On Feb 23, Kate Raphael, an American Jew and a member of IWPS (Int’l Women’s Peace Service) and QUIT (Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism), spoke at the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning. This event was sponsored by the Pittsburgh Palestine Solidarity Committee, OPTICS, The Middle East Peace Forum, and the Thomas Merton Center, among others.

Kate spent over half a year in the illegally Occupied Territory of the West Bank, Palestine working closely with local and international peace groups like the ISM (Int’l Solidarity Movement) and CPT (Christian Peacemaker Teams) where she witnessed the daily humiliation of the Palestinians by the Israeli Occupation Forces. After being arrested and spending almost 2 weeks in an Israeli jail, Kate was expelled from Israel where she then went to another Occupied country in the Middle East—Iraq. There, Kate joined up with Code Pink and Global Exchange, whose mission it was to document the status of women and children under occupation.

With the accompaniment of a PowerPoint presentation, Kate relayed her experiences to the audience of 50 students, teachers, and parents. The similarities of these dual occupations were discussed: checkpoints, walls of concrete and barbed wire fencing, humiliating rituals, despair, and empire building. And then there are the differences: The US in Iraq wants to "Iraqi-ize" the occupation by utilizing the Iraqis for such things as frisking and policing, in a sense, masking the occupation, while Israel’s goal is to blatantly elevate the intensity of the occupation, by way of house demolitions, increasing harassment, and land confiscation, the latter of which Kate says is Israel’s prime goal—stealing as much land as possible.

Kate focused on the role women are playing under these brutal occupations. The IWPS is a group of 10-12 women, including Jews, Muslims, and women of color, from 8 different countries between the ages of 25-48. Together with local Palestinian and Iraqi women’s groups, Kate directed her efforts non-violently to stopping the occupations, which she is now doing by touring the US and amplifying their unheard voices.

Recently, QUIT "occupied" a Starbucks in California, a direct action of which Kate was a part, with the title "A café without Queers for Queers without a café," a parody of the slogan "A land without a people for a people without land," which early Zionists adopted in creating the myth that Palestinians do not exist. This action was repeated in several other cities.