SISTER CITY SQUABBLE
PROPOSED MADISON-PALESTINIAN TIE SPARKS CONTROVERSY
Judith Davidoff, The Capital Times, May 1, 2004
Jennifer Loewenstein first lived in Israel in 1963 as a child when her father was hired to play first trumpet in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, then under the direction of Leonard Bernstein.
She went back in 1981 as a junior in college.
Now a lecturer in professional communications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Loewenstein has also recently lived in Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut and traveled throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where she worked for five months in 2002 at the Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza City.
At the Mezan Center, Loewenstein made contacts in Rafah, a city of about 150,000 people located in the Gaza Strip along the border with Egypt, which she visited in January with two other Madison residents. There she says she saw the terrible conditions of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.
She is now spearheading a movement to formalize a sister city relationship between Madison and Rafah. The proposal, before the City Council, has incited vociferous opposition from the Madison Jewish Community Council, which calls it “nothing more than a thinly veiled mechanism to bash the state of Israel.”
The group also calls it anti-Semitic.
Mayor Dave Cieslewicz has declined to support the proposal and the controversy has already caused one of the measure’s eight City Council supporters, Ald. Mike Verveer, to withdraw his name as a co-sponsor.
If the initiative fails, it would be the first time the council has not approved a proposed sister city program.
Loewenstein says she and other members of the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project hope a sister city relationship would help shed light on the plight of Palestinians living under Israeli rule — a situation that has deteriorated considerably since the start of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in 2000.
“We want people to understand what the occupation means,” she says.
Forging ties with Rafah is also a way to remind people that Palestinians are human beings who share a culture and cuisine and who have folklore and art, Loewenstein adds. “So many different facets of Palestinian culture get completely overlooked because of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” she said.
Loewenstein, who is Jewish, has family living in Israel. One member of her family even fought in the Israeli War of Independence. Her family considers itself pro-Israel. Yet she doesn’t see these allegiances as being out of sync with her desire to reach out to oppressed Palestinians.
“I believe strongly Jews and Palestinians don’t have to be on opposite sides in politics,” she says. “They have many more reasons to coexist peacefully.”
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American killed: Rafah made headlines across the country just about a year ago when Rachel Corrie, a young American woman, was crushed to death there by an Israeli bulldozer while protesting the demolition of Palestinian family homes.
The death of Corrie, an activist with the International Solidarity Movement, was followed the next month by the shooting death of British solidarity movement activist Tom Hurndall, who was trying to move children away from police fire. A documentary filmmaker also died from Israeli gunfire the next month.
When Loewenstein made her first trip to Rafah in January 2004, she too found herself in the middle of gunfire. In an essay about her travels, Loewenstein writes about leaving the home of Rafah Mayor Said Zoroub after one of the city’s all-too-common power blackouts.
“We decided to leave when the lights came back on and Talal, the mayor’s friend, came to pick us up, but we had to cram ourselves back into the doorway when bullets flew at us from the watchtower in the distance, hitting the side of the building or shooting past us into the night,” Loewenstein writes. “I would never have left that doorway had I been alone, but for the others the routine for these episodes of indiscriminate firing was to pause for a moment to wait for quiet, then dart into the car and duck down below the windows while the driver sped away.”
City Council sponsors of the Rafah project say Madison and Rafah share common goals of developing greenspace and improving the environment and transit system.
The City Council resolution also says Rafah’s municipal government reflects a “democratic vision that corresponds to the values of Madison’s political leadership.”
But Steve Morrison, director of the Madison Jewish Community Council, vehemently disagrees.
According to Morrison, Hamas and other terrorist groups “are in control of Rafah.”
“There is no way that anyone could claim any leadership unless they had some relationship or provided some support for the role Hamas plays in Gaza, including Rafah itself,” says Morrison, who sent a letter with such objections to Cieslewicz and the City Council.
“Rafah is the very epicenter of a smuggling operation that is helping, in my view, to do tremendous harm to the people, the economy and the culture,” he adds.
The Madison Jewish Community Council’s executive board of more than 30 members voted unanimously to denounce the resolution, Morrison says.
The Madison-Rafah Sister City Project supporters have responded to Morrison’s letter with a point-by-point refutation.
Among other things, they challenge Morrison’s contention that Rafah is controlled by Hamas and that the weapons used by Hamas come into the area via tunnels in and around Rafah.
And many in the group, about half of whom are Jewish, say they are personally offended by Morrison’s charge of anti-Semitism.
“I think that is a way of generating hostility,” Loewenstein says.
Cieslewicz says the City Council should stay out of the fray.
“This City Council and I aren’t equipped and we shouldn’t be expected to debate Middle East policy when we have city issues to deal with,” he says. “Also, I am concerned that this issue may put into jeopardy the entire sister city program. As you know, it did come under some fire in the last budget and I’m afraid that raising this issue will only give those who have raised questions about the program more reason to raise questions.”
But Marc Rosenthal, a co-founder of Madison-Arcatao Sister City Project in El Salvador, which dates to 1986, says he and many others involved in local sister city projects welcome the Rafah proposal.
“It’s very much within the spirit of sistering and what it means to be a global citizen,” Rosenthal says.
And he questions the mayor’s logic.
“In today’s globalized world, there are no issues that are purely Madison,” he says.
He says he saw from his work in Arcatao, which began during a time of war, how significant international solidarity can be for people caught in the middle of armed conflict.
“We know from firsthand experience what a difference it can make,” he says. “Both on a personal level for people in the community and as a way to put a human face on those broader social and political issues that confront us.”
MADISON-RAFAH
AGAINST: The Madison Jewish Community Council is opposed to a sister city partnership. The text of a letter to the mayor detailing its opposition is at madison-rafah.org/mjccletter042204.html.
IN FAVOR: The Madison-Rafah Sister City project has written a response. It is at madison-rafah.org/refutationmjcc.html.
Instant Poll
Do you think Madison should form a sister city partnership with the city of Rafah in Gaza? Cast your vote between now and 8 a.m. Monday at www.madison.com/captimes/poll
E-mail: jdavidoff@madison.com
CAPTION(S):
Rafah, located on the border of Gaza and Egypt, is caught in the midst of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and so draws attention from people around the world.
Associated Press
Peace activist Rachel Corrie was killed in March 2003 when she was run over by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah.
Michelle Stocker/The Capital Times
Members of the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project want to form a bond between the city and a city in Gaza. Shown here on the shore of Lake Monona are Jennifer Loewenstein (sitting, from left), Barbara Olson, Carol Reiss and Tsela Barr. Standing behind them are Bernhard Geyer (left), George Arida, Kathy Walsh and Kevin Walsh.
Graphic
Location of Rafah
Cite this article
“SISTER CITY SQUABBLE PROPOSED MADISON-PALESTINIAN TIE SPARKS CONTROVERSY.(FRONT).” The Capital Times. Capital Newspapers. 2004. Retrieved November 15, 2009 from HighBeam Research: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-116118277.html
COPYRIGHT 2004 Capital Newspapers.
