BY JESS MILLER AND WORT NEWS DEPARTMENT, WORT 89.9FM, OCTOBER 28, 2024 

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For the last several years, late October has been a time of celebration for the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project – a chance to commemorate the annual olive harvest in Palestine. This year, though, the group went a different direction with the event.

“We called it a chance to honor the resilience of the Palestinian people,” said Cassandra Dixon, a volunteer with the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, who helped organize the event. “We seem to have either celebratory events or funerals. And I guess that this is really neither of those. But it is really, really remarkable and phenomenal that the Palestinian people have withstood,” Dixon said.

Dixon knows it might be hard to wrap your head around what’s happening to Gaza’s olive crop, coming from a city like Madison that does so much to support its farmers. “People in Madison, we really treasure our CSAs, and our local farmers and access to the farmer’s market,” Dixon said. “And to think of those people facing tear gas, and sound grenades and the possibility of being injured or killed just to harvest the food that they’re bringing us … we cannot imagine that.”

One of Dixon’s hopes for the event was to introduce Palestine to people who might not be intimately familiar with the area.

The olive harvest event was held in the Tenney Park pavilion on Sunday afternoon. The Sister City Project and other partner organizations set up tables with information, crafts and other goods for sale. An ensemble played Palestinian music. Speakers provided updates on the current numbers of dead and injured in Gaza – over 42,000 dead and over 100,000 injured at the time of Sunday’s event. Others recited poems. Refreshments were spare, in light of the starvation happening in Gaza, but showcased both local vendors and authentic Palestinian olive oil. Over a hundred community members came and went over the course of the afternoon.

During the event, Dixon and others spoke about what the Sister City Project is doing to address the crisis over olives. And how people can get involved. The Sister City Project and the group Palestine Partners have joined with the Dutch group Plant an Olive Tree to plant a grove of olive trees in an area of Palestine’s West Bank.

“Families there have lost hundreds and hundreds of olive trees to settler violence and demolition of trees by both settlers and the military. So this is an attempt to keep replacing those trees. Last year I think that Madison sponsored close to 500 trees,” Dixon said.

Additionally, the organizers encouraged attendees to boycott the Sabra brand of middle-eastern style foods because one of Sabra’s parent companies, the Strauss Group, helps fund the Israeli military. “Sabra is owned by a company that has strong connections to Israel and the occupation,” Dixon elaborated, “which supports a couple of Israeli military brigades that have been involved in the genocide in Gaza.”

As part of the boycott, the Sister City Project has organized a campaign to get Sabra products removed from Willy St. Co-op. Per the co-op’s policies, if at least 1% of owners request a boycott of a product or brand, the co-op will open a comment period for all owners to become informed and provide feedback. Dixon said they’re currently 65 owners short of that one percent – around 350 owners. Currently only the North Side co-op location stocks Sabra products, along with several other Madison grocery stores.

“If we cannot open a discussion at Willy Street Co-op in Madison, Wisconsin about genocide, there’s something seriously wrong,” Dixon said. “So I’m really hoping that we can reach out to people. And I hope that people who have already written will also ask their friends and neighbors to also do that.”

The Madison-Rafah Sister City Project has had a relationship with Rafah, Palestine in the Gaza Strip since 2003. In 2004, a plan to make Rafah an official sister city failed to pass in Madison. But Rafah has maintained an unofficial sister city status with the Sister City Project.

In addition to providing humanitarian aid to Palestine, the group’s goals include increasing Madisonians’ understanding of the daily life of Palestinians, supporting Palestinians through selling their crafts and wares in the United States and partnering with similar groups to hold Israel and the United States accountable for human rights violations against Palestinians.

“So we really need as individuals and as a community and as U.S. citizens to find ways to dig deeper, and not look away,” Dixon said. “We need to look farther for ways that we can make our voices heard. We are doing all the right things, we’re just not doing quite enough of them yet. And we’re not being heard.”
 
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