The Madison-Rafah Sister City Project (MRSCP)
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We made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together our voices are stronger. Can’t you see that we are intertwined? That my people can be truly safe if Basel’s people are truly free and safe? There is another way. It’s not too late for life, for the living. ― Yuval Abraham, Israeli co-director of the Oscar-winning film No Other Land.
But it is still Israel that can do most to improve the economic lot of the Palestinians: not only in Gaza, where it will continue to control the flow of people and goods across the border, but also in the West Bank, which despite the ceasefire remains under a harsh regime of closures and roadblocks.…
Hind Khoury, The International Herald Tribune, AUGUST 11, 2005 JERUSALEM — After more than 38 years of its oppressive military occupation of the Gaza Strip, Israel will soon begin evacuating the few thousand settlers who have been denying freedom to more than a million Palestinians there. Israel has marketed the Gaza withdrawal as yet another…
Despite his innocent appearance, Avi Shlaim knows that he is a sort of enemy of the people, and even enjoys it with refined British enjoyment. And now he has come to Israel, armed with his book, “The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.” Meron Rapoport, Haaretz, Aug 11, 2005 After reading the 573 pages…
August “Washington Wednesday” Action Alert Start Date: August 10, 2005 End Date: To be determined BACKGROUND Israel is scheduled to begin in mid-August a unilateral “disengagement” from the Palestinian Gaza Strip by evacuating its illegal settlements and military bases there. Israeli officials announced in July that they will ask the United States to pay $2.2 billion…
It’s a dispute that involves just about every emotive issue you can think of – Israel, Palestine, human rights, freedom of speech. Gary Younge dissects the academic battle that has gripped America Gary Younge, The Guardian, 10 August 2005 In his landmark book, Democracy in America, the 19th-century French intellectual Alexis de Tocqueville commented on…
Robert Dreyfuss, MIFTAH, August 09, 2005 Important new details of the U.S.-Israeli espionage case involving Larry Franklin, the alleged Pentagon spy, two officials of the American- Israel Public Affairs Committee, and an intelligence official at the Embassy of Israel emerged last week. Two AIPAC officials-who have left the organization-were indicted along with Franklin on charges…
Will Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza free it from the burden of the occupation? The answer is yes and no. Aluf Benn, Haaretz, Aug 09, 2005 After it is all over – when the Jewish settlers from Gush Katif are luxuriating in their caravillas, when the Hamasniks have finished their victory parades and the Israel Defense…
The Jordan Valley, the settlement blocs that continue to merge into each other, the monumental Jews-only roads, the demilitarized zone long since annexed to Israel, the area annexed to Jerusalem in 1967, the de facto annexations of the fence – these already cover most of the West Bank. Amira Hass, Haaretz, Aug 03, 2005 A…
The International Crisis Group, REPORT No. 44 / MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA, 2 AUGUST 2005 While the world focuses on Gaza, the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations in fact may be playing itself out away from the spotlight, in Jerusalem. With recent steps, Israel is attempting to solidify its hold over a wide area in…
The legalistic deception of the Israeli Civil Administration: “It is all Israel” Amira Hass, Haaretz, 13 July 2005 Listen to the soldier in the field. He says what his commanders were trained to cover up and embellish. Listen to the red-headed soldier, who prevented residents of Qafin from passing through the gate in the separation…
Thank you Madison/Rafah Sister City Project for your endorsement of the Rachel Corrie Mural Project: Break the Silence’s project in honor of Rachel Corrie, a US solidarity activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer while defending the Nasrallah home, and the many Palestinian families and activists who have lost their lives in the struggle against occupation…
Gideon Levy, Haaretz, July 10, 2005 Here he is – the survivor. His head and arms bandaged, his cheek gashed, his right ear deaf. In pain, weak, exhausted, scared, stunned, angry, bitter. Hilal Majaida, 18, from Muwasi. For eight years he hadn’t left that area, in the heart of the Gaza Strip. Now he’s trying…
Life under occupation Yael Barda, Occupation Magazine, July 7 2005 Yesterday I had a fascinating experience. Plucking my eyes out and placing them in the heart of the occupation. Abdullah Abu Rahma, coordinator of the public struggle against the Seperation Fence in the village of Bili’in, was summoned to the Shabak (the Israeli General Security…
Two weeks later, I was at the Aaskar refugee camp, near Nablus. That day, the government decided to destroy a series of terrorists’ homes in order to “deter suicide bombers.” The officer in charge of explosives placed two anti-tank mines instead of half an explosive block. We knocked down a neighborhood instead of a room.…
Amira Hass, Haaretz, July 6, 2005 The hunting season is at its height, and the settlers are the prey. They have become a target for criticism in the media to an extent whose like is hard to remember. They are criticized for sending their children to block roads, for hitting and cursing soldiers, for the…
ATLANTA–(BUSINESS WIRE)–July 4, 2005–A United Church of Christ (UCC) resolution demanding that Israel dismantle its anti-terrorism fence “is functionally antisemitic, which devalues the lives of the citizens of the Jewish state,” charged Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, of Los Angeles. “This immoral resolution, which cloaks itself in the language of…
2005 United Church of Christ Synod Tear Down the Wall – Resolution of Witness Submitted by: Wider Church Ministries THEOLOGICAL RATIONALE For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. (Ephesians 2:14) A central tenet of…
For years, the news media ignored the injustices the settlers inflicted on their neighbors. Gideon Levy, Haaretz, Jul 03, 2005 The media is to blame: For months, it portrayed the story of the “great sacrifice” the evacuated settlers must make. For years, it ignored the injustices they inflicted on their neighbors and thus helped portray…
Sam Ser, THE JERUSALEM POST, July 1, 2005 The United Church of Christ is to consider divestment from Israel at its biennial General Synod assembly, which opens in Atlanta on Friday. A resolution submitted by UCC member churches in Hawaii suggests the church divest from American and Israeli companies “profiting from the perpetuation of violence…
The West Bank city of Nablus is relatively calm at present. Anyone who can raise money, even by selling their jewellery, is investing in the stock market. They want to make enough for a one-way ticket out of Nablus. Benjamin Barthe, Le Monde diplomatique, July 2005 THE sun suits Nablus. It makes the stone buildings…
Two emails from Beshara Doumani June 28, 2005 Dear Friends, I want to alert you to a disturbing development on the academic freedom front: It is possible that the University of California Press might not, after all, publish the long-awaited book by Norman Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of…
Israel must understand that the liberation of the Israeli people depends on the liberation of the Palestinian people Occupation Magazine, June 28, 2005 Translated from Hebrew by Daniel Breslau Summary: Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a founder of the Palestinian Democratic Initiative, criticizes the Palestinian Authority, which he believes is not doing enough to preserve the public’s…
But “Never in the modern history of the Jewish state has there been more outspoken public opposition on elite college campuses to the basic principles and tenets of Israel” NATHANIEL POPPER, Forward, June 24, 2005 It has become common for many Jewish activists and Israeli leaders to claim that Israel’s standing among university students and…
Dear all, I received disturbing news about prisoners in IOF prisons in Israel. 30-year-old, Salameh Muhammad Rashaydeh, from Bethlehem lost his sight during interrogation. Rashaydeh was being interrogated for alleged trade and smuggling of small arms, and told the guards and interrogators he could not see following long sessions of interrogation, which extended to 40…
Alan Dershowitz is on the defensive over his research on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Jon Wiener, The Nation, JUNE 23, 2005 What do you do when somebody wants to publish a book that says you’re completely wrong? If you’re Alan Dershowitz, the prominent Harvard law professor, and the book is Norman Finkelstein’s Beyond Chutzpah: On the…
US hypocrisy is not new but Condi Rice has taken it beyond chutzpah Avi Shlaim, The Guardian, 21 June 2005 Condoleezza Rice hailed the understanding between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on the need to destroy the homes of the 8,000 Jewish settlers in Gaza as a historic step on the road to peace. This…
US hypocrisy is not new but Condi Rice has taken it beyond chutzpah The Guardian, 21 June 2005 Condoleezza Rice hailed the understanding between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on the need to destroy the homes of the 8,000 Jewish settlers in Gaza as a historic step on the road to peace. This is a…
Palestine Media Center (PMC), June 11, 2005 In a report titled “The Myth of Incitement in Palestinian Textbooks”, the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education has refuted as “unfounded” the Israeli and US allegations that Palestinian textbooks incite hatred and violence, ahead of attempts by some US Congressmen to attach conditions to direct US…
Ramzy Baroud, AntiWar.com, June 7, 2005 "Ramzy, I must admit it, it’s so hard being a Palestinian these days.” That’s how a friend of mine, a dedicated individual who is spending her days and years advocating justice for the Palestinian people, ended a distressing message to me a few months back. I recall her words…
Grainger Hall, University of Wisconsin 975 University Avenue Madison, WI 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM Dr. Norman Finkelstein, Professor of Political Theory at DePaul University and author of Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict will present this keynote address at the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation Upper Midwest Regional Organizing Conference. The…
First United Methodist Church Parlor 203 Wisconsin Ave, Madison Sunday mornings at 9:30 am This is a three-part discussion series on Palestine-Israel, and one on Iraq, sponsored by the First United Methodist Church. Participants include Jennifer Loewenstein, founding member of MRSCP, George Shalabi, and MRSCP Advisory Committee member Cecil Findley. A theme text is from…
Upper Midwest Regional Organizing Conference Madison, WI Join the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project for a weekend conference to network, strategize, and build skills to end U.S. support for Israel’s military occupation. See the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation for information on conferernce registration, agenda,…
Panel Discussion with Craig and Cindy Corrieand Khaled and Samah Nasrallah Saturday, June 25, 2005 7:30 PM – 9:00 PM The Crossing, 1127 University Ave., Madison, WI (corner of University and Charter) Cindy and Craig Corrie are the parents of U.S. peace activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed by the Israeli army in the Gaza…
Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, May 9, 2005 Madison — The Madison-Rafah Sister City Project (MRSCP) has enlisted the Mezan Center for Human Rights in Palestine as its key partner in maintaining peopleto-people relations with the citizens of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. The Mezan Center is a non-profit, non-partisan, transparent and accountable human rights organization…
Mohammed Omer, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May/June 2005 THEY BREATHE the same air, drink the same water, are covered by the same blue sky, yet the extremists among the Israeli settlers in occupied Palestine live in a different universe from that of their Palestinian neighbors. Ariel Sharon, who originally championed the settler movement…
How Madisonians helped create a respite from violence for Palestinian children Kathy Walsh, Isthmus, April 29, 2005 Children were everywhere. They were standing on rooftops, shooting marbles in the streets, playing “football” wherever there was bare ground, making their way to and from school. And always in the background there was machine-gun fire. This was…
Al-Awda, The Electronic Intifada, 27 April 2005 (Madison, WI- 04/27/05) – The Association of University of Wisconsin Professionals (TAUWP) has adopted a resolution that calls on the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents to divest from companies that provide the Israeli Army with weapons, equipment, and supporting systems. TAUWP is a statewide local of the…
St. Mark’s Lutheran Chapel 605 Spruce St., Madison 7:00 PM This season of Passover is observed with the Seder ceremony, which celebrates the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery. This year we will have the opportunity to participate in a Seder celebration that is open to people of all beliefs and supports two excellent…
On Tuesday, April 12, 2005 the Teaching Assistants Association (TAA) of UW-Madison debated a resolution calling on the UW to divest from companies doing business with the Israeli military. Discussion of this issue had been tabled at the March general meeting when members voted to hold an additional information session on the divestment issue (held…
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Shamai Leibowitz, The Electronic Intifada, 24 March 2005 The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has led to an explosion of “people power” in the streets of Beirut, in which hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens have called for an end to Syria’s occupation of their land. These calls have been celebrated and…
On his first visit to the Gaza Strip, Daniel Day-Lewis meets the Palestinian families living in the heart of the danger zone — and the psychologists who are counselling them Authors in the Frontline: Daniel Day-Lewis The Sunday Times Magazine, March 20, 2005 Mossa’ab, the interpreter, leads the way, carrying a white Médecins Sans Frontiéres…
The pilgrimage to Jerusalem of so many European leaders shows that they are not deterred by the criticism of Israel – they are taking part in a media event that can only be interpreted as support for Israel, as it is today. Amira Hass, Haaretz, Mar 16, 2005 The crowd of world leaders visiting the…
Ruth Conniff, The Progressive, March 7, 2005 On Saturday I sat with other members of the conservative synagogue in Madison, Wisconsin, listening to Yonatan Shapira, a pilot in the Israeli Air Force since 1991 before he was dismissed after refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories. It was a controversial event. Shapira calls the bombing…
A Partners for Peace presentation Sunday, April 10, 2005 — 4 pm Memorial United Church of Christ 5705 West Lacy Rd. Fitchburg Monday, April 11, 2005 — 7 pm First Unitarian Society Meeting House 900 University Bay Dr. Madison Sponsored by the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project (MRSCP) , The Peace and Justice Committee of the…
FAYYAD SBAIHAT, Badger Herald, Mar 3, 2005 The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents has adopted a series of guidelines to regulate the $330 million UW trust fund. The trust and investment policies are meant to prevent the university’s money from being invested in companies whose business is deemed unethical or immoral. These policies…
Madison, Wis — A silent auction of donated art work benefiting Augusta Victoria Hospital in Palestine will be on display March 6-20, 2005. The show opens Sunday, March 6, 2005 at St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church, Monona in Koinonia Place, with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Initial viewing and bidding will take place at…
JOSH MOSKOWITZ, Badger Herald, Feb 24, 2005 In just a few short weeks, the political climate in Israel has drastically changed. One needs to look no further for proof than by scrutinizing the actions of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. Sharon recently released 500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli…
March 4, 6:00 PM, Congregation Shaarei Shamayim, Prairie Unitarian Universalist Society building, 2010 Whenona Drive, Madison. Potluck followed by a discussion with Shapira. Daycare will be available. March 5, 9:00 AM, Beth Israel Center, 1406 Mound Street, Madison. Shapira will speak during services and stay for discussion after the Kiddush. March 5, 5:00 PM –…
Gwen Evans, UW News, February 8, 2005 For filmmaker Saul Landau, who has interviewed the likes of Fidel Castro and Zapatista leaders in Chiapas, Mexico, the recent popularity of political documentaries must give him cheer. With more than 40 films to his credit, he has been putting a focus on human rights and social and…