The Madison-Rafah Sister City Project (MRSCP)
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Jun 2, 2025
❝Random Quotes❞
Who paid the price when they settled there? Is it really true that Israel was a land without a people, for a people without a land? ― Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies, Occupation 101, 2006
Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 07:48:29 -0800 (PST) From: Kelly Bornshlegel Subject: Resistance Under Occupation Ringing In The New Year In the midst of an already month-long invasion, the Sheiks announced over the mosques for everyone to yell from their windows and their roofs “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) together for an hour. It began…
Al-Awda, 5 December 2003 The Geneva Accord was signed Monday, December 1, 2003, amid great media and political fanfare. The 50-page document lays out a plan for a presumed “peace agreement” between Israel and the Palestinian people. We, the undersigned, consider this initiative as inconsistent with the prerequisites of a just and durable peace for…
Gideon Levy, Haaretz, Nov 30, 2003 Quietly, far from the public eye, Israeli soldiers continue killing Palestinians. Hardly a day goes by without casualties, some innocent civilians, and the stories of their violent deaths never reach the Israeli consciousness or awareness. If there is one consistent piece of data in the current intifada, it…
David Grogan, American Booksellers Association, Nov 12, 2003 On Thursday, November 6, Madison, Wisconsin’s Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative and a local newsweekly were able to convince Madison Area Technical College (MATC) to reverse its decision to impose restrictions on a speaking event about the Middle East, featuring noted writer and University of Chicago researcher Ali Abunimah.…
Palestinian farmers seek protection against settlers The Globe and Mail, 12 November 2003 Einabus, West Bank – Men with chainsaws turned Fawzi Hussein’s olive into a wasteland overnight – 255 trees cut down at the trunks, fruit-laden branches wilting on a West Bank slope, at the height of the harvest season. The suspected culprits: militant…
Uri Avnery, CounterPunch, November 7, 2003 In the Six-Day War, hundreds of Israeli soldiers were murdered while storming the Sinai desert, the West Bank and the Golan heights. In the Yom-Kippur War, more than 2000 Israeli soldiers were murdered in the defense of the conquered territories. In the 18 year long Lebanon War, more than…
AFP, 04 Nov 2003 BRUSSELS (AFP) – The European Union scrambled to contain the fallout from a public opinion poll that — to Israel’s fury — labelled the Jewish state the biggest threat to world peace. The United States was just behind Israel in the global danger league, in joint second place with North Korea…
World Food Programme Report, 28 October 2003 . . . Christiane Berthiaume of the World Food Programme said that she had been in the occupied Palestinian territories last week. The situation in that region continued to deteriorate. A WFP study showed that more than 50 per cent of the inhabitants of the occupied territories lived…
Rabbis for Human Rights delegation physically attacked by settlers while documenting cut trees Rabbis for Human Rights, 27 Oct 2003 This morning a RHR delegation was attacked by settlers while documenting cut trees. Well known journalist John Ross, age 66, is on his way to Beilinson Hospital. RHR executive director Rabbi Arik Ascherman was also…
October 25, 2003 Thank you for your continuous support and committment towards Rafah City and Rafah People. From the start of the Intifadah, Rafah has suffered more than any other Palestinian city, Since the start of the Intifadah to date, Rafh has suffered ofthe follwing: 271 Martyrs were killed by the Israelis, 75 of…
“My People are American. My Time is Today.” Lenni Brenner, CounterPunch, October 24, 2003 A friend once got a bit of a reputation by pointing out that “you don’t need the weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.” But you do need a demographer to know which way the Jews are going. Some…
Saturday, Nov 8, 2003 4:45-6:45 pm Red Gym Media Room Campus Information and Visitor Center 617 Langdon St UW-Madison This pivotal video exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites ó working in combination with Israeli public relations strategies ó exercise a powerful influence over news reporting about the Middle East conflict. Combining…
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, Reference: 45/2003, October 16, 2003 At 11:30pm Wednesday 15 October 2003, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) attacked the Al Nakhla (Brazil) neighborhood in Rafah. Eyewitnesses said that about 60 Israeli tanks and armored vehicles invaded the neighborhood under helicopter cover and imposed a curfew on it. Initial…
Amira Hass Thursday, October 30, 2003 Morgridge Auditorium, UW-Madison Grainger Hall 7:30 pm Amira Hass covers Palestinian affairs for the Israeli daily Ha’aretz. She is the only Israeli journalist who actually lives in the Occupied Territories. Author of Drinking the Sea at Gaza, she has just published a second book, Reporting from Ramallah. Known for…
(Photo: Rafah Today, 2003) Laura Gordon, The Electronic Intifada, 14 Oct 2003 Then the streets started screaming and we were running almost without thinking, down the edges of the street around the people who had lost their fear, around donkey carts loaded full, ran until we fround a corner to turn into and then we…
Reference: 43/2003 Date: October 13, 2003 Al Mezan Center For Human Rights On Monday 12 October 2003 Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) redeployed their forces around the town and refugee camp of Rafah. Mezan’s fieldworkers visited the area, under direct occupation since Friday 10 October, to collect information and meet with victims and their families. According…
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, October 12, 2003 In the early morning hours of Monday 13 October 2003, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) withdrew from the refugee camp of Rafah after a three-day incursion. Initial reports from the camp revealed massive home demolitions and damage to the city’s infrastructure. Israeli soldiers killed eight…
Allen Ruff, Palestine-Israel Peace and Justice Alliance (PIPAJA), 12 Oct 2003 Amira Hass, the author of the article below, will be appearing in Madison on October 30th as the second speaker in the “Reporting the Middle East” speakers’ series produced by the Palestine-Israel Peace and Justice Alliance (PIPAJA). Hass will appear at the Morgridge Auditorium,…
Laura Gordon, The Electronic Intifada, 10 October 2003 9 October 2003 — This Yom Kippur (October 6th), the most holy day on the Jewish calendar, the day of atonement in which we are supposed to cease every form of work in order to pray and request forgiveness from God, the Israeli army began construction on…
NONVIOLENCE EVENT WEEKEND How to Spread Nonviolence, Globally and Locally September 19-21, 2003 Hosted by Edgewood College, Madison, WI Madison-Rafah Sister City Project is looking for volunteers to help staff our table at this event. If you are interested, please contact RafahSisterCity at Yahoo.com. Brochures with registration information will be available the first week of…
Graffiti in Gaza. (Ronald de Hommel) Steve Niva, The Electronic Intifada, 2 September 2003 Palestinian suicide bombings are vicious and grave abuses, clearly war crimes under international law for intentionally killing civilians. They have also been a strategic disaster for Palestinian national aspirations, souring the Israeli public on peace and damaging the Palestinian cause in…
The Palestine Monitor, 2 Sep 2003 Aya Fayad was one little girl out of one million eighty-five thousand Palestinian children, who should be having their first day back at school today. Aya is not having hers because she was murdered; thousands of others will not have theirs, because of some 400 Israeli checkpoints and road…
South Central Federation of Labor Meeting Monday, September 15 7 pm Madison Labor Temple, 1602 S. Park St. Contact: Ron Blascoe, c/o RafahSisterCity at Yahoo.com Multicultural Student Coalition Meeting Tuesday, September 16 7:00 pm See “Today in the Union” for room location. There will also be a display on library mall the day of the…
Tale of boy’s life in West Bank prompts pressure groups to call for withdrawal Fiachra Gibbons, The Guardian, August 23, 2003 Jewish pressure groups are calling on a publisher to withdraw a children’s book about a Palestinian boy growing up amid the intifada on the West Bank. A Little Piece of Ground, by the multi-award-winning…
MG&E Innovation Center, 505 S. Rosa Rd., Madison 7:00pm This is a meeting to gear up for our fall plans, which are extensive and growing. SUMMARY OF MRSCP STATUS (Please review prior to the meeting; these will all be discussed) MRSCP has four working committees at the moment: The Delegation Committee, the City Council Committee, the…
An iron wall on the right, a line of rubble from destroyed homes on the left, one of many toxic untreated human waste in the foreground are all that remains in this part of the Block “O” refugee camp in Rafah. A mobile IDF watchtower in the distance looms over the remaining homes. (Mark Zeitoun) Laura…
Gush Shalom, August 20, 2003 The horrifying suicide bombing in Jerusalem, in which dozens of innocent civians were killed and wounded, deserves to be condemned in the sharpest terms. We offer our condolences to all the bereaved families. But it is imposible to avoid also considering how did this come to happen. The renewed cyce…
Jewish Peace News, 10 Aug 2003 [Israel’s new citizenship law, passed recently by a wide margin in the Knesset, denies any Palestinian who is married to an Israeli citizen the right to reside in Israel or acquire Israeli citizenship. Only Palestinians — who in the overwhelming majority of cases are married to ethnically Palestinian Israeli…
Mohammed Omer, Rafah Today, 8 Aug 2003 Everyone in Palestine tastes the Occupation crimes, this occupation which wasn’t kind to children, women, old men, old women, and youth also, every day. Thousands of crimes I saw at the checkpoints, many immoral crimes which are impossible to describe; yes, hard things, you don’t know what they…
Israel’s crackdown on international peace activists raises grave concerns. Muna Hamzeh, Al-Ahram Weekly, 29 May – 4 June 2003 At a time when world attention is focussed on the Israeli government’s acceptance of the "the steps" set out in the roadmap and its complete rejection of the Palestinian right of return, the Israeli authorities have…