The Madison-Rafah Sister City Project (MRSCP)
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Apr 29, 2025
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Israel is not targeting “terrorists” supposedly hiding behind “human shields.” On the contrary, it’s targeting the “human shields” themselves. ― Norman Finkelstein, Dec 27, 2023
Online and from MRSCP Resistance Art’s 2020 Colors from Palestine calendar is a tribute to the late Palestinian Poet Mu’in Bseiso (1926 – January 23, 1984). His words spoke of resistance, love, torture chambers and naked walls, children coloring on a beach, exile —the endless exile and the resistance against it. MRSCP plans to order…
November 24: 9 am – 2 pm Annual Fair Trade Sale at Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ, 1501 Gilbert Road, Madison 53711. Call 608-271-7212. December 7: 8 am – 3 pm 23rd Annual Fair Trade Holiday Festival at Monona Terrace. Do your holiday shopping with MRSCP and dozens of other Fair Trade vendors at…
EyeWitness Palestine still has some openings available for their fall delegation. Scholarships are available. The Environmental Justice and Olive Harvest delegation is your opportunity to visit Palestine during the olive harvest season — a culturally rich and important time. Hear from farmers and learn of the importance of agriculture to the economy and culture. Learn…
Ismail Ajjawi, a Harvard freshman who said he was was denied U.S. entry because of his friends’ social media postings, arrived in Boston in time for the start of classes. He is pictured in his home near the El Buss refugee camp in Lebanon. (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) JAWEED KALEEM, Los Angeles Times,…
Posts by friends on social media were critical of the United States Deirdre Fernandes, Boston Globe, August 27, 2019 A 17-year-old Palestinian student en route to Harvard University to begin his freshman year was denied entry to the United States at Logan Airport last weekend, heightening fears that the Trump administration’s restrictive immigration policy is…
In this July 15, 2019, file photo, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn, right, speaks, as U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., listens, during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington. (J. Scott Applewhite) TSELA BARR AND BARB OLSON, The Cap Times, August 23, 2019 Last week, the Israeli government took the unprecedented step of denying…
Relatives of Muhammad Abu Namous, one of three Palestinians killed along the Gaza-Israel boundary overnight, mourn during his funeral in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, on 18 August. (Mariam Dagga/APA images) Maureen Clare Murphy, The Electronic Intifada, 19 August 2019 “Israel is ready to carry the costs of helping Gazans emigrate,” and would potentially use air…
Dr. James J. Zogby, August 17, 2019 Back in May, a jury found Patrick Syring, a former State Department official, guilty of 14 counts of making threats against my life and my staff at the Arab American Institute. This week, a federal judge sentenced Syring to five years in prison to be followed by three…
Reps. Tlaib & Omar Blocked from Taking Official Trip to West Bank Democracy Now! August 16, 2019 GUESTS Mustafa Barghouti member of the Palestinian Parliament, secretary general of the Palestinian National Initiative, a political party. He was a presidential candidate in the 2005 elections. Rebecca Vilkomerson executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace. Israel sparked outrage…
Rep. Tlaib’s grandmother says the family had already prepared a lamb Muftiyah Tlaib, the grandmother of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), spoke to The Washington Post on Aug. 16 from her home in the West Bank. (Video: James McAuley/Photo: James McAuley/The Washington Post) James McAuley and Sufian Taha, The Washington Post, August 16, 2019 BEIT UR…
Isabel Kershner, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Peter Baker, New York Times, Aug. 15, 2019 JERUSALEM — Under intense pressure from President Trump, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government on Thursday barred two members of the United States Congress from entering Israel, reversing a previous decision to admit two of the president’s most outspoken critics. By enlisting…
Judge Orders University to Recognize Students for Justice in Palestine Club Students for Justice in Palestine at Fordham University Center for Constitutional Rights, August 6, 2019 New York— Five Fordham University students have won a landmark legal victory against Fordham University, which sought to prohibit them from forming a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)…
B’Tselem, 06 August 2019 From the beginning of the Great March of Return protests on Land Day, 30 March 2018 until the end of June 2019, Israeli security forces killed 216 Palestinians, 43 of them minors, and wounded thousands, the vast majority with live ammunition. However, security forces also make deadly use of crowd control…
B’Tselem, 24 July 2019 Israel’s unlawful open-fire policy during the demonstrations along the Gaza perimeter fence – which were upheld by the Supreme Court – have so far resulted in hundreds of Palestinian deaths and thousands of injuries. Official sources now admit that they were well aware that people were being killed when even the…
66 Civilians Injured by Israeli Forces: 28 Children, 2 Journalists, and 4 Women, Including a Paramedic Palestinian Center for Human Rights – Gaza, August 2, 2019 On the 69th Great March of Return, 66 Palestinian civilians were injured due to the Israeli military’s continued use of excessive force against peaceful protests along the Gaza Strip’s…
Demonstrators protest New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s McCarthyite executive order requiring state agencies to divest from organizations that support the Palestinian call to boycott companies profiting from, or cultural or academic institutions complicit in, Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people, June 9, 2016. (Sipa via AP Images) Omar Barghouti, The Nation, July 29, 2019 Last…
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won the Democratic primary in New York’s 14th congressional district [Rothman’s/Facebook] The Middle East Monitor, April 18, 2019 US Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has proposed the US cut military and economic aid worth $3 billion a year from Israel in response to the re-election of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister. “I think these are…
Celebration of house demolition, by Israeli border police and IDF officer, July 22, 2019. Screenshot from video. Mohamed Mohamed, Mondoweiss, July 26, 2019 Israel is at it again. It remains consistent in engaging in one of its favorite activities: stealing Palestinian land and tormenting Palestinians. On Monday, Israeli bulldozers, escorted by hundreds of Israeli soldiers,…
Hebron Freedom Fund [pdf-embedder url=”http://madisonrafah.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/hebron-newsletter.pdf” title=”hebron newsletter”]
The morning of Monday, July 22, 2019, Palestinian families in the village of Sur Baher woke up to the sound of bulldozers accompanied by hundreds of Israeli troops that had been ordered to oversee the destruction of their homes. Israeli demolition crews are now in the process of destroying 16 Palestinian apartment buildings, totaling 100…
Photos: Jim Maas/FUS Social Justice Ministry, Tsela Barr/MRSCP, and Kit Kittredge/NA Boat to Gaza Campaign Since 2008, the Freedom Flotilla movement has sent 35 ships attempting to break Israel’s illegal, US-backed military blockade that has devastated Gaza and denied 2 million people — half of them children — access to food, clean water, fuel, medicine,…
Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, July 23, 2019 “I felt shaky and uneasy all day, preparing for this talk” – Jehad Abusalim, a Palestinian from the territory of Gaza Jehad Abusalim, a Palestinian now living in the United States, grew up in Gaza. In Chicago last week, addressing activists committed to breaking the siege…
Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Ref: 89/2019, July 22, 2019 On Monday morning, 22 July 2019, Israeli military forces launched a large-scale destruction operation against civilian property in Wadi al-Humus neighborhood, in Sour Baher, south of occupied East Jerusalem. Hundreds of Israeli soldiers and machinery carried out the destructions that resulted in hundreds of civilians…
Khuloud Rabah Sulaiman, We Are Not Numbers, May 20, 2019 “I want to be one of the best chefs in the world,” says Mahmoud Abu Nada. That, despite the fact that he lives in the blockaded Gaza Strip, is just 12 years old and suffers from leukemia. And…while he is not yet known to the…
Dr. James J. Zogby, July 13, 2019 In the coming week, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs will move on four bills – all of which, I believe, drive more nails in the coffin of Israeli-Palestinian peace. While two of the proposed bills are blatantly pro-Israel, it is the two more benign pieces of legislation…
Diala Shamas and Ziad Alwan, The Activist Files, Episode 16 Did you know that in Palestine, Israeli settlers and companies profit off of stolen land? That’s what our Advocacy Director Nadia Ben-Youssef discusses with Staff Attorney Diala Shamas and client Ziad Alwan in the 16th episode of “The Activist Files,” where we speak about our intervention into a case filed by Israeli…
At Har Gilo, a Jewish settlement overlooking the southern West Bank, American college students get a history lesson. (Ilia Yefimovich for The New York Times) David M. Halbfinger, The New York Times, July 10, 2019 PSAGOT, West Bank — The fun was over before the tour bus rolled into Har Gilo. For the past week,…
If Americans Knew, June 26, 2019 It’s anybody’s guess how this will play out, but it’s going to be a long, wild ride. Overwhelmed by the crowd of candidates for President? The issue of justice for Palestinians – in which almost everyone bows to the Israel lobby – is the ultimate litmus test for integrity.…
Milwaukee resident Ari Bloomekatz. (Photo: Jimmy Rothschild) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel June 25, 2019 It’s just a few seconds caught on video. Pulled from multiple videos and posted on Twitter, it includes 33-year-old Milwaukee resident Ari Bloomekatz in the West Bank’s South Hebron Hills. The clip shows Bloomekatz in the thick of an altercation involving about…
Israeli soldiers kill one Palestinian, injure many in Jerusalem IMEMC 28 June — Israeli soldiers and the police invaded, on Thursday evening, the al-‘Issawiya town, north of occupied East Jerusalem, killed a young Palestinian man, and injured many other residents, in addition to imposing a strict siege on the town. Media sources said the soldiers…
MECA 2018 Annual Report by Middle East Children’s Alliance on Scribd
In 2018, Americans were horrified to learn that migrant children were being cruelly separated from their families at the U.S. border and imprisoned in intolerable conditions. Many U.S. lawmakers – on both sides of the aisle – joined the national outcry to say this is an UNACCEPTABLE practice for the United States. Yet – under…
A growing number of Palestinians want a ‘one state, equal rights’ model and think Trump may unwittingly pave the way for it. Palestinian youths climb a section of Israel’s wall near the West Bank. | Abbas Momani/Getty Images NAHAL TOOSI, POLITICO, 05/21/2019 Some prominent Palestinian activists and politicians are quietly rooting for Jared Kushner as…
According to Amnesty International, over the past 20 years, Israeli military exports went to at least eight countries that have been known for serious violations of human rights,. (Photo: via MEMO) Mohamed Mohamed, The Palestine Chronicle, May 21, 2019 An in-depth report released in Hebrew by Amnesty International’s Israeli chapter provides a damning picture of…
Alternative Memorial Day, a binational tradition since 2005, is a sign that we are capable of taking down the walls of fear. Mourners and supporters at the Alternative Memorial Day ceremony in Israel on May 7, 2019. (Photo by Tatyana Gitlits) Avigail Corry and Sulaiman Khatib, May 22, 2019 Mourning is a personal matter. When…
Wisconsin Muslim Journal, May 17, 2019 Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world that systematically prosecutes an estimated 500 to 700 children each year in military courts lacking fundamental fair trial rights. Children within the Israeli military system commonly report physical and verbal abuse from the moment of their…
Friends of Sabeel – North America (FOSNA) For too long, Palestinians have been calling for freedom, justice, and equality. As organizations that share these values, we urge you to join us in confronting Christians United for Israel (CUFI). CUFI has quietly become the largest organization in the United States driving support for Israel’s oppression of…
Arsalan Bukhari, Informed Comment, 04/26/2019 WASHINGTON, D.C. (CAIR News Release) – The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today welcomed this afternoon’s landmark victory in CAIR’s First Amendment lawsuit on behalf of Bahia Amawi, the Texas speech language pathologist who lost her job because she refused to…
The injured Abu Jazar brothers, with their father and mother in Gaza. Photo By Mohammed Asad Ahmad Kabariti, Mondoweiss, April 20, 2019 In a dim room in a two-story building in al-Shaboora, Rafah, the poorest refugee camp in the southern Gaza strip, five brothers of the Abu Jazar family recall the details and pains of…
Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Ref: 64/2019, April 24, 2019 The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns that the Israeli authorities stationed at Beit Hanoun “Erez” Crossing arrested a patient’s companion, from the Gaza Strip, while returning to the Gaza Strip. According to PCHR’s investigations, at approximately 12:00 on Tuesday, 23 April 2019,…
Action is needed to protect them and tens of thousands more who risk losing their homes under Israel’s devastating home demolition policies. Mike Merryman-Lotze, American Friends Service Committee, Apr 19, 2019 Israeli’s home demolition policy has led to the destruction of thousands of Palestinian homes (like this one in Hebron in the West Bank) and…
Uri Ben-Eliezer, Sociology, University of Haifa The Havens Center, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison “The Nation and War, Some Reflections from Israel’s History” Tuesday, April 23, 4pm, 6191 Helen C. White “The Making, Unmaking, Remaking of Israeli Militarism” Wednesday, April 24, 4pm, 6191 Helen C. White Open seminar for public, students, and faculty Thursday,…
Ilan Ben Zion, Time Magazine, April 17, 2019 (JERUSALEM) — An Israeli court on Tuesday upheld a deportation order against Human Rights Watch’s local director and gave him two weeks to leave the country. The Jerusalem District Court rejected an appeal by Omar Shakir to remain in the country, saying that his activities against Israel’s…
Israel’s family reunion practices are gravely offensive Palestine Update 234, April 12, 2019 This time; Palestine Updates brings you two powerful testimonies. The first is from Zoughbi Zoughbi, Director of Wi’am: The Palestinian Conflict Transformation Center. Wi’am is a grassroots civil society organization based in Bethlehem with a mission to promote peacebuilding and empower community…
With this denial of entry, Israel appears to have once again enlisted the Trump administration to do its bidding “Palestinians are now helplessly anticipating a far-right Israeli tsunami that will wipe out whatever rights we have left.” (Photograph: Nasser Nasser/AP) Omar Barghouti, The Guardian, 16 Apr 2019 Last Wednesday, as I was preparing to depart…
A crowd celebrates in Tel Aviv on Nov. 29, 1947, after the U.N. votes for the partition of Palestine. (Hans Pins/GPO, via Getty Images) J.J. Goldberg, New York Times, April 11, 2019 THE LIONS’ DEN Zionism and the Left From Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky By Susie Linfield As discouraging as these times may be…
“The only possible option for them is to continue knocking on the walls of their prison with the hope that the world will hear them.” Ahmed Abu Artema has organized the Great March of Return in protest of Israel’s blockade on Gaza. (Hosney Salah) Esty Dinur, The Progressive, April 11, 2019 Ahmed Abu Artema is…
The 2019 North America Nakba Tour comes to Madison UW-Madison Red Gym, On Wisconsin room 716 Langdon St 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm Mariam Fathalla was just 18 years old in 1948 when her 4,000 year old village was leveled and she was forced to flee Palestine along with hundreds of thousands of others to…
While Jewish Israelis will be able to move freely in and out of the occupied West Bank, millions of Palestinians — even those with entry permits issued by the Israeli army — will be on lock-down. Illustrative photo of Israeli soldiers voting at a portable ballot box, near Bethlehem in the West Bank. (Nati Shohat/Flash90)…