Madison Rafah Journal

The Madison-Rafah Sister City Project will participate in the second annual crafts sale at the Madison Children’s Museum American Girls Benefit sale in Middleton. NEW THIS YEAR: Doll-size traditional Palestinian embroidered dresses, shawls and scarves made by Palestinian craftswomen from Rafah and refugee camps in Lebanon.

TICKETS ARE SOLD OUT FOR THIS DATE! (Read on …)

Tuesday, June 22, 6:30 pm
Wilmar Neighborhood Center, 953 Jenifer Street, Madison [Map]
Sponsored by Madison Area Peace Coalition |

Program:

(1) Presentation by Jennifer Loewenstein on the current situation in Gaza under the Israeli blockade, what is now known about the May 31st Israeli attack on and hijacking of the ships, and the campaign to compel Israel to agree to a UN investigation.

(2) Questions and comments by the audience directed either to Jennifer or to the meeting in general.

(3) Audience responses to some questions posed by Spanish journalist and politician Pilar Rahola. These are rhetorical questions apparently distilled from a speech Ms. Rahola gave at a “Global Forum” in Barcelona on “Combating Antisemitism in Spain” where she vigorously defended Israel and Zionism against allegedly unfair attacks by others in the European left. Her comments are posted on the English-language website Israelseen.com and have been widely circulated by Israel’s defenders worldwide including in the U.S. (Read on …)

AFP, June 20, 2010

BERLIN – Germany on Sunday slammed Israel for preventing Development Minister Dirk Niebel from entering the Gaza Strip to meet with Palestinian refugees during his current visit to the region.

“I believe that Israel has a need for transparency to render credible the idea that it is changing its political strategy towards Gaza, and my visit would have created that transparency,” Niebel said on German public television station ARD.

Niebel wanted to visit the Hamas-run Palestinian territory Sunday to meet representatives of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a statement in Berlin that he also “regretted” the decision by the Israeli government, and underlined that Germany and the European Union want to see an end to the Gaza blockade.

“If we open the doors to Gaza to ministers from all countries Hamas will use it to legitamise itself,” Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said on ARD. (Read on …)

AFP, Jun 20, 2010

JERUSALEM – Israel on Sunday released one of several Hamas MPs arrested after Gaza militants captured an Israeli soldier in a deadly cross border raid in June 2006, prison authorities said.

Naif al-Rajoub was released into the occupied West Bank because it was “the end of his sentence,” a spokesman said, without providing further details.

He was among more than 60 Hamas elected officials arrested after the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, then 19, was captured in an attack claimed by Hamas and two smaller groups.

Many have since been freed. Israel is currently holding nine Hamas MPs, as well as two lawmakers from the secular Fatah movement led by Mahmud Abbas and one from the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Hamas has demanded the release of hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli jails, including several top militants convicted of deadly attacks, in exchange for Shalit, who is being held in a secret location in Gaza. (Read on …)

A just and lasting two-state solution

Editorial, The Capital Times, June 15, 2010

It is not often that a candidate in a tight U.S. Senate race actually says something significant about the Middle East peace process — or the lack of a process. Pennsylvania Democrat Joe Sestak has done so, with a call for the administration to do more than just “open lines of communication.”

Sestak, who defeated incumbent Arlen Specter in last month’s Democratic primary, faces Republican Pat Toomey in what is likely to be one of the roughest races of the fall.

As such, Sestak might have been expected to avoid discussing the Middle East. Most candidates, especially most Democrats, do — and that has been doubly the case in recent weeks, as relations between Israelis and Palestinians have degenerated following the Israeli military raid on an aid flotilla headed for the Gaza Strip.

Instead, Sestak has waded into the debate by prodding the Obama administration to take a leadership role in encouraging and facilitating direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians. This is certainly not a radical stance, but it is an important one, Sestak, who served as the director for defense policy on President Clinton’s National Security Council, not only calls for direct negotiations but also criticizes those who say peace advocates are not being sympathetic enough to Israel. (Read on …)

Madison Area Peace Coalition, The Capital Times, June 13, 2010

The Madison peace community condemns the Israeli murder of nine activists aboard the Mavi Marmara on May 31. Nineteen-year-old U.S. citizen Furkan Dogan was among the slain. Other unarmed activists, including American and Israeli citizens, were illegally arrested in international waters. Though the activists’ ship flew the flag of NATO member and erstwhile Israeli friend Turkey, the Israeli soldiers were undeterred. These brutal crimes against a peaceful flotilla of humanitarian aid vessels were acts of state piracy on the high seas.

While pretending to end its occupation of the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel has subjected the population of Gaza to an illegal blockade for the past three years because it does not approve of the democratically elected Palestinian government. In January 2009 Israel inflicted a brutal, punitive assault on Gaza, killing 1,400 civilians. Numerous Israeli war crimes during this attack, including the use of white phosphorus munitions in civilian areas, are carefully documented in the United Nations Goldstone Report.

The prolonged Israeli siege prevents Gaza’s civilians from getting enough food and medicine for their daily needs and the necessary supplies to rebuild their devastated economy. Biscuits, chocolate, fishing line, seeds, toys, musical instruments and dozens of other household items are prohibited under the blockade. Even Gaza’s sewage system cannot be rebuilt due to a shortage of cement.

Amnesty International reports that 90-95 percent of the drinking water in Gaza is contaminated and unfit for consumption. According to the U.N., 15 of Gaza’s 27 hospitals were damaged or destroyed during the war. Without building materials like cement and glass, the vast majority of the destroyed health infrastructure has not been rebuilt. The U.N. has also found that “over 60 percent of households are now food insecure, threatening the health and well-being of children, women and men.”

In an effort to provide nonmilitary supplies to the besieged Palestinian population, nine peace activists aboard the Mavi Marmara were brutally gunned down. The humanitarian supplies from all six vessels in the flotilla have been impounded by Israel. Just days later, a seventh ship, the Irish vessel Rachel Corrie, was similarly boarded, its passengers kidnapped and its humanitarian contents seized, although thankfully without further loss of life. Other planned relief voyages can expect the same treatment unless the U.S. demands a change in Israeli policy. (Read on …)

We should not forget that Gaza is another “democracy” in the Middle East: it was precisely because Hamas won free elections there in 2005 that both the Palestinian Authority and Israel reacted with such vehemence.

TONY JUDT, The New York Times, June 9, 2010

Jeffrey Heller, Reuters, 6 Jun 2010

JERUSALEM – Israel rejected Sunday a proposal by U.N. Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon for an international investigation into its deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship and said it had the right to launch its own inquiry.

“We are rejecting an international commission. We are discussing with the Obama administration a way in which our inquiry will take place,” Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, said on the U.S. TV program “Fox News Sunday.”

The U.N. chief had suggested establishing a panel that would be headed by former New Zealand prime minister Geoffrey Palmer and include representatives from Turkey, Israel and the United States, an Israeli official said earlier in Jerusalem.

Netanyahu discussed the proposal for a multinational panel with Ban in a telephone call Saturday but told cabinet ministers from his right-wing Likud party Sunday that Israel was exploring other options, political sources said.

Nine Turks were killed Monday in the Israeli commando raid on the Mavi Marmara, part of a six-vessel convoy that set out to challenge an Israeli-led blockade of the Gaza Strip. (Read on …)