The Madison-Rafah Sister City Project (MRSCP)
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Apr 1, 2025
❝Random Quotes❞
The Israeli government limits building permits in Palestinian Israeli communities more than Jewish, and omits Palestinian Israeli towns from some government social and economic plans. Buildings without permits are illegal, and this is a commonly cited reason for demolishing Palestinian buildings. ― Second Class Citizens, 2016
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…
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Free preview showing and discussion!Escape Java Joint916 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…
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.…
Palestinians 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…
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…
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…
· Seizure would allow huge expansion of settlements · Move seen as rush to make changes before US summit Conal Urquhart in JerusalemWednesday October 10, 2007The Guardian 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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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This is a special appeal on behalf of three projects in Palestine: (1) Save Gaza's pilot project on Sustainable Gardens in Gaza, including Rafah; (2) The Rebuilding Alliance's West Bank "Abir's Garden" playground project (note September 16 deadline for fund raising contest; and (3) Fida Qishta's Rafah Life Maker's Children's Center. Please send your donations…
Jennifer Loewenstein, The Progressive, June 26, 2007 Contrary to the many claims that the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip represents the failure of US and Israeli policies in Palestine, the violent civil infighting that has dominated the Gaza Strip over much of the last year and a half and that led directly to the…
John Nichols, Capital Times, June 20, 2007 The tragedy of Washington’s narrow “debate” about the Middle East is that few American political players are willing to comment in a serious manner about the fact that George Bush’s mishandling of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has done more than money or guns to advance the cause of the…
MIKE MURRAY, Cap Times, Jun 9, 2007 This week marks the 40th anniversary of the 1967 war in which, most Americans believe, a small, gallant Israel defeated powerful attacking Arab armies. A few brave Israeli historians now argue that this is a myth and that Israel’s 1967 pre-emptive attack on Egypt was a “war of…
Jennifer Loewenstein, Islamic Human Rights Commission, 06 June 2007 Jennifer Loewenstein brilliantly illustrates the horrors of living under fire and portrays the Palestinians of Gaza as a people abandoned by the world to the murderous Israeli occupation, but whose will to resist strengthens with each atrocity committed against them. June 2007, Jennifer Lowenstein, originally published…
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Palestine, Israel and Lebanon 40 Years after 1967 “Hizbullah, Israel and Lebanon: The Summer War, 2006”Fawwaz Trabulsi, Lebanese-American University, Beirut, LebanonApril 12th • 1351 Chemistry • 7:30 pm “Jerusalem Women Speak: Three Women, Three Faiths”Huda Abu Arqoub, Muslim Palestinian and consultant for the Palestinian Ministry of Education; Tal Dor, a Jewish Israeli community activist; and…
Washington – The simmering debate over American policy toward Israel and the role of the Jewish community in shaping it exploded with near-nuclear force this week. Several of the nation’s best-known international affairs commentators fired salvos at pro-Israel lobbyists and defenders of Israel fired back with unprecedented fury. In the space of three days, major…
Major Givers Reportedly withholding Funds from School, Sparking Fierce Free-Speech Debate on Massachusetts Campus Larry Cohler-Esses, The Jewish Week (New York), February 16, 2007 Major donors to Brandeis University have informed the school they will no longer give it money in retaliation for its decision last month to host former President Jimmy Carter, a strong…
Amira Hass, Haaretz, Feb 14, 2007 The Gaza Strip is ‘abroad’ in a strange way. Israelis need a passport to get there, and Palestinian Jerusalemites need a laissez passer – the same one they need to present when they fly to Paris via Ben-Gurion International Airport. Now it is official: The Gaza Strip is “abroad.”…
Miko Peled, The Electronic Intifada, 13 February 2007 Palestinians wait at the Rafah Crossing in Gaza to pass through to the Egypt, 6 February 2007. (MaanImages/Hatem Omar) The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one area where liberals and neo-conservatives in America find common ground. From Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton all the way to George Bush and…
Bassam Aramin, The Forward, February 9, 2007 I fought with my daughter on the day she was shot. On her way out the door to school, Abir announced, in that way children have of doing, that she would be playing with a friend that afternoon rather than coming straight home to study for an exam…
Ali Abunimah is coming to Madison to speak on his new book, One Country — A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. A Palestinian-American, Abunimah is a co-creator and editor of the The Electronic Intifada web site and more recently, of Electronic Iraq and Electronic Lebanon. A graduate of Princeton University and the University…
Victoria Brittain, Guardian Unlimited, January 30, 2007 Mona el-Farra, a Palestinian doctor working in Gaza should have been in London this evening, launching a campaign for peace between Israelis and Palestinians based on recognition of international law. The campaign, simply called Enough, is backed by various aid organisations, trade unions, faith and other campaign groups.…
Ceasefire between Palestinian factions enters into force after five days of intense inter-factional fighting United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 30 Jan 2007 Overview The ceasefire between Palestinian factions announced by Palestinian Foreign Minister, Mohammed al Zahar in the early hours of this morning is holding. The ceasefire follows the heaviest…
The Madison-Rafah Sister City Project (MRSCP) has launched a Student Stipend Program to provide Rafah college students with assistance to remain in school in Gaza and complete their studies. The economic situation in Rafah is dire, with 79 percent of people in the Gaza Strip living below the poverty line due to Israeli restrictions and…
Is the Bush administration violating the law to provoke a Palestinian civil war? Conflicts Forum, 07 Jan 2007 Deputy National Security Advisor, Elliott Abrams — who Newsweek recently described as “the last neocon standing” — has had it about for some months now that the U.S. is not only not interested in dealing with Hamas,…
Haaretz Service Dec 28, 2006 Report: Threefold increase in number of Palestinians killed compared to 2005; 23 Israelis killed in 2006. According to an annual B’Tselem report, from the beginning of 2006 to December 27, Israeli security forces have killed 660 Palestinians, a figure more than three times the number of Palestinians killed in 2005,…
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN, Truthdig, DECEMBER 28, 2006 As Jimmy Carter’s new book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid climbs the bestseller list, the reaction of Israel’s apologists scales new peaks of lunacy. I will examine a pair of typical examples and then look at the latest weapon to silence Carter. Apartheid Analogy No aspect of Carter’s book has…
Chris Hedges, Truthdig, Dec 18, 2006 AP / Khalil Hamra Water mixes with blood in a street of the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun in this Nov. 8 file photo. Israeli tank shells landed in a residential neighborhood, killing at least 18 people in their sleep, including eight children, according to witnesses and…
Former president stands by new book despite criticism, says it is meant to stimulate debate in U.S. Haaretz Service, Dec 11, 2006 Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter said in remarks broadcast Monday that Israeli policy in the West Bank represented instances of apartheid worse even that those that once held sway in South Africa. Carter’s…
Erez Crossing, Gaza (Credit: The Electronic Intifada, May 29, 2005) Jennifer Loewenstein, CounterPunch, November 15, 2006 A clear and warm November evening; sun sets in a violence of color to the west over the sea and a full luminescent moon on the rise over Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip. As if on cue,…
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN, CounterPunch, NOVEMBER 13, 2006 The historical chapters of Palestine Peace Not Apartheid are rather thin, filled with errors small and large, as well as tendentious and untenable interpretations. But few persons will be reading it for the history. It is what Carter has to say about the present that will interest the reading…
Edgewood College Anderson Auditorium 5 to 6:30 pm Anna Baltzer gives the keynote address of the 22nd annual conference of The Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies entitled “New Directions for Peace in the Middle East and Around the World”. Anna will be talking about her five months working with the International Women’s Peace…
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US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, July 13th, 2006 BACKGROUND:Israel is using weapons supplied by the United States to target Palestinian & Lebanese civilians and civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon in violation of the US Arms Export Control Act and the Geneva Conventions. * On July 12th, Israel killed 23 Palestinians…
From: Jennifer Loewenstein Subject: Resuming Emails: Gideon Levy – A Black Flag Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2006 00:17:34 +0100 Last week I was in the West Bank and East Jerusalem trying to accomplish work for a research project, hence my absence. All I can say now is that what you are reading in real news…
Haaretz Editorial, 30 Jun 2006 Bombing bridges that can be circumvented both by car and on foot; seizing an airport that has been in ruins for years; destroying a power station, plunging large parts of the Gaza Strip into darkness; distributing flyers suggesting that people be concerned about their fate; a menacing flight over Bashar…
Wisconsin State Journal :: FRONT :: A2, Wednesday, April 19, 2006 Rafah is not a city in El Salvador Ald. Lauren Cnare doesn’t oppose buying milk for kids in Rafah on the Gaza Strip in Palestine. She just objects to tax money given to a Madison sister city in El Salvador being used that way.…
Madison.com, May 3, 2006 Madison Ald. Lauren Cnare and State Journal readers can rest easy. Contrary to Melanie Conklin’s April 19 column, the Arcatao, El SalVador, sister city project did not give any city money to the Rafah sister city project. In spite of erroneous comments made by the Sister City Oversight Committee, Arcatao only…
Melanie Conklin, Madison.com, Apr 19, 2006 Ald. Lauren Cnare doesn’t oppose buying milk for kids in Rafah on the Gaza Strip in Palestine. She just objects to tax money given to a Madison sister city in El Salvador being used that way. Cnare sits on the Sister Cities Grant Review subcommittee, which during the grant…
TONY JUDT, New York Times, April 19, 2006 IN its March 23rd issue the London Review of Books, a respected British journal, published an essay titled “The Israel Lobby.” The authors are two distinguished American academics (Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago) who posted a longer (83-page) version of…
Kathy Walsh, Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, April 4, 2006 In the article “Settlers, Israeli public part company” (Capital Times, April 3), Rabbi Yoel Bin Nun is quoted as saying “Olmert will at least take something.” Rabbi Bin Nun gets it right. Despite all the fuss about Olmert giving up land to Palestine with his proposed…
Kathy Walsh, Capital Times, November 19, 2005 The photographs titled “Faces of grief in Palestine and Israel” in the April 3 Capital Times once again leave readers with the idea that Palestinians grieve for killers while Israel grieves the victims of terrorism. In reality, many more Palestinians have died at the hands of Israelis than…
UW-Madison 1345 Health Sciences Learning Center 750 Highland Avenue 7-9:00 pm [pdf-embedder url=”http://madisonrafah.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/healthtourflyer.pdf”] Workers from the Ibdaa Health Committee of the Dheisheh Refugee Camp will be in Madison as part of a national tour. The Committee consists of volunteer health professionals, including nurses, physicians, and social workers. The goals of the tour are to build…