald Reagan and the apartheid regime in South Africa, were butchering Mozambican peasants, the news stories were sparse and the tone usually tentative in any blame-laying. Not so with Darfur, where moral outrage on the editorial pages acquires the robust edge endemic to sermons about inter-ethnic slaughter where white people, and specifically the US government, aren't obviously involved.

Since March 1 the New York Times has run seventy news stories on Darfur (including sixteen pieces from wire services), fifteen editorials and twenty-one signed columns, all but one by Nicholas Kristof. Darfur is primarily a "feel good" subject for people here who want to agonize publicly about injustices in the world but who don't really want to do anything about them. After all, it's Arabs who are the perpetrators and there is ultimately little that people in this country can do to effect real change in the policy of the government in Khartoum.

Now, Gaza is an entirely different story. The American public as well as the US government have a great deal of control over what is happening there. And it is Israel, America's prime ally in the Middle East that is, on a day-to-day basis, with America's full support, inflicting appalling brutalities on a civilian population. To report in any detail on what's going on in Gaza means accusing the United States of active complicity in terrible crimes wrought by Israel, as it methodically lays waste a society of 1.5 million Palestinians. Of course the death rate is a fraction of what's alleged about Darfur, but all the same, we are talking here about a determined bid by Israel, backed by the U.S. and E.U. to destroy an entire society.

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Jennifer Loewenstein writes: In a shameful call on Palestinians to refrain from voluntary acts of non-violent resistance, Human Rights Watch has undermined its legitimacy as an independent voice upholding universal human rights. Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch's director, should be reserving her condemnation for Israel whose policies of targeting individuals, their families, communities and homes for military attack are gross violations of international law. Instead she has focused her criticism here on the victims of on-going collective punishment — of economic and political siege and of extra-judicial assassinations and indiscriminate killing. Whitson makes no reference to the illegality of these actions, of the failure in all cases to apply due process or the standards of basic human rights. Please call upon Human Rights Watch to rethink its recent condemnation of Palestinian resistance by contacting Whitson.

Human Rights Watch, Jerusalem, November 22, 2006

Palestinian armed groups must not endanger Palestinian civilians by encouraging them to gather in and around suspected militants' homes targeted by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Human Rights Watch said today.

Calling civilians to a location that the opposing side has identified for attack is at worst human shielding, at best failing to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians from the effects of attack. Both are violations of international humanitarian law.

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