Madison Rafah Journal

Tuesday, June 22, 6:30 pm
Wilmar Neighborhood Center, 953 Jenifer Street, Madison [Map]
Sponsored by Madison Area Peace Coalition |

Program:

(1) Presentation by Jennifer Loewenstein on the current situation in Gaza under the Israeli blockade, what is now known about the May 31st Israeli attack on and hijacking of the ships, and the campaign to compel Israel to agree to a UN investigation.

(2) Questions and comments by the audience directed either to Jennifer or to the meeting in general.

(Read on …)

Israel-Palestine from Bush to Obama: Health, Human Rights and Foreign Policy

The University of Wisconsin – Madison Middle East Studies Program April Lecture Series

This joint educational series sponsored by community and university organizations will feature three experts in health, human rights, and foreign policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

1) Sunday, 5 April 2009
Rita Giacaman; Bir Zeit University, Ramallah, West Bank
“Health Conditions & Medical Services under Siege, 2006-2009”
First Unitarian Society of Madison; 900 University Bay Drive; 1:30-3:30pm

Dr. Rita Giacaman is a professor of public health at the Institute of Community and Public Health at Birzeit University in Ramallah, West Bank, Palestine. She and Dr. Watt have contributed to recent issues of The Lancet on health and humanitarian conditions in Palestine.

(Read on …)

Saturday, January 24
Forum: "The Left and Obama – A Public Forum", 7 pm at the Orpheum Stage Door Theater, 216 State Street, Madison.
Admission is $5-10 (no one turned away for lack of funds)

After Barack Obama's historic election victory, will the new administration deliver change we can believe in or business as usual? How do we organize for a progressive agenda with a Democrat in the White House? Featuring these distinguished speakers:

JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN Associate Director of UW Middle East Studies Program & founding member of the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project

JOHN NICHOLS Washington correspondent for The Nation

MATT ROTHSCHILD Editor of The Progressive Magazine

(Read on …)

Wisconsin State Journal, January 4, 2009

University officials say there are no UW-Madison students studying in Gaza as Israel, which has been aiming air strikes at the area, now has launched a ground operation into Gaza. But Jennifer Loewenstein, associate director of UW-Madison's Middle East Studies Program, said she was supposed to be there. After living in Gaza for six months in 2002, Loewenstein said she has been back almost every year since.

She was planning to attend a conference there sponsored by the World Health Organization in October, she said, but Israel banned all foreign participants from entering. Loewenstein postponed her travels until January, but she said she won't go to the embattled zone now.

UW-Madison's only program in Israel is at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. There are four students studying there for the 2008-09 academic year, said Matt Geisler, assistant director of International Academic Programs. There is also one student from Gaza who is studying in Madison.

Copyright ©, Capital Newspapers. All rights reserved.

Israel Has No Intention of Granting a Palestinian State

JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN, CounterPunch, January 1, 2009

Let us get one thing perfectly straight. If the wholesale mutilation and degradation of the Gaza Strip is going to continue; if Israel’s will is at one with that of the United States; if the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and all the international legal agencies and organizations spread across the globe are going to continue to sit by like hollow mannequins doing nothing but making repeated “calls” for a “ceasefire” on “both sides”; if the cowardly, obsequious and supine Arab States are going to stand by watching their brethren get slaughtered by the hour while the world’s bullying Superpower eyes them threateningly from Washington lest they say something a little to their disliking; then let us at least tell the truth why this hell on earth is taking place.

The state terror unleashed from the skies and on the ground against the Gaza Strip as we speak has nothing to do with Hamas. It has nothing to do with “Terror”. It has nothing to do with the long-term “security” of the Jewish State or with Hizbullah or Syria or Iran except insofar as it is aggravating the conditions that have led up to this crisis today. It has nothing to do with some conjured-up “war” – a cynical and overused euphemism that amounts to little more the wholesale enslavement of any nation that dares claim its sovereign rights; that dares assert that its resources are its own; that doesn’t want one of the Empire’s obscene military bases sitting on its cherished land.

This crisis has nothing to do with freedom, democracy, justice or peace. It is not about Mahmoud Zahhar or Khalid Mash’al or Ismail Haniyeh. It is not about Hassan Nasrallah or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. These are all circumstantial players who have gained a role in the current tempest only now that the situation has been allowed for 61 years to develop into the catastrophe that it is today. The Islamist factor has colored and will continue to color the atmosphere of the crisis; it has enlisted the current leaders and mobilized wide sectors of the world’s population. The primary symbols today are Islamic – the mosques, the Qur’an, the references to the Prophet Muhammad and to Jihad. But these symbols could disappear and the impasse would continue.

There was a time when Fatah and the PFLP held the day; when few Palestinians wanted anything to do with Islamist policies and politics. Such politics have nothing to do with primitive rockets being fired over the border, or smuggling tunnels and black-market weapons; just as Arafat’s Fatah had little to do with stones and suicide bombings. The associations are coincidental; the creations of a given political environment. They are the result of something entirely different than what the lying politicians and their analysts are telling you. They have become part of the landscape of human events in the modern Middle East today; but incidentals wholly as lethal, or as recalcitrant, deadly, angry or incorrigible could just as soon have been in their places.

(Read on …)

Dear Members and Friends of MRSCP,

Our friends in Rafah and elsewhere in Gaza report massive casualties due to the Israeli air strikes. Hospitals are overflowing with more than 200 dead and over 500 wounded (so far). So-called "Hamas compounds" included a civil police training school where scores of young men desperate for a salary to support families were assembled for a graduation ceremony. Bombs hit at school let-out time so children were in the streets in large numbers.

Many expected that no Israeli attack would be launched just hours after Israel, as widely reported in the western media, had finally allowed the delivery of a small amount of humanitarian aid to the starving population of Gaza. Widespread property damage is making life in the cold and dark of Gaza even more miserable than it was, if such a thing can even be imagined. And as I write this, it is reported that new missile attacks are targeting a mosque and various social welfare agencies located in densely crowded neighborhoods.

And the U.S. media continues to promote the myth of Israeli "retaliation" when in reality it was Israel that broke the truce several weeks ago.

If you need more information on today's events in Gaza, click here: Gaza City hospital a gruesome scene; families pick through body parts to identify loved ones (Read on …)

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.

(Read on …)