Thank You from Palestine!

Hello friends,

Thank you all so much for helping me to come back to Palestine, and for sponsoring young olive trees to be planted in Masafer Yatta in the coming growing season.

I attended the September 6 hearing in the legal case  against the Israeli settler who assaulted me in March of this year in the Palestinian village of Tuba, but the judge did not issue a verdict. The court scheduled another hearing for November 2, during which the settler will testify. 

During the September 6 hearing both the prosecution and the lawyer for the settler questioned two of the doctors who cared for me after the assault.   Lawyers for the settler refused to accept written hospital reports and documentation, and insisted on questioning the doctors at length in an attempt to claim that the injury was not serious.  It was not easy for these doctors to travel to the hearing, and I am so grateful to them, both for their wonderful care when I was injured, and again now for their help in insisting on legal consequences for the settler.

The lawyer for the settler also argued that the settler should be released, however as I understand he remains on house arrest in the home of his grandparents.

The US consulate did not attend the hearing, which was held completely in Hebrew, and fairly early in the proceeding the judge forced the human rights lawyer who was accompanying me to leave the room. As a result I know only what the doctors were able to tell me about their  testimony, and what the prosecutor told me during a few minutes of conversation  after the day- long hearing.  I am trying to get a court transcript. 

Meanwhile in the area of Masafer Yatta, where the attack on me occurred last March, Palestinians continue to confront escalating attacks by settles, backed up by Israeli soldiers. In one village that I visited last spring, Widade, the violence from settlers has been so relentless and terrifying in these past months that the family has been forced to flee, leaving their home and barns and the livelihood they built over generations. Their sheep have been sold now and all they know has been lost.  Settlers have already arrived to destroy everything that remained, and there is now no hope of them returning to their land.

The majority of legal complaints made by Palestinians to the Israeli police against settlers are dismissed before they reach the prosecution stage and legal consequences for settlers involved in assaults  on Palestinians are almost unheard of.

At this time, in 2023, Palestinians are facing violent attacks by Israeli settlers at the rate of 2.8 per day in the occupied West Bank. This unrelenting pressure and violence is forcing families to flee, and resulting in the depopulation of villages that will be lost forever.

In addition to attacks on people, settlers continue to burn and slash olive trees, steal sheep and donkeys, vandalize homes, cars and personal belongings and destroy water wells and crops. The Israeli military and police routinely back up the settlers, and refuse to intervene to protect civilians.  US taxpayers send Israel 3.8 million dollars per day in aid, the majority of which is received by the military, so when these attacks occur, we own a piece of the violence. 

I hope that in response you will consider passing on to a friend this chance to sponsor an olive tree, at a cost of $24 per tree, to be planted here in Masafer Yatta in the coming planting season as an act of solidarity with these families who are struggling every day to hold on to their land.

Please visit https://tiny.one/MadisonOliveGrove

Many many thanks,
Cassandra

Click to sponsor an olive tree!


Please consider sponsoring one or more olive trees via the Madison-Masafer Yatta Olive Grove project. Thanks to your generous support, the initial goal of 40 trees has been met, and we are on our way to the next goal of 80 trees donated.

If you prefer to donate by mail, you can send a check payable to MRSCP and marked “Olive Grove” to:

    MRSCP
    P.O. Box 5214
    Madison, WI 53705

Bruno Mars: Don’t play apartheid Israel

Top-selling artist Bruno Mars just announced a concert in apartheid Tel Aviv. JVP and numerous movement partners are calling on him to stand with the Palestinian people and cancel his show. 

Countless artists have joined the cultural boycott of Israel, recognizing that the Israeli government uses these concerts to cover up its crimes against Palestinians. 

Together, let’s push Bruno Mars to follow the lead of these artists and stand up for justice. 

Tell Bruno Mars: Don’t play apartheid Israel.

Mars is set to play at Yarkon Park, which was built on the lands of the ethnically cleansed Palestinian village of Al-Shaykh Muwannis. This ethnic cleansing continues today, as the Israeli government escalates its brutality and openly supports the dispossession and killing of Palestinians.

The South African apartheid government also invited big-name musical acts to distract from its abuses. Conscientious artists, then and now, knew that playing a concert in an apartheid state would be used by the government to whitewash its violence. 

Inspired by this history, over 1,500 musicians have joined #MusiciansforPalestine in recent years, refusing to perform in Israel while the state carries out a system of segregation, oppression, and war crimes against Palestinians. 

Let’s push Bruno Mars to add his name to that list.

In solidarity,

Jason Farbman
Digital Director

Tell Bruno Mars to stand for justice and cancel his show in apartheid Israel
 

Sign Petition to Release UNRWA Food Aid to Gaza

 

Washington, D.C. | adc.org | September 7, 2023 – The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is calling on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to release the $75 million in United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) food aid for Palestinian refugees currently being blocked by Senator Jim Risch (R-ID). This inhumane hold on aid is a brazen attempt to hold civilians, many of whom are children, hostage using food as a weapon. ADC’s understanding is that Secretary Blinken has the authority to release the funds right now.

In a letter sent to the Secretary, ADC highlighted that ensuring the provision of food assistance to refugees in need is desperately needed, is a direct reflection of American values, and is in the best interest of US diplomatic and security interests. According to UNRWA, if the money is not released soon, 1.2 million Palestinians, including nearly half a million children, will stop receiving food aid, and the next ten days are critical to preserving the flow of aid. There is no moral or humanitarian reason for the continued denial of this assistance, and Secretary Blinken has an obligation to supercede Sen. Risch’s hold on the funds.

Add Your Name to an Open Letter Demanding Senator Risch Stop Harming Palestinian Refugees

Sen. Risch’s hold on the funding is particularly devastating for Palestinians in Gaza, where food insecurity is already at a tipping point. Right now, cuts to the World Food Programme’s budget have reduced the number of Palestinians in Gaza that are served from 300,000 to 100,000, and a further reduction in food assistance will have a catastrophic impact on the health of those Palestinians. In addition, UNRWA food represents 60% of Gaza’s overall monthly commodity imports. Any interruption of these imports will have disastrous consequences for the economy in Gaza, worsening what is already an economic and humanitarian crisis.

ADC National Executive Director Abed Ayoub said, “Senator Risch’s decision to withhold $75 million in essential UNRWA food aid for Palestinian refugees – a lifeline that supports some of the most vulnerable members of society – is inhumane. Time is running out, so it is essential that humanity and compassion prevail over politics. We urge Secretary Blinken to utilize his power to override this hold and ensure that food assistance reaches those in dire need. We believe in an America that champions human rights and humanitarian assistance, and we should expect that our leaders will act accordingly.”

Desperately needed refugee assistance should never be used as a political hostage. Food is a basic human necessity, not a political weapon. Senator Risch can stop playing politics with human lives or Secretary Blinken can override him, either way this funding must be released as soon as possible.
 

Why we are anti-Zionist Jews

JUDITH LAITMAN AND TSELA BARR — GUEST COLUMN, JUNE 14, 2023

This year on April 26, millions celebrated the 75th anniversary of Israel’s creation on Israel Independence Day. However, we, as anti-Zionist Jews, did not celebrate.

Instead, on May 15, we stood in solidarity with the Palestinian people by commemorating the Nakba, or “catastrophe.” The Nakba was the mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians prior to and following the official establishment of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948. It was the direct result of a deliberate campaign by Israel to expel the region’s indigenous people.

During that period, an estimated 13,000 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces or terrorist gangs. More than 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed. In just a few months, according to Israeli historian Benny Morris, 34 massacres of Palestinians occurred. As a result, 731,000 Palestinians fled and were never allowed to return to their homes.

While the Holocaust created an urgent need for a safe haven for Jewish refugees during and after World War II, the establishment of Israel was the culmination of the Zionist movement that began a half-century before. This movement sought an exclusive homeland for the Jewish people, a group that had faced persecution and displacement for much of their history.

Ironically, Palestine had long been a place that accepted Jewish immigrants. In fact, by 1931 Jews were approximately 17% of Palestine’s population. Zionists, however, wanted more. In 1958, Israel Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion told the country’s lawmakers that in just a decade of existence Israel had “redeemed thousands of Jews from poverty and degeneration in exile, and transformed them into proud, creative Jews.”

Sadly, the Zionists’ dream became the Palestinians’ nightmare. Indeed, the Nakba that began 75 years ago has never ended.

The reality is that Zionism is not and never has been a redemption for the Jewish people. Rather, it has been a colonial project of displacement, theft of land and subjugation of one set of people by another. The truth is that Israel is a democracy only for Jews. In January 2021, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem issued its report called “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid.” It described Israel as a state that has a different set of rights for Palestinians that is “always inferior to the rights of Jews.”

This year, an extreme right-wing government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has escalated attacks on Palestinians and greenlighted additional illegal Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land. This government has removed even the veneer of democratic discourse in Israel, with some government officials openly espousing racist policies and inciting violence. As of mid-May, Israeli forces had killed at least 123 Palestinians, including at least 27 children.

Even worse, Israel continues to commit its crimes against the Palestinian people with impunity. Instead of being sanctioned for its human rights abuses, Israel receives over $4 billion a year in U.S. tax dollars to help ensure it has one of the world’s most powerful militaries. The U.S. also provides Israel with political cover when its human rights violations come up in the U.N.

One reason for this impunity has to do with the branding of criticism of Israel as “antisemitic.” This lie is designed to silence and shame critics. But criticism of Israel is not antisemitic; it is demanded by Jewish ethical teachings.

As Jews, we applaud new efforts in Congress to condition U.S. aid to Israel on ending its oppression of Palestinians. U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum recently re-introduced the Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act. This legislation would prohibit Israel’s government from using U.S taxpayer dollars for the detention or abuse of Palestinian children, or from seizing or destroying Palestinian property.

Americans can act now to be on the side of the oppressed by contacting Congress in support of this bill.

Judith Laitman and Tsela Barr are members of the Madison chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Tsela Barr is a founding member of Madison-Rafah Sister City Project.

Hebron Emergency Caves Project

We are getting closer to our goal of providing emergency housing to one family in the Masafer Yatta area of the South Hebron Hills.

The need is urgent; since we first took this on, demolitions have proceeded including the Sfai school, which was demolished for the third time in spite of international appeals.

Please read the message below from Cassandra Dixon, and then consider a donation to help us provide shelter to one of many families. Every amount helps.

Donate online, or send a check payable to MRSCP marked “Caves” to:

MRSCP
P.O. Box 5214
Madison, WI 53705

So far, we have raised just over half of the $2000 needed, thanks to those who have already donated.

As always, thanks for your generous support!


A Message from Cassandra Dixon

Dear Friends,

I’ve been visiting Palestine as a volunteer for more than a dozen years, and because I earn my living as a carpenter, people always ask me if I got to build anything over there.  I’ve always had to say no.

But my trip this spring was different. Before I was struck and injured by an Israeli settler, I was able to help friends in a village slated for demolition by Israel to create a home in a naturally occurring cave — making the space taller, dividing the living areas, and even creating a rock niche for a TV.

The renovation of caves is a brilliant and desperate effort on the part of these families to remain on their land if the threatened demolitions are carried out. Even if Israeli bulldozers reduce their homes, schools, and barns to broken stones, they intend to stay.

I’ll be returning to Masafer Yatta this fall for the trial of the settler who assaulted me, and I hope to be able to visit the homes of families who have become so dear to me. But the Israeli high court has cleared the way for the military to demolish the villages at any time. So I am grateful that the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project has taken on this Palestinian-led project to create safe, clean living spaces for these families as they nonviolently resist forced removal from their lands. I hope you will join me in donating to this campaign.

Sincerely,
Cassandra Dixon

Apartheid-Free Communities – Cut Your Ties to Israeli Apartheid


All people are equal and should be treated with dignity and respect

But for decades, the Palestinian people have faced Israeli settler colonialism and occupation enforced through racist and discriminatory legal regimes, forced displacement, blockade and movement restrictions, and systematic human rights abuses. According to legal scholars and the international human rights community, this situation constitutes the crime of Apartheid. It must end.

As people of conscience and loving communities, we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their call for equal and full rights. Inspired by the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, we want to declare our own communities “Apartheid-Free.”

Let’s build an Apartheid-Free world, starting with our own communities: our faith congregations, cities, campuses, and workplaces. We need to educate ourselves and others about racist laws and state systems at home and abroad, and we want to ensure that our communities do not contribute to the maintenance of Apartheid regimes. Together, we can work to promote freedom, justice, and equality for all.

Support Palestinians in Masafer Yatta

“We are staying here, herding our sheep and cultivating our land. Nothing will uproot us from our land.” —Jaber Dbabseh, Masafer Yatta

Two Hundred Fifteen Palestinian families in Masafer Yatta, near the southern border of the West Bank in Palestine, are asking us to help them resistforced expulsion from their lands. Israeli authorities have delivered  demolition orders for ALL of their above ground structures, including homes, schools, agricultural buildings and energy and water installations. These demolitions are already underway.

Stop the Wall and the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) have responded to requests from these families to assist in transforming existing caves on their lands into livable environments. They have launched a campaign to purchase cement, tile, cooking and heating stoves and reinforced front doors, as well as tents and generators for temporary use after the the imminent demolitions. 

Madison-Rafah Sister City Project (MRSCP) has decided to raise the $2,000 needed to renovate one cave space. We hope you will join us in supporting this campaign.

BACKGROUND

About 2,000 Palestinians, more than half of them children, live in 13 Palestinian villages in Masafer Yatta. Their forced expulsion by Israel would be the largest since 1967. 

The area was seized by Israel in 1979 for the creation of “Firing zone 918”. Classified documents have recently shown that these firing zones — which now take up roughly 18% of the West Bank — were created in order to take large tracts of Palestinian land using false claims of “national security”.

The villages have fought orders for their removal in Israeli courts for decades, but the Israeli high court has now denied their final appeal and Israeli forces have already demolished schools and homes.  Primary students in Sfai have seen their school demolished twice in recent months.

Many residents of Masafer Yatta arrived in the area as refugees after being driven from their original villages in1948. After Israeli soldiers forced 700 civilians onto trailers and demolished their homes in 1979, many returned to their lands and their flocks of sheep and goats. Since then they have waged a legal battle for the right to stay, and have resisted repeated demolitions of their homes, roads, schools, wells and agricultural buildings by Israel.  They suffer frequent Israeli army live fire exercises that leave their land scattered with spent ammunition, their crops destroyed by tanks and military vehicles, and their children and animals terrified by gunfire and low flying helicopters.

Meanwhile illegal Israeli settlements and outposts have expanded, seizing more and more Palestinian land and subjecting shepherds and schoolchildren to violent attacks and intimidation. Two Israeli outposts in the area (Avigayil and Asahel), illegal under both Israeli and international law, have recently been recognized by Israel as settlements giving hundreds of settlers the right to remain in the firing zone even as Palestinians whose land they have already stolen face imminent forced expulsion.

Please join us in supporting the residents of Masafer Yatta in their resistance to expulsion by making a tax deductible donation to turn these spaces into homes.

You can
  • donate online here or
  • mail a check made out to MRSCP marked “caves” to:

    MRSCP
    P.O. Box 5214
    Madison, WI 53705

As always, thank you for your support!

 

January 3rd CODEPINK Capitol Calling Party

CODEPINK.ORG

You are invited to join our Tuesday CODEPINK CONGRESS Calling Party to talk with special guests about what’s happening in Palestine and efforts to end US complicity in Israeli crimes.

Chat with peacemakers and experts Tuesday, January 3rd at 5 pm PT/7 pm CT/8 pm ET:

None

 

Israeli settler violence against Palestinians escalated in 2022 with West Bank settlers on the rampage, defiling mosques, vandalizing shops and assaulting Palestinians in Hebron and other Palestinian cities. Instead of stopping the settlers, the Israeli military turned on Palestinians, adding to the year’s death toll: 150 Palestinians killed, 33 of them children. Meanwhile, the most racist Israeli government returns to power with former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu – under criminal indictment – set to serve his sixth term. This new ultra-nationalist government stands in explicit – no longer implicit – opposition to a Palestinian state and threatens to strip the courts of their power.

US Secretary of State Blinken insists the US commitment to apartheid Israel is ironclad, despite whispers last month that the Biden administration might refuse to meet with some of the most reactionary members of the new Israeli government. 

Join us as we detail the situation on the ground in Palestine and examine US congressional and grassroots efforts to end US complicity in Israeli crimes. 

Featuring

Mazin Qumsiyeh is an activist, environmentalist and author. He is founder and director of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability (PIBS) at Bethlehem University. He served on the faculties of the University of Tennessee, Duke University and the Yale University, and now researches and teaches at Bethlehem university. He is the author of hundreds of articles and several books including Sharing the Land of Canaan and Popular Resistance in Palestine.

Anat Biletzki is a professor of philosophy at Quinnipiac and past professor at Tel Aviv University. She is a steering committee member of FISP – The International Federation of Philosophical Societies. She also serves as Vice-Chair of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, and is co-founder and co-director of the Program for Human Rights and Technology at MIT. Born in Jerusalem, she was Chair of the Board of B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights NGO, from 2001 to 2006, having served as a B’Tselem Board member for several years before. Her most recent book is Philosophy of Human Rights: A Systematic Introduction (2019).

Take Action!

End-of-Year Appeal: Help with Rafah Family Home

Dear Friends of MRSCP,

We hope you will consider contributing to our year-end fundraising drive to renovate and repair a family home located in the Tal al Sultan neighborhood of Rafah, where we previously installed a playground.  This house is one of 20 that the U.S. organization Rebuilding Alliance has selected for their new Gaza Family Guided Home Construction Project which involves each family as well as local agencies and contractors in design and construction of their particular space.

We are also asking you to support a housing solution here in Madison: Occupy Madison’s Tiny Houses project.

 
Help Provide Shelter in Gaza

As you are probably aware, the housing crisis is just one of many afflicting the over 2 million men, women and children trapped in Gaza. The fifteen year-long Israeli-US-Egyptian blockade has made it virtually impossible to keep up with the demand for proper shelter created by population growth, or to recover from the devastation of either massive demolitions along the borders or Israel’s periodic devastating military bombardments.

Rebuilding Alliance has launched this pilot program to implement low-cost housing solutions for 20 families which will (1) improve access to water & sanitation facilities; (2) decrease overcrowding and allow more privacy by adding upstairs rooms; and (3) upgrade heating and ventilation.

The home that MRSCP hopes to renovate is occupied by two parents and three children. The father has become disabled and the mother works to try to keep the family afloat.  Their small apartment is desperately in need of roof repairs, interior renovations especially to the main living area and bath, and the addition of another room–especially now that the cold and rains of winter have arrived.

The project will be completed in three stages. As of this writing, we have raised $960 of the $3080 needed for Phase 1. The total cost of all three phases is $10,064.
Contributions to the Rafah home project can be made online via Global Giving.
 
If you prefer, send a check payable to MRSCP marked “Rafah House” to MRSCP, P.O. Box 5214, Madison, WI 53705.
 

AND… 
 
Help Provide Shelter Here in Madison

Once again, we also ask your support for a local project that is related to our campaign in Rafah. Please consider donating to Occupy Madison’s Tiny Houses, addressing the housing crisis right here at home.

Occupy Madison has built two tiny house villages that house 30 formerly homeless individuals and is in the process of buying a third property. Self-governed by the people who live there, the goal is to become self-sustaining by selling goods made in a wood shop, home-grown flowers and plants, crafts and jewelry and soon, a coffee cart!  There is a very long waiting list for these houses. 

Your donation will help support the current villages and build new houses for another village.

You can donate online to Tiny Houses here. (Please include a note in the comment box that the donation is for the Tiny Houses.) 
 
You can also send a check made out to Occupy Madison marked “Tiny Houses” to Occupy Madison, 304 N. Third Street, Madison 53704.

We hope you are able to help support these two projects. And as always, we thank you for your support!

Sincerely,

Rowan Attala, Tsela Barr, Cassandra Dixon, Samir El-Omari, Ashley Hudson, Barb Olson, Donna Wallbaum and Kathy Walsh for MRSCP