CONFERENCE REPORT

Almost 30 Montrealers travelled to Toronto to participate in this conference. The movement to boycott Israeli Apartheid is growing in Montreal: contact Tadamon or the Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine (www.cjpp.org) to find out how you can get involved.

The landmark conference held in Toronto from 6-8th October 2006 “The Struggle Continues: Boycotting Israeli Apartheid“, was an inspiring and significant event. Over 600 people attended the conference sessions, one of the largest Palestinian solidarity conferences ever held on this continent.

Although the conference was primarily designed for Palestine solidarity activists in Ontario, a significant number of participants came from across Canada including Montreal, Halifax and Vancouver as well as the US. International guests included Jamal Jumaa from the Stop the Wall Campaign in Palestine, Salim Vally from the Palestine Solidarity Committee in South Africa, Betty Hunter from the Palestine Solidarity Committee in the UK, and Jonathan Rosenhead, Emeritus Professor at the London School of Economics and member of the British Committee for Universities in Palestine. Robert Lovelace, Co-Chief of the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation, closed the conference with a powerful comparison of the experience of colonialism in Canada and Palestine.

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From International Socialist Review (ISR), Issue 50, November – December 2006.

By HADAS THEIR

It looked as if a tornado had torn through the residential building and partments, ripping off balconies and roof supports, tearing down massive walls and collapsing whole blocks inwards upon their occupants. Many of the dead were sandwiched inside these ruins. In the streets, where Israeli bulldozers had swept away the rubble with military briskness, the people of Sidon walked in a daze.
    – Journalist Robert Fisk describes the scene at Sidon, where many Lebanese and Palestinian refugees had fled to, trying to escape Israeli raids.(1)

They are all terrorists.
    – An army officer when asked why bulldozers were destroying houses in which women and children lived.(2)

I was not even six when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, too young to be conscious of war and politics. My only memory of the war is the day that my uncle, then thirty-one, serving in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), died – my mother wailing in agony, the shattered expressions on my grandparents’ faces. I would sit with my grandparents for hours in the living room, gently stroking their arms, attempting to ease their pain. For the conquering army, death and suffering is an unavoidable consequence of resistance to occupation. In this case, the six hundred or so IDF deaths, led to a rare development of a peace movement in Israel. But for the conquered, their only crime was to be, by their very existence, in the way of the occupier’s ambition.
    – The author

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DIRECTIONS for MONTREAL SOLIDARITY WITH LEBANON after the 2006 Israeli Attack.

Tadamon! [Solidarity! in Arabic], is a Montreal-based collective of social justice organizers & media activists working to build relationships of solidarity between grassroots political movements for social and economic justice in Beirut & Montreal.

Building on Tadamon!’s 2006 summer delegation to Lebanon & its organizing efforts in Montreal against the Conservative government’s support for the Israeli military assault on Lebanon, Tadamon! has outlined new priorities for the coming months. 

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by Daniel Freeman-Maloy

Canadian Dimension, November/December 2006 Issue

Under Paul Martin’s Liberals and Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, the Canadian government has rapidly shed any pretense at having an independent foreign policy. In Haiti, Canadian forces joined their U.S. and French counterparts in carrying out the coup d’ tat of 2004, overthrowing the elected Lavalas government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and instituting a foreign occupation of the country. In Afghanistan, similarly, thousands of Canadian troops are engaged in combat operations to defend the U.S.-ledoccupation and allow the U.S. military to focus its resources on Iraq. For years, escalating Canadian support for Israel has been part of this trend. In recent months, it has become more unabashed than ever.

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  YAHMOUR – Daily Star: The tiny Southern village of Yahmour is situated between Nabatiyeh and Arnoun. Strewn around the village, which is home to some 450 families, are seemingly endless olive groves and tobacco fields. During the 34-day war in Lebanon this summer, Israeli air strikes hit Yahmour particularly hard. Less than half of the houses are still standing, many of them only partially so.

Now, with the early onset of the rainy season, tempestuous weather is forcing villagers to endure further hardships.

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Beirut –www.samidoun.org– On Saturday November 4, 2006, the National Demining Office, and the National Steering Committees for Mine Risk Education and Victim Assistance will call upon Lebanese civil society to participate and mobilize in a national day against cluster munitions.

This event is intended to send a message to the international community prior to the Review Conference of the COnvention on Certain Conventional Weapons in Geneva, taking place from November 7-17. This message presents an important opportunity for states to seriously review the devastating humanitarian impact attributed to cluster munitions.

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Canada: Peacekeeper. Humanitarian. Election monitor. Really?

The Dominion’s special issue on Foreign Policy takes a look beyond the official mythology to research and examine the actual role of Canadian mining companies, military operations, development agencies, NGOs, and diplomats. Articles look at Canada’s involvement in Guatemala, Venezuela, Somalia, South Asia, Afghanistan, Palestine, First Nations and others. It includes:

Selectively Terrified: How Hezbollah became a terrorist organization in Canada.

The United Nations Environment Programme is investigating allegations, first published in The Independent, that Israel may have used uranium-based weapons during this summer’s war in Lebanon. Twenty UN experts, working with Lebanese environmentalists, have spent two weeks assessing various samples. They are planning to report their findings in December. (more…)

From: Heinrich Böll Foundation

Israel’s offensive in Lebanon between July 12 and August 14 caused almost 1,200 fatalities and the destruction of infrastructure and property to the cost of at least US $ 2.5 billion. But in addition to the loss of life and damage, the war caused several environmental problems that will have long-term consequences. This report will examine the following issues:

• The 15,000 ton oil spill caused by the Israeli air strikes on the fuel tanks of Jiyeh power station;
• The dust and smoke pollution caused by the bombardment;
• Unexploded ordinance, primarily the estimated one million cluster bombs in south Lebanon;
• Impact on farming communities; and
• Long-term implications for the environment and environmental policy.

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Photos

An evening of multi-media presentations, information, inspiring poetry and beautiful music on the 4th International Day against the Apartheid Wall.

Come out to learn about the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israeli Apartheid.

Thursday, 9 November, 7pm
Maison de l’Amitié, 120 Duluth East
(east of St. Laurent, Sherbrooke metro)

• Joneed Khan, Journalist with La Presse
• Report from Toronto conference on boycotting Israeli apartheid (member of Tadamon!)
• Mostafa Henaway, International Solidarity Movement-Montreal
• Music by Stefan Christoff and Yasser Shoukri
• Poetry and Spoken Word by Ghada Chehade, Hossein Sharang & Claude Maheu, and Kaie Kellough

tea & refreshments, free child-care, whisper translation (English, French & Arabic)

Download flyers: boycott_newflyers.pdf. Download posters: boycottposter.pdf

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