The Ninth Annual Israeli Apartheid Week!
9th annual Israeli Apartheid Week featuring inspiring conferences, workshops, film screenings, demonstrations, and cultural events to raise awareness around the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israeli apartheid.
Tadamon! Stands in Solidarity with Brooklyn College Students for Justice in Palestine
Statement of Support for Brooklyn College Students for Justice in Palestine:
We Condemn Attacks Against Advocates for BDS and Palestinian Rights!
We deplore the efforts of politicians and others to bully student activists and faculty and to smear supporters of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel as anti-Semites.
In recent days, opponents of an event on BDS to be held on campus February 7th have attacked the organizers and scheduled speakers, internationally renowned philosopher Judith Butler and Palestinian human rights activist Omar Barghouti, as well as the political science department and university administration for co-sponsoring the event. This is just the latest in a series of incidents involving attempts to silence criticism of Israel at Brooklyn College.
Opponents of the February 7 event have made deeply offensive and inflammatory accusations against supporters of BDS, with State Assemblyman Alan Maisel going so far as to warn of “the potential for a second Holocaust here.” Other prominent critics include lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who has openly called for the United States and Israel to use torture, and State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a follower of the late Meir Kahane, an Israeli-American rabbi whose racist Kach movement has been outlawed by the US and Israel as a terrorist organization for advocating the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories and for carrying out violent terrorist attacks against Palestinians and others.
It is outrageous and perverse to conflate BDS proponents and our stance in support of equal rights and freedom for Palestinians with anti-Semitism and Nazism. Contrary to the claims of these detractors, the BDS movement is an inclusive, nonviolent, civil society-led campaign whose goal is to pressure Israel into respecting Palestinian human rights and abiding by international law, in the absence of action on the part of the US government and international community to do so. It is comprised of people of all faiths and backgrounds, including many Israeli and American Jews. Leaders of the BDS movement have always rejected and condemned any and all forms of racism and bigotry, including anti-Semitism. As SJP-BC’s mission statement says, we “reject any form of hatred or discrimination against any religious or ethnic group.”
As supporters of Palestinian rights and of academic freedom and free speech on campus, we commend Brooklyn College President Karen Gould for showing leadership and not succumbing to pressure from bullies like Dershowitz and Hikind, who seek to suppress criticism of Israel by smearing advocates of Palestinian freedom and equality as bigots.
For nearly 65 years, Palestinians have been dispossessed, colonized, and denied the most basic of human rights and freedoms by Israel. For more than 45 years, they have endured a brutal and illegal Israeli military occupation that becomes more entrenched each day. Today 66 to 69 percent of the 11.6 million Palestinians are refugees, the survivors and descendants of the approximately 750,000 Palestinians who were ethnically-cleansed during Israel’s creation in 1948, are prevented from exercising their internationally-recognized right of return to the land and homes they were expelled from simply because they are not Jewish, while those Palestinians who remained inside Israel after 1948, who make up about 20% of the population today, face widespread institutionalized discrimination and are treated as second- or third-class citizens. As the international community looks on and does nothing to hold Israel accountable for its actions, global civil society is taking the lead with BDS.
In light of the attacks, we pledge our continued support to SJP’s efforts to educate the public about Israel’s grave and systematic abuses of Palestinian human rights and the racist, apartheid regime Israel has instituted in the territories it controls between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
For more information, visit SJP Brooklyn College’s website at www.brooklynsjp.com or email brooklyncollegesjp@gmail.com.
From Turtle Island to Palestine, we must all be “Idle No More”
– Mahmoud Darwish, The Penultimate Speech of the “Red Indian”
Indigenous people have risen up across Canada in the Idle No More movement, a mass call for Indigenous sovereignty, self-determination and rights, against colonization, racism, injustice, and oppression. As Palestinians, who struggle against settler colonialism, occupation and apartheid in our homeland and for the right of Palestinian refugees – the majority of our people – to return to our homeland, we stand in solidarity with the Idle No More movement of Indigenous peoples and its call for justice, dignity, decolonization and protection of the land, waters and resources.
We recognize the deep connections and similarities between the experiences of our peoples – settler colonialism, destruction and exploitation of our land and resources, denial of our identity and rights, genocide and attempted genocide. As Palestinians, we stood with the national liberation movement against settler colonialism in South Africa, as we stand with all liberation movements challenging colonialism and imperialism around the world. The struggle of Indigenous and Native peoples in Canada, the United States, have long been known to the Palestinian people, reflecting our common history as peoples and nations subject to ethnic cleansing at the hands of the very same forces of European colonization.
(more…)
Mark your calendars for the ninth annual Israeli Apartheid Week, which will be taking place from March 6th to 13th at campuses across Montreal.
Last year, Montreal joined over a 100 cities around the world in holding a series of workshops, film screenings, conferences, and concerts aiming to raise awareness surrounding the realities of Israeli apartheid. Join us this year as we continue to build momentum around the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign and the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. More details to follow in the months to come.
ABCs of BDS series: “Do we have a role in the Palestine-Israel conflict?”
MONDAY JANUARY 21
Time: 2:00pm-4:30pm
Location: DeSeve Cinema
Concordia University
As part of the GSA winter orientation series, this event will focus on Palestine solidarity work and specifically on one the most growing forms of global solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, that of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions.
(more…)
For the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people
Join us in a demonstration to demand a Free Palestine and an End to Israeli Apartheid.
Sunday December 2nd
1PM,
Philips Square.
(Metro Mcgill).
Facebook
This month alone, Israel has murdered over 150 Palestinians in Gaza in a brutal and merciless 7-day offensive by land, sea, and air. Gaza, a strip of land measuring the size of the city of Montreal at approximately 360km2, is inhabited by 1.7 million people; half of whom are children. Even in the face of a multilaterally brokered ceasefire, Israel continues its indiscriminate killing and Israeli authorities maintain the suffocating blockade on the coastal enclave. (more…)
End the Siege ! Stand with Palestinian Students !
As the first week of Israel’s operation “Pillar of Clouds” draws to an end, more than 120 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, including 24 children. For Palestinians in Gaza, are denied the fundamental right to education. Through the ongoing siege on Gaza the continued air strikes, and the effects of the 2008 operation Cast Lead that resulted in 1,400 deaths, Palestinians in Gaza are denied the fundamental right to education.
On Thursday November 22nd students in Montréal and across the globe will be marching for accessible education. This demonstration is being held at the same time as thousands of Palestinians students continue to face daily bombardment from the Israeli Military. Our solidarity is a must! As ASSÉ (l’Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante), the coalition of student unions currently leading the student strike, asserted in their recent call out for student solidarity: “It is our responsibility to show them that we, students of Quebec, stand in solidarity of every movement, of every struggle. To global attacks, let’s build an international response!”
In solidarity with GAZA and all Palestinians
End the Siege! Stop the Massacres! Free Palestine! End Israeli Apatheid!
1pm Sunday November 18th
Hall Building, Concordia University
1455 de Maisonneuve West
Metro Guy-Concordia
On Wednesday November 14th Israel declared its latest war on Gaza “Operation Pillar of Defense” also known as “Operation Pillar of Cloud”. The operation was launched with over 65 airstrikes in a period of one day. These latest attacks have led to the deaths of 33 Palestinians, and 180 injured in three days. The air strikes continue amidst a tight and illegal siege of the gaza strip. (more…)
Demo in Solidarity with the people of Gaza
Israeli Air strike on Gaza
Wednesday November 14, 2012 at 6pm
Hall Building, Concordia University
1455 de Maisonneuve West
Metro Guy-Concordia
Israel has just confirmed the launch of its latest war on Gaza “Operation Pillar of Defence” also known as “Operation Pillar of Cloud”.
(more…)
Weekly protest in Bi'ilin
Described as “part resistance journal, part home movie, and part memorial”, 5 Broken Cameras charts five years of popular resistance through the eyes of one family. Since 2005, the West Bank village of Bil’in has been struggling to defend its land and livelihood, staging weekly demonstrations against the construction of the apartheid wall and of illegal settlements on its agricultural lands.
