Archives June 2007 Israel Palestine Canada

For all the attention and hysteria the latest events in Gaza have generated since the Hamas “takeover,” for Israel they represent nothing but a minor blip in its inexorable drive towards its own unilateral “solution:” apartheid.

Kim Peterson - When Monopolization of the Media Fails, Then Squash Freedom of Speech: Canadian Zionists Wage War against Independent Media

"Knowledge is power." So goes the often heard, and generally accepted, aphorism. Consequently, powerful people who would like to maintain and consolidate their power will endeavor to control and manipulate information. One step in achieving control of information is through the media. When complete media control is not possible, then silencing rival media is also effective. In Canada, this silencing of dissident voices can be attempted, strange as it seems, through the Canadian Human Rights Council (CHRC).

WASHINGTON, June 22 (Reuters) - Shunned by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization, the Islamist group Hamas scored a publicity coup this week by defending its policies in Gaza with opinion pieces in two of the country's most influential newspapers on the same day. The New York Times and The Washington Post gave space to Ahmed Yousef, a senior Hamas figure, on Wednesday to argue that the United States should not interfere in Gaza, where Hamas took control after six days of bloody fighting against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah fighters.

Following its dramatic rout of Fatah positions, Hamas leaders gave televised speeches emphasizing that they were not at war with Fatah's rank and file (many of whom did not even fight) and did not want to seize power or overthrow Abbas, whose legitimacy they explicitly reaffirmed. Their problem, they said, was only with the U.S.-supported militia leaders, such as Mohammed Dahlan and Rashid Abu Shbak, who had made the job of the elected Hamas-led government impossible. As a goodwill gesture, Hamas leaders issued a general amnesty for all captured Fatah commanders and appealed for dialogue, reconciliation and reconstructing a national unity government.

Israel firsters are always justifying the Zionist state's aggression by saying: "It is self-defence, the Arabs want to wipe Israel off the map." The Jewish National Fund of Canada is an organization that has charitable status with the Canada Revenue Agency yet the map of "Israel" on the JNF website shows the West Bank and Gaza as part of Israel. [More on the JNF]

As Alexa McDonough, the NDP's foreign affairs critic, said Tuesday: "Peace cannot be achieved without Hamas at the table. It is a fraud to pretend otherwise." [Read full statement]

Listen also to Daniel Levy. He is a former peace negotiator for Israel and is now a senior fellow at the New America Foundation ... What to do? "Prevent a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Curtail the daily inconveniences in the West Bank. Pursue a two-state solution. But do it by bringing the Palestinians from both sides together, rather than trying the opposite."

Israeli politicians openly advocate starving the Gaza Strip and renouncing Israel's humanitarian obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention, and all we do is say that Palestinians brought it on themselves. None of this misery would be happening if Israel recognized Palestine's right to exist, but it's not in the nature of a criminal to respect the rights of his victims, which means the slow tortured death of Palestine will continue and we will say nothing.

Haaretz - UN Human Rights Council makes Israel permanent agenda item

The United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday voted in favor of making Israel's actions a permanent item on the council's agenda.

Of the council's 47 member states, the sole opponent of the decision to make Israel a permanent agenda item was Canada.

Doing justice to the Palestinian people would bring about security for Israel, while delaying the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories feeds extremism and terrorism, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Michel Sabbah told participants at a church conference for peace in the Middle East yesterday.

ISRAEL's new defence minister Ehud Barak is planning an attack on Gaza within weeks to crush the Hamas militants who have seized power there. According to senior Israeli military sources, the plan calls for 20,000 troops to destroy much of Hamas's military capability in days. ..... The question is not if but how and when,” he said.

CJPME CALLS ON CANADA TO PUSH FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS ON PALESTINE / ISRAEL

MONTREAL, June 13 / – As recommended by Amnesty International in its June 2007 report “Enduring Occupation”, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) calls on Canada to:

Support the deployment of an international human rights monitoring mechanism across the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel to monitor compliance with international law. This should be backed up with a commitment to investigate and prosecute those who commit war crimes or other crimes under international law.

PHOTOS: Ottawa & Montreal June 9 boycott of Chapters-Indigo stores

40 years of occupation - enough is enough!

The momentum is building. All over the world this week a cry has gone up for Israel to end its 40-year illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories. There have been demonstrations and boycotts of all kinds denouncing Israeli Apartheid. In Canada today, there have been boycotts of the Chapters-Indigo chain in all major cities to protest their offer of incentives to mercenaries who serve with the IDF in the occupied territories, filling the void left by over 1600 Israel refuseniks

Help make history - Contact us today to find out how you can help end Israeli Apartheid.

40 years and 18,000 demolished homes is enough!Beginning 11th June ICAHD will rebuild each and every Palestinian home demolished by Israel during the 40th year of the Occupation – about 300 homes total.

This summer – forty years after the Israeli seizure and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip – international, Palestinian and Israeli civilians will sail to Gaza to challenge Israeli control and isolation of the 1.4 million Palestinians who live there. The project is intended to awaken the conscience of the nations of the world, who have turned their backs on a people whose human rights, welfare and very existence are being sacrificed to political expediency. More on this project: Freegaza.org

Palestine Media Collective - Vancouver Sun Newspaper Eclipsed by Activists

VANCOUVER - Today media activists eclipsed the Vancouver Sun's Zionist line. The Palestine Media Collective distributed 12,000 copies of a doppelganger edition of the CanWest flagship to morning commuters in Vancouver and Victoria to point out the anti-Palestinian bias of the newspaper.

A phlanx of direct-action media critics fed-up with CanWest propaganda distributed the faux "addition" at transit hubs in Greater Vancouver and Victoria. "We have provided a truth-telling antidote to the anti-Arab poison of the CanWest chain," said Palestine Media Collective spokesperson Earl Zatz Handel.

The conflict in Gaza is not a fight born of sectarian tensions, since the vast majority of the population are Sunni Muslims.....People in Gaza know this is a special kind of war, a war that is funded by outside sources and fuelled by poverty and desperation. ...

Neither Hamas nor Fatah has much success maintaining any ceasefire as frustrated youths, born in the Gaza pressure-cooker with no future prospects and no hope in sight, take over the streets. My cousin described it best: "This is not a civil war. It is a prison riot."

A must read paper delivered by peace activitst Henry Lowi at the first NOT IN OUR NAME (Toronto) public forum on March 15, 2007. The paper deals with “ Why Israeli Anti-Zionists do NOT “recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist as a Jewish state.” Henry Lowi lived in Israel from 1971 to 1988. He is an IDF veteran, and a veteran of the peace movement, and of Palestine solidarity.

University and college lecturers have voted in favour of boycotting Israeli universities in defiance of their union leadership. The surprise vote at the conference of the newly formed University and College Union (UCU) in protest at the treatment of Palestinians also brought swift condemnation from Jewish groups and Israeli academics.

" The call, in a letter to the defence minister, appears to have been timed to coincide with the vote among British academics over a proposed boycott on Israeli universities."

Comment from Israeli Peace Activist Dorothy: If the above is indeed the case, as I suspect it is, then all the more reason for boycotts and sanctions on Israel: it implies that they work. Indeed, should boycott and sanctions on Israel become widely pursued, then, who knows, perhaps we'll even see 4 university presidents, a few well-known authors, and 1 or 2 Israeli politicians insisting on ending the occupation.