Jennifer Loewenstein

Return to Rafah: Journey to a land out of bounds


” I left for Rafah on 11 January 2004 as part of a three-person pilot delegation to the city. We represented the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, an organization founded in February 2003 to establish people-to-people ties between our two communities. Sistering projects are well known in Madison, Wisconsin —a Midwestern University town north of Chicago. Madison has official, City Council-approved sister cities with El Salvador, Nicaragua, East Timor, Cuba, Vietnam, and Lithuania among others. It seemed time, some of us thought, to build ties with a city in Palestine.” Jennifer Loewenstein reports on a trip to Rafah. 

What gas is Israel using?

“Here is a disturbing ordeal that has not yet been mentioned in any mainstream US papers or media. It exposes some shocking aspects of Israel’s treatment of Palestinian political prisoners, including the use of a gas that impacts the nervous and respiratory systems. It should be noted that Israel has denied using nerve gas against Palestinians, even though one account of its use has already been documented in James Longley’s searing film, ‘Gaza Strip’.” Jennifer Loewenstein and Angela Gaff report from London. 

Days of Darkness, Days of Awe: Yom Kippur in Palestine

“I was afraid you’d gone to Rafah”, I say to Ahmad over the wires to Gaza City. More families in Rafah lost their homes to Israeli bulldozers this past week and a young man died for objecting to the zillionth incursion onto his land. I worried that Ahmad had gone to investigate. His extended family lives there. “No one is going anywhere”, Ahmad responds cynically. “It’s Yom Kippur”. 

With neighbors like these

“They raise their children to hate.” That’s what we’re told about the Palestinians. Watch the TV news. Listen to the radio. Pick up the dramatic US news magazines. Ask the intellectuals and the political pundits. 

Blood and sand in Gaza: Impunity and the murders of children

There is a halo of blood on the ground where Huda died while sleeping last Tuesday night (4/30/02). Toddler-sized diapers lie strewn on the ground among the concrete heaps where the bedroom wall once stood, and a single blue sandal, tiny as my fist, sits perched in a corner of the room on a wooden slab. Huda was 11 months old.