Year-end and holiday giving: Two opportunities to help Gaza

December 12, 2007

Dear Members and Friends of MRSCP,

As we approach the holiday season and the end of the tax year, please consider donating to the following emergency appeals to help the people of Gaza.

The first is from the Middle East Children’s Alliance, a U.S. based group which we have worked with and highly recommend. MRSCP will be contributing $1500 toward this appeal and we strongly urge you to consider a gift as well. Contributions to MECA are tax-deductible.

The second is from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, which is “planning an emergency dispatch of humanitarian supplies and a delegation of doctors, in order to supply limited emergency aid, to witness and report on the medical situation in Gaza, and to express protest and solidarity with the residents of the Gaza Strip under siege.” Contributions are apparently also tax deductible; please follow the instructions given in the appeal.

In the past year, and especially in the past few weeks, Gaza has literally become hell on earth as the U.S., Israel and Egypt have all but cut the densely-populated strip off from the rest of the world. Just this past week Israel began drastic cuts in electricity and fuel which are essential to keep people alive by providing drinkable water and emergency health care.

Palestinian Medical Relief Society calls for an immediate end to the murderous siege of Gaza
Excerpt: People are dying in Gaza. Patients die in their hospital beds because they are denied permits to access life-saving treatments abroad. Patients with such permits die at the Erez crossing because the Israeli military denies them exit, despite their permits. (Full article)

And, the latest casualty:

IOA blocks baby with a hole in the heart from leaving Gaza for urgent treatment
Excerpt: A Palestinian child, who was born almost two weeks ago with a hole in the heart, has been denied an Israeli permit to leave the Strip and receive urgently needed treatment for his case, medical sources reported. They said that the baby’s condition was worsening as he is suffering problems in the liver and swelling in his body. (Full article)

Both of the appeals above document the catastrophic situation further. Please be as generous as you can.

As always, thanks for your support.

Summit’s Goal: Perpetuate Repression of Palestinians

Barb Olson, The Capital Times, December 07, 2007

“After meeting their own low expectations for the Annapolis conference amid intense skepticism, Bush administration officials crowed with delight,” said an Associated Press story.

And well they might. It was more symbolism than substance, but President Bush looked almost presidential.

But all Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert really agreed on was to negotiate — Bush called it “hard bargaining.”

“Hard bargaining” with Olmert and Abbas (and Bush too) at record low levels of support domestically?

“Hard bargaining” with the overwhelming power of the United States and Israel on one side and the divided and bloodied Palestinians on the other?

The United States is not an honest broker here. Congress just gave Israel another $30 billion for military aid over the next 10 years. That’s on top of the $3 billion to $5 billion annually it already gets.

Since 2004, Bush has officially committed the United States to help Israel keep Palestinian land stolen for Jewish settlements. This policy of using “facts on the ground” to gobble up Palestinian land, water and commerce has already sparked two Palestinian uprisings and is destroying the viability of any independent Palestinian state.

Was this policy reversed at Annapolis? No. Instead Bush asked Israel to pretty-please remove a few trailer park “outposts” and to stop expanding the settlements. (Wink, wink.)

Bush instructed the Palestinians not to focus on the “borders” of a state. No wonder — Israel has already set the borders by constructing the annexation wall deep inside Palestinian territory, leaving the Palestinians imprisoned in a handful of poverty-stricken ghettos on a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of their original homeland.

What’s next, a virtual Palestinian state?

Bush told Palestinians to focus on the “nature” of their state instead. It should be “democratic.” Oh really? The United States and Israel have starved and bludgeoned the Palestinians for having elected the wrong people, and then invited Abbas (who overthrew the elected government) to Annapolis.

Bush hailed the “transparency and accountability” of the Abbas regime. These are the same crooks who were thrown out of office for shamelessly lining their pockets with the meager contents of the Palestinian treasury.

Bush and Olmert seek a puppet regime that will pick up the garbage and police the prison-statelets that are all Palestinians can expect from this “hard bargaining.”

This is why the Abbas-Olmert agreement gives the United States (and thus Israel) a veto over any results, stating that implementation of the agreement will be “led by the United States” and “judged by the United States.”

Completely absent, in spite of pleas from Palestinian human rights groups, was any mention of international law, which long ago laid down two unavoidable conditions for peace: the return of all Palestinian (and Syrian) territory taken by force in 1967, including removal of the colonial settler infrastructure, and a just solution for the millions of Palestinians driven from their homeland since 1948.

Bush’s U.S.-Israel-Palestine bargaining process aims to circumvent this painful reality. Behind a fig leaf of endless negotiations, Israel will push ordinary Palestinians further into poverty and repression. Many will leave in order to survive. Those who remain face a grotesque form of apartheid, whose structure is already in place and whose foundation was laid by the logic of creating a “Jewish state” in a country populated mainly by others. Indeed, many Israelis openly hope that even so-called “Israeli Arabs” — Palestinians who stayed in 1948 and are now 20 percent of the citizenry — will be forcibly transferred to the new “Palestinian state.”

If you want to see the reality obscured by the lofty language of politicians, visit the concentration camp that is Gaza, invisible at Annapolis. Smell the stench of raw sewage and uncollected garbage. Listen to the cries of hungry children and watch sick people die from Israel cutting the electricity or the embargo on medicine or from waiting too long at the perpetually sealed borders. Watch women screaming over the bodies of children and husbands torn apart by Israeli bombardment or vicious fighting among rival gangs of camp inmates.

The original online transcript of Bush’s Annapolis speech referred to the “Iraqi soil of the West Bank and Gaza.” Official versions corrected this to “rocky soil.” But the cruel irony of this Freudian slip remains. Iraq certainly does resemble Gaza, with the West Bank close behind. This is not a path to peace.

Barb Olson is a member of the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project.

© 2007 Capital Newspapers

December 9, 2007
Film: Reel Bad Arabs

Free preview showing and discussion!
Escape Java Joint
916 Williamson St.
Sunday, December 9, 7:00 p.m.

Discussion will be led by George Arida, co-host of WORT “Salamat” and member of the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project.

Featuring author Dr. Jack Shaheen, the film explores a long line of degrading images of Arabs — from Bedouin bandits and submissive maidens to sinister sheikhs and gun-wielding “terrorists” — and offers along the way some devastating insights into the origin of these stereotypic images, their development at key points in US history, and why they matter so much today.

Directed by Sut Jhally, this excellent new 50-minute documentary comes from The Media Education Foundation.

November 17, 2007
Rami Khouri Talk in Madison

Rami George Khouri – “A Fair and Balanced View from the Arab World”
Madison Civics Club November Meeting, Monona Terrace
November 17th, 2007, 10:55 a.m.–1:45 p.m.

Khouri is Executive Editor of the Beirut, Lebanon-based newspaper The Daily Star, the largest English language newspaper published throughout the Middle East, in partnership with the International Herald Tribune. He was recently appointed director of the Issam Fares Institute of Public Policy and International Affairs at American University of Beirut (AUB). Author of “A View from the Arab World,” an internationally syndicated weekly political column at agenceglobal.com, his commentary and articles center around the broad range of roles played by the Middle East — its culture, politics, and religion — worldwide. A Palestinian-Jordanian educated in both the Middle East and the US, Khouri returned to his homeland 35 years ago and now resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth.

With a Special Public Affairs Presentation:
UW Law Professor Asifa Quraishi – “Islamic Law:
What Americans Don’t Know May Surprise Them”

Asifa Quraishi, a specialist in Islamic law and legal theory, joined the University of Wisconsin Law School faculty in Fall 2004. Professor Quraishi’s expertise ranges from U.S. law on federal court practice to constitutional legal theory, with a comparative focus in Islamic law. At the UW Law School, Quraishi is teaching a combination of core law school classes in Constitutional Law, and electives in Islamic law and jurisprudence. Asifa Quraishi made news in 2001 when she drafted a clemency appeal brief in the case of Bariya Ibrahim Magazu, who was sentenced to flogging for fornication in Zamfara, Nigeria.

If you are a nonmember interested in attending, please call Karen Icke at 238-4352. The luncheon fee for a nonmember who is not the guest of a member is $30. If a luncheon is sold out, there may be seating space (without the meal) for a fee.

Catastrophe at Rafah Crossing: More Than 35 Dead—and Counting

Catastrophe at Rafah Crossing: More Than 35 Dead—and CountingPalestinians wait to cross the Rafah border for medical treatment (Photo M. Omer)

Mohammed Omer, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September/October 2007

PERCHED ATOP A suitcase and trunk, her leg knocking listlessly with staccato thuds on vinyl, newly engaged 23-year-old Islam Al Assar waits on the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing to Egypt.

And waits. And waits.

“I’m waiting for my happiness,” she states forlornly. “I’m waiting to start my life. I have to be immensely patient. We hear news that the border will open, but it never does.”

At the border, now closed for more than two months, her luggage carries her dreams: a wedding dress, trousseau, gifts and necessities for her future life. On the other side awaits her fiancé and a new life in United Arab Emirates. The wedding, set for late June, has been put on hold.

“I’m not the only one waiting,” she sighs. “Five of our neighbors are here, too, awaiting passage for operations for cancer, kidney diseases and other chronic illnesses.”

Since the elected Hamas government managed to prevent Israeli- and U.S.-backed Fatah militia from taking over Gaza in June, 1.5 million Palestinians have been living under siege, shut off from the outside world. European Union observers have abandoned the Rafah crossing to the Palestinian executive force, which works under complete Israeli control via remote control and video cameras, and the Egyptian military. Together they enforce the Israeli-ordered closure of the border, which comprises seven distinct gates.

Government officials estimate that more than 12,000 Palestinians are stranded on the Egyptian side of the border, with another several thousand trapped in Gaza trying to leave. While those caught on the Gaza side of the border share a slight advantage, since they are able to find comfort with friends and family, their numbers include people with life-threatening diseases who are prevented from leaving for scheduled medical procedures in Egypt and Jordan.

Stateless Infants

Conditions on both sides of the border remain precarious. Families struggle to survive day-to-day under the blistering Sinai desert sun, with little shade and no water, toilets, food or sleeping quarters. Their situation is best symbolized, perhaps, by the 16 babies who have been born while their mothers wait at the border. Without medical care, many born prematurely may not survive. To this life-threatening situation Israeli bureaucracy adds yet another twist. Since the newborns were not born within Gaza or in hospitals, none has the birth certificates and legal documents required for re-entry.

“The majority of these parents were compelled to come to Gaza prior to the births so their children could be registered and maintain their national identity,” explains Al Mezan of the Human Rights Center. The continued closure of the Rafah border crossing, he asserts, is an example of “collective punishment by Israel used as a political tool in a flagrant disregard of Palestinians’ human rights.”

A Mother’s Death

By mid-August, more than 35 people had died waiting to enter Gaza. One might assume that those who died were either very young or very old, but that is not always the case. After waiting 38 days in the blistering sun, Sana Shanan of the Jabalya Refugee Camp, a 27-year-old mother of three children, 7 years, 4 years and 6 months old, passed away on the Egyptian side of the crossing. The young wife and mother was returning from a successful operation in Egypt to treat her hepatcirrhosis. The last wish she uttered on the phone to her husband as life drained from her limbs encapsulates the anguish felt by all: “Please destroy the wall,” she whispered, her husband said, “and let me get through and see my children before I die!”

Her grief-stricken 35-year-old husband vents his helpless frustration. “I can’t stand it,” he cries. ”Nobody cares about Palestinian suffering! Nobody can live for 38 days under the burning sun!”

The suffering endured by the thousands of people stranded in Egypt is further compounded by lack of finances. Each family receives just $100 for food, shelter, water and necessities—an amount which lasts only a few days. As Israel enforces the closure for weeks, then months on end, Palestinians stranded at the border sell their clothing, watches and personal belongings to anyone who will buy them in order to purchase food and water. While some find shelter and facilities in homes and businesses near the border, most Palestinians end up sleeping on the street, in gardens or anywhere shelter can be found.

According to Haaretz, Israel’s largest daily newspaper, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas asked Israel to keep the Rafah border closed. Abbas’ media advisor Nabil Abu Rudieneh issued a denial, saying, “Such reports are untrue rumors.”

The Airport Terminal

Along with some 90 other people, Mohammed Ali, a 27-year-old free-lance journalist returning from France, entered his fourth week of diplomatic quarantine inside Egypt’s Al Arish Airport near the Gaza border. Others—most under 35—are stranded at Cairo’s International Airport. Among those waiting in limbo at the Al Arish terminal were two women with their children. Like Tom Hanks in Stephen Spielberg’s 2004 film “The Terminal,” none of them can leave the airport. Neither citizens of Egypt nor holders of entry visas, they are trapped in a maze of bureaucracy—while their homeland’s occupier uses the well-worn excuse of “security” to deny them passage. For Ali the situation was especially difficult: his wife waited at home, in her ninth month of pregnancy.

While most trapped in this diplomatic no-man’s-land—whether at the border or at airports—refrain from blaming Egypt for their plight, all agree that Egypt remains key to its solution. To call attention to the escalating crisis, several nonviolent protests have been held. Ali and others stuck in the Al-Arish terminal embarked on a three-stage hunger strike, surviving on minimal nourishment (salt and water) and vowing to up the ante if necessary.

”If the border doesn’t open soon,” Ali confirmed, “we won’t hesitate to go on a full hunger strike! Even the sick among us will join.”

Human Rights Violations

By preventing the passage of people, essential medicine, food and products, the closure exacerbates the crisis on both sides of the border. In a phone interview, Sari Bashi, director of the Israeli human rights group Gisha, commented on the closure of Rafah crossing. “Denying Gaza residents the ability to live in dignity,” she continued, “denying their ability to lead normal lives, to work and support themselves and their families violates Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law, human rights law and its own national law.

“Normal life is not just food and water,” the Israeli human rights work er asserted. “It’s also a dignified human existence and the possibility to continue to earn livelihood. Seeking to weaken Hamas by punishing 1.5 million women, men and children is illegal and counterproductive. It is the ordinary people who are suffering…Gaza residents have the right to go home…[and] Israel has a responsibility to reopen the Rafah border,” Bashi concluded.

Israeli typically requires that all Palestinians enter and leave the occupied territories—their homeland—through the same border crossings. Lately, however, it has allowed several hundred Palestinians who left via Rafah to return through the Eretz crossing through Israel. Many have rejected this option, however, fearing arrest or pressure to collaborate with the occupying power. Indeed, many young men returning via Eretz have been subjected to such treatment.

With the departure of the European Union observers, the odds of Rafah border crossing opening in the foreseeable future are close to nil. Meanwhile—and needlessly—thousands of men, women and children die, starve and, above all, wait.

Mohammed Omer spoke at length on this issue during a July 18, 2007 interview on Don Bustany’s “Middle East Focus” program on KPFK radio in Los Angeles. The 20-minute interview can be heard at <KPFK.org>.

Mohammed Omer, winner of New America Media’s Best Youth Voice award, reports from the Gaza Strip, where he maintains the Web site <www.rafahtoday.org>.

November 11, 2007
Madison-Rafah Sister City Project General Meeting

MRSCP will be holding an open general meeting on Sunday, Nov. 11 beginning at 7 pm at Escape Java Joint, 916 Williamson Street in Madison.

The point of this meeting is to share information on national and international trends in Palestine solidarity work, and to discuss the work of MRSCP in that light.

The meeting will open with a preview clip from one of our new films (Reel Bad Arabs or Occupation 101) and then move on to a power-point summary of the recent national conference of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, which adopted three new action proposals for 2007-2008. We will also have a short report on two other major Middle East conferences: the UN conference on Palestine that was held in Brussels in August, and the Boston Sabeel conference which was held the weekend of October 27-28.

This will be followed by a recap of what MRSCP has been up to and some discussion of possible plans for the coming year. Q&A and discussion will follow.

If you’ve been thinking of getting more involved with MRSCP or just wondering what we’ve been up to, be sure to attend this meeting…bring friends too. Escape has a great menu and we will be providing some hummus and zatar with Holy Land olive oil for you to sample.

Finally, here are links to two good articles: (1) the recent decision by Israel to collectively punish Gaza further by shutting off fuel and electricity, and (2) Bishop Desmond Tutu’s speech at the Sabeel conference.

Hope to see you at Escape.

November 17, 2007
Divest From the Israeli Occupation

The next meeting of the Divest From the Israeli Occupation group will be on Saturday, Nov. 17th from 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm in the downtown Madison Public Library.

George Arida, with the Madison Rafah Sister City Project, will give a report on the recent meeting of the national U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and will present their adopted proposal to groups for a Motorola Boycott.

Other items on the agenda include
• State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB) response to Action Sudan,
• prospects for work on the SWIB campaign,
• plans of allied groups,
• ideas for a public outreach campaign to publicize the nature and effects of the Israeli occupation,
• development of an apartheid analogy,
• and your ideas.

Mike Wyatt
251-4328
mapcmadison (at) merr.com

Israeli army orders confiscation of Palestinian land in West Bank

· Seizure would allow huge expansion of settlements
· Move seen as rush to make changes before US summit

Conal Urquhart in Jerusalem
Wednesday October 10, 2007
The Guardian

Construction workers in the West Bank
Construction workers in the West Bank. Photograph: Sebastian Scheiner/AP
 

The Israeli army has ordered the seizure of Palestinian land surrounding four West Bank villages apparently in order to hugely expand settlements around Jerusalem, it emerged yesterday.

The confiscation happened as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met to prepare the ground for a meeting hosted by President George Bush in the United States aimed at reviving a diplomatic solution to the conflict.

However, critics said the confiscation of land suggested that Israel was imposing its own solution on the Palestinians through building roads, barriers and settlements that would render a Palestinian state unviable.

The land seized forms a corridor from East Jerusalem to Jericho and is intended to be used for a road that would be for Palestinians only. Analysts said the road would run on one side of the Israeli security barrier, while the existing Jerusalem-Jericho road would be reserved for Israelis.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli army said it was necessary to build a road to link Bethlehem and the Judea region with Jericho and the Jordan valley area in order to “improve the quality of life” for Palestinians.

She said the road would be nearly 10 miles long and would be built on 145 hectares (357 acres) of state land and 23 hectares of private land that had been confiscated. She added that the army had designed the route to minimise losses to private landowners.

Adam Keller of the Israeli peace group, Gush Shalom, said the confiscation of land belonging to the villages of Abu Dis, Arab al-Sawahra, Nebi Musa and Talhin Alhamar would “rob many villagers of their sole livelihood” but would also “facilitate the big annexation plan known as E-1, which is aimed at linking the settlement of Ma’aleh Adummim with Jerusalem and cutting the West Bank in two.”

He said the confiscations were aimed at constructing a “Palestinian bypass road” that would “push the Palestinian traffic between Bethlehem and Ramallah deep into the desert and effectively bar them from the central part of the West Bank”.

The E-1 area has been marked out on Israeli government maps for years but the state has refrained from large scale development of the area. The only building to be completed is the proposed headquarters of the Israeli police in the West Bank.

The plan for the area envisages 3,500 housing units and dozens of businesses which have yet to be started, although infrastructure such as roads and drainage is being constructed.

Jeff Halper, an Israeli geographer who specialises in Israel’s development of the West Bank, said it appeared that there was a rush to carry out as much work as possible before the US-sponsored meeting between Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, in Annapolis, Maryland, in November.

Palestinian author under cyber attack before Wisconsin Book Festival

Annie’s Letters, October 9, 2007

Palestinian author and human rights activist Susan Abulhawa has come under a cyber attack just days before she is scheduled to appear at the Wisconsin Book Festival, and one week before the Dutch edition of her book is to be released in the Netherlands.

Before this past weekend, it was discovered that all news links to “Susan Abulhawa”, “Scar of David”, and her charitable foundation “Playgrounds for Palestine” have been blocked from access on major search engines, including GOOGLE, MSN, Yahoo, and Ask.com. Users clicking on “NEWS” and requesting any of the three listings were unable to receive links to news coverage between October 3, 2007 and October 4, 2007, despite the fact that more than 20,000 listings were provided the day before the incident. None of the search engines have offered an explanation for the interruption. GOOGLE and MSN have not commented at all, while both Yahoo and Ask.com have promised to resolve the issue.

The suspicious timing of the simultaneous blockage on multiple search engines points to an orchestrated effort to disrupt Abulhawa’s promotion of her book, with its unpopular perspectives on the Palestinian conflict with Israel.

For information contact: mark (at) scarofdavid.com

Apartheid Reigns In Israel, Activist-author Says


He Claims Nation Is Hurting Self With Its Policies

SAMARA KALK DERBY, The Capital Times, October 8, 2007

Israeli human rights activist and author Jeff Halper argues that in the Israel-Palestine conflict, the two-state solution is dead, and apartheid has taken over.

Jimmy Carter let the genie out of the bottle with his recent book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” but Halper has been using the same language for years.

“We use apartheid in a very precise way. We don’t use it as a slogan. We have been very careful about it. Apartheid is a system that can’t be exported,” Halper told a group of about 40 people during a talk Sunday at Memorial United Church of Christ in Fitchburg.

An apartheid system is one of separation in which one segment of the population separates itself from the others, Halper said. “And that’s what Israel calls its policy,” he added.

The other element of apartheid is domination, he explained. “One population separates itself from the others and then dominate them,” he said. “Permanently and institutionally.”

Israel’s offer to withdraw from 95 percent of the West Bank will create not peace, but rather a Palestinian prison state, said Halper, who has been called “a Jewish anti-Semite.”

Halper is a Minnesota native who has lived in Israel for 35 years. Formerly an anthropology professor at Haifa and Ben-Gurion Universities, he co-founded the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions to challenge and resist the Israeli policy of demolishing Palestinian homes. The organization was founded in 1997 after Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister on a right wing, security-heavy platform.

Israelis have been moving into the occupied Palestinian territories – which includes the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem – through settlement construction and land confiscation. At the same time, Palestinian population growth has been confined to small “islands” within those territories.

The natural development of Palestinian towns has been curtailed by discrimination in building permits and zoning policies and the demolition of Palestinian homes, Halper said.

According to Halper, Israel has destroyed more than 18,000 Palestinian homes since 1967.

Halper has organized and led nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience against Israel’s occupation policies. He has faced down bulldozers in front of Palestinian homes and confronted Israeli soldiers. He also organizes Israelis, Palestinians, and others to help rebuild demolished Palestinian homes. He estimates that they’ve built more than 100 homes in the last 10 years.

In addition to opposing home demolitions, Halper is equally critical of Israel’s construction of the 26-foot tall West Bank separation barrier, which is more than twice as high as the Berlin Wall and five times as long. The Israeli government and its supporters say the wall has reduced terrorism. Critics charge it is laying the groundwork for a unilateral border.

In the past 40 years, Israel has laid a “Matrix of Control” over the occupied territories, including 300 settlements, which eliminates the possibility of a viable Palestinian state, Halper said.

Cancelled Event Hoax

This e-mail was sent to the UW Middle East Studies listserver today, cancelling the Jeff Halper event tonight at Grainger Hall. The only problem is, the event was not cancelled, and no one knows who sent the e-mail. The Middle East Studies Program is investigating.

Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 09:22:48 -0700
From: “U. Wisconsin Middle East Studies Program” cmes@mailplus.wisc.edu
Subject: [Cancelled Event] TODAY – JEFF HALPER -ISRAEL/PALESTINE: COUNTDOWN TO APART… @ Mon Oct 8 7:30pm – 9:30pm ()
To: mes-events@lists.services.wisc.edu
HTML Attachment

U. Wisconsin Middle East Studies Program cancelled the following event:
TODAY – JEFF HALPER -ISRAEL/PALESTINE: COUNTDOWN TO APARTHEID?
Mon Oct 8 7:30pm – 9:30pm
(Central Time)
2080 Grainger Hall; 975 University Ave. corner of Brooks and University; UW Madison Campus (map)
Calendar:

JEFF HALPER, founder of the ISRAELI COMMITTEE AGAINST HOME DEMOLITIONS and Anthropology Professor at HEBREW UNIVERSITY will discuss whether President Bush’s upcoming Middle East Summit offers hope for peace or a continuation of the process of transforming the occupied Palestinian territories into a permanent political reality similar to what was in place during Apartheid South Africa. Where is the Israel-Palestine conflict headed? Halper, an Israeli citizen who has lived and worked in Israel as an academic and an activist since 1973, discusses what he has termed the “Matrix of Control” in shaping options for peace on the ground. He will also discuss the “CONSTRUCTING PEACE CAMPAIGN” to rebuild all Palestinian homes demolished this year by the Israel Army.Can Israel be described as an Apartheid regime? Why are some arguing that it is? Debate on this and other Israel-Palestine issues is increasingly important as the region descends into greater and greater turmoil.

This lecture is FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

Sponsored by the University of Wisconsin’s MIDDLE EAST STUDIES PROGRAM and the University of Wisconsin’s HAVENS CENTER; Local organizations groups supporting this talk include the Fitchburg Memorial United Church of Christ, the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, Jewish Voice for Peace/Madison and ICAHD-USA.

This event was removed from your calendar.

You are receiving this courtesy email at the account mes-events@lists.services.wisc.edu because you are an attendee of this event.

October 6 – 9, 2007
New Madison Events with Jeff Halper of ICAHD

Saturday, October 6, 7:30 – 10:00 pm
Middleton
Houseparty Fundraiser with Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). Goal to raise $5000 to rebuild one Palestinian house. At a private home in Middleton — please contact rafahsistercity (at) yahoo.com for info and directions.

Sunday, October 7, 2:00 pm
Memorial United Church of Christ, 5705 Lacy Road, Fitchburg
Build Peace, Build Houses, Stop Home Demolitions: Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) will speak on where the Israeli “Matrix of Control” is taking the Israel/Palestine conflict. Find out how you can help ICAHD-USA “Construct Peace” by rebuilding all Palestinian homes demolished this year by the Israeli army. Co-sponsors: Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, Jewish Voice for Peace/Madison, Memorial UCC, UW Middle East Studies Dept, Havens Center. More info at madisonrafah.org or 215-9157.

Sunday, Oct. 7, 7:00 pm
Jeff is scheduled to be interviewed live on Forward Forum, Madison 1670 The Pulse. Call in at 321-1670. You can listen live to streaming audio at WTDY.com, and outside the Madison area the toll free number is 877-867-1670. The program will be available starting Monday on podcast.

Monday, October 8, 12:00 pm
Jeff will appear live on WORT Radio’s A Public Affair with Allen Ruff from 12 noon to 1 pm (89.9 FM, call in at 256-2001).

Monday, October 8, 7:30 pm
UW-Madison Campus, 2120 Grainger Hall, 975 University Ave. (corner of Brooks and University)
Israel/Palestine: Countdown to Apartheid? Jeff Halper of ICAHD will discuss whether Bush’s planned November DC “summit” on Israel/Palestine offers hope for peace, or will further consolidate Israel’s occupation into a permanent political reality similar to apartheid South Africa. Co-sponsors: Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, Jewish Voice for Peace/Madison, Memorial UCC, UW Middle East Studies Dept, Havens Center. See mideast.wisc.edu or call 265-6583 for location.

Tuesday, October 9, 12:00 pm
Foreign Policy Action Summit, Washburn Heritage Room, Regina Hall, Edgewood College
Jeff will join Tom Melville and George Mische to discuss the disastrous effects and connections between US foreign policy in Central America and the Middle East. Members of the Catonsville 9, who burned draft records in 1968, Melville and Mische have dedicated their lives to peace work in Central America and the U.S. Melville, a cultural anthropologist and ex-Maryknoll priest in Guatemala, is also the author of Through a Glass Darkly: US Holocaust in Central America. For more information, call 233-7004.

Tuesday, October 9, 7:00 pm
Wilmar Neighborhood Center, 953 Jenifer St., Madison
Jeff will be participating in a discussion at the regular meeting of the Madison Area Peace Coalition (MAPC). He will present material on Israel’s role in the global weapons trade and in U.S. power projection around the world. This will cover new material in a participatory session with all interested activists.

Civil Society and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Beneath the Hideous Veneer of ‘Security’

Jennifer Loewenstein, CounterPunch, 23 september, 2007

On January 26th 1976 the United Nations Security Council debated a resolution (S11940) introduced by Jordan, Syria and Egypt that included all the crucial wording of UNSC resolution 242. It accepted the right of all states in the region to exist within secure and recognized borders while re-emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force. This resolution added for the first time, however, what was missing from 242: recognition of Palestinian national rights. The phrase “all states” was taken to include a new Palestinian state in the occupied territories.

Israel was, of course, invited to attend the session but refused, preferring instead to have a national tantrum that included bombing Lebanon the same day, killing about 50 people ­in all likelihood a typical “in your face” message to the UN and the world. Unsurprisingly the US vetoed the resolution causing the PLO, which was present at the session, to speak of the “tyranny of the veto.” As with similar resolutions since this one, the overwhelming majority of the world’s nations supported it. The two nations that have consistently opposed this and comparable resolutions were the United States and Israel thereby establishing the well-known pattern of rejectionism that persists to this day. As a result, resolutions such as S11940 have vanished from the historical record despite its significance in marking the first time a UN resolution explicitly recognized the inalienable national rights of the people of Palestine.

In the debate leading up to the vote on this resolution, one of the participants remarked that the problem of Palestine is at the heart of the Middle East conflict and must be resolved….We are sorry that Israel stayed away from the debate and has instead been [wreaking] havoc all over and hurling defiance against the alleged bias of the United Nations. In truth it is Israel which is maintaining, by the use of force, and [which] wishes to be left alone to continue, its occupation of the territories of its Arab neighbors. Persistence in this policy of tone and diktat can only breed more violence, engender further bitterness, and make ever more remote the prospect of the peace and cooperation which the Israeli government professes to be seeking and which all the peoples of the Middle East desire and need. (M. Akhund; representative of Pakistan; in transcript of debate following introduction of resolution. S/PV.1879 of 26 January 1976. UNISPAL home; See also: UN DPI multimedia: United Nations. Thirty-first year; 1879th meeting.)

Reading these words, I was struck by a sense of déjà vu and had to double check the source to certify that they were in fact spoken 31 years ago. Unfortunately, however, although the similarities with present day circumstances are remarkable, the situation that we face vis a vis the Palestinian issue today is far more serious.

Noam Chomsky’s response to my upbeat description of last year’s UN’s Conference in Geneva on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People was that if things did not soon improve on the ground in the occupied Palestinian territories, the next such conference “would be a wake.” It was a sobering reminder of just how dire the situation has become; how, in Chomsky’s words we are currently witnessing an event almost unprecedented in the modern era: the systematic, deliberate and long-term destruction of an entire nation.

As activists and representatives of civil society NGOs concerned with what is happening in Israel-Palestine, we know the importance of maintaining a realistic level of optimism; of dogged persistence even in the face of what seem to be insurmountable obstacles. I have not given up that hope, nor ­I suspect-have any of you, which is why we are here today.

Nonetheless as important as solidarity work is for us and for the continuation of efforts to effect change in the circumstances facing millions of Palestinians in the territories and beyond, none of us is deluded enough to believe that a Just Peace is at hand. With every killing, every maiming, every act of state-sponsored terror, every home demolition, every arrest, every confiscation of property, resources and identity, every closure, checkpoint, permit, roadblock, or concrete slab put into place along the serpentine Wall that is devouring Palestinian land in its path, Palestine is rendered increasingly invisible, buried behind euphemisms and peace scams ­ a non-entity for non-persons whose continuation as one of the many nations populating the globe today is seriously threatened.

(1) In trying to assess how we can put a stop to this devastating dynamic I came up with three pre-conditions that are necessary before we can even begin a process leading to a just settlement. First and foremost is to demand an end to Israeli crimes. These include, most significantly today, its bloody and sadistic torture of Gaza, but also its continued territorial expansion which it has no intention of ending, an end to atrocities against the people of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, recognition of the right of Palestinians to have free elections ­meaning, in this case, the recognition of Hamas and the establishment of dialogue with it and all other Palestinian political factions regardless of whether or not we like them; the release of Palestinian Parliamentarians taken hostage beginning in the summer of 2006; the release of thousands of prisoners and illegal detainees whose only “crime” was resistance to an illegal occupation.

I should add here that on December 7th, 1987 the United Nations General Assembly passed UN resolution 42/159 which, among other things, authorized peoples living under occupation regimes the right to resist. This is yet another piece of the historical documentary record conveniently forgotten lest it be used to support Palestinian and other just causes.

To reiterate: it is crucial that all of Israel’s ongoing crimes against the Palestinian nation cease; that we in civil society and in world organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union so allegedly concerned with the adherence to and principles of international law take it upon ourselves to enforce it or soon, with regard to Palestine, there will be nothing left to talk about.

(2) The second pre-condition is that the Quartet, which includes the United Nations and the European Union, publicly acknowledge the international consensus as it has existed since January 26th, 1976 and was broadened by the 2002 Arab League Summit in Beirut to include full normalization of relations, in return for Israel’s compliance with international law. As mentioned, however, this consensus has been systematically and often hysterically rejected by the US and Israel whereas virtually all other concerned parties, including Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas, have ­contrary to what the American media would have us believe-explicitly accepted it.

(3) Finally, once the international consensus is acknowledged, civil society activists and organizations must pressure European Nations to have the courage to act independently of US policies, as they can do in many important ways, instead of ­as one activist put it-“toddling meekly behind the Boss and participating in his crimes”(Noam Chomsky; private correspondence). Actions taken by the UN and the EU among other world organizations to ostracize and isolate the United States and Israel rather than kowtow to them in servile obedience must serve as the beginning of constructive change; of sending a message to the world’s only superpower and its principal client that they may, by sheer military force, continue to get their way, but that their actions will no longer be tolerated or ignored.

It is bad enough that the United States and Israel together behaves like neighborhood bullies dictating their whims to both friends and enemies alike; but when their pious appeals to freedom, democracy and justice are heard as tanks, heavy artillery and warplanes devastate the lands and decimate the civilian populations they have occupied it is long past the time to censure their record-breaking violations of international law and basic human morality.

With regard to Palestine, it is important to ask ourselves why Hamas, which won power in free, fair and transparent democratic elections has been deemed a criminal terrorist organization whose carefully planned demise depends on the calculated starvation and suffering deliberately imposed on the Gaza Strip, 50% of whose population is under age 25. We need to understand that brutal, authoritarian regimes such as those in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are upheld as “moderate” and “friendly” states by the US because their first priority is to the Master and his whims.

By understanding this we are forced to confront the sudden cynical embrace by both Israel and the US of Mahmoud Abbas and his disturbing acquiescence in this embrace. Abbas’ illegal government-by-decree has agreed not only to avoid any dialogue or attempts at reconciliation with Hamas; it has also accepted ­ in Orwellian fashion-the US/Israeli designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization. Indeed Abbas himself while lauding the values of freedom and democracy announced on Israeli television that he would refuse to “conduct negotiations with murderers.” Surely his Israeli and American backers have satisfied their immediate aims of making him an honorary Warrior on Terror. Thus, with help from his foreign backers, Abbas’ Fatah faction has succeeded in splitting the Palestinian National Movement in half making it easier still for the Israelis to continue to destroy the economic, social, cultural and political fabric of Palestine. Who are these people that they would sacrifice on the altar of celebrity, power and corruption the historic struggle and soul of Palestine? The path on which this cynical triumvirate of power is moving leads inexorably to a fate none of us here would seriously like to contemplate.

Last November I had the pleasure of returning to Gaza to visit friends to whom I owe more than I can ever say. Yet the visit called up the usual mixture of emotions that fill one’s heart with the beauty and anguish that is Gaza today. In the midst of a lovely family gathering, of laughter, warmth and an uncanny sense to me of belonging, the treacherous thundering guns of “Operation Autumn Clouds” commenced in the north, in Beit Hanoun. In the days that followed I visited the Shifa and Kamal Adwan hospitals ­the ICU wards full of badly wounded civilians- and the morgues on which the dead men, women and children lay silently on cold, silver freezer trays.

What was more troubling to me than anything else was not the absurdity and injustice of these deaths; the on-going brutality and barbarism that a state has adopted under a hideous veneer of “security needs.” No, what bothered me most was the chilling familiarity of the scenes: Jenin, Rafah, Gaza City, Khan Yunis, Ramallah, Nablus, Beitunia, El-Bireh, Qalandia, Beit Sahour, Hebron I can no longer remember which place bore which of these unspeakable tragedies. All I know is that they show no sign of ending and that, my friends, is why our messages here at this conference must be urgently heeded.

Jennifer Loewenstein is the Associate Director of the Middle East Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a member of the board of the Israeli Coalition against House Demolitions-USA branch, founder of the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project and a freelance journalist. She can be reached at: amadea311 at earthlink.net

This essay is extracted from a speech given at the UN’s conference on Palestine this past Aug. 30th-31st.