action to remember Palestinian activist Bassam Ibrahim Abou Rahme.

FRIDAY MAY 8 12h00
Indigo Bookstore
corner of St. Catherine & McGill college
(metro McGill)
Montreal, Canada

Bil’in, a Palestinian village in the West Bank, has become an internationally celebrated symbol of Palestinian popular resistance to the ongoing construction of the Israeli apartheid wall. Since 2005, villagers have led weekly protests, with the active participation from both Israeli and international solidarity activists, in opposition to illegal Israeli colonization or annexation of Palestinian land.

In April 2009, Israeli soldiers killed Bassam Ibrahim Abou Rahme, a Palestinian activist from Bil’in. News on Bassam’s passing spread quickly throughout the world, sparking international solidarity actions and condemnations of the killing of another Palestinian protester by the Israeli army.

Bassem was the 18th Palestinian to have been killed by the Israeli army during popular demonstrations against the apartheid wall. A video that captures the killing is linked here, in which you can see that Bassam was attempting to calm the Israeli soldiers at the moment the shooting occurred.

In Montreal we are holding a protest to commemorate Bassam’s death and to show our continued solidarity with the ongoing weekly protests in Bil’in and the wider struggle against Israel’s illegal apartheid wall.

The apartheid wall, which was ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004, is one element of the ongoing Israeli military occupation of Palestine. In constructing the wall, Israel will annex and colonize almost 60% of Bil’in’s land.

Bil’in is currently engaged in a legal battle in Canada, as the village recently filed a lawsuit in Quebec Superior Court against Green Park International and Green Mount International, two companies registered in Quebec.

According to Bil’in village “the two companies are illegally constructing residential and other buildings on the village’s lands and that its land and the defendants are subject to the rules and obligations of international law because the West Bank is occupied territory … Bil’in claims protection under the Fourth Geneva Convention … which prohibits an occupying power from transferring its civilian population into territory that it has occupied as a result of war.”

Today Bil’in village is seeking an immediate order from the Canadian court stopping the illegal construction, punitive damages and other relief as set out in the claim.

This protest in solidarity with Bil’in and to commemorate Bassam Ibrahim Abou Rahme occurs within international campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel and the Canada-wide boycott campaign against the Chapters/Indigo bookstore.

A boycott campaign targeting Chapters/Indigo was launched in December 2006 to target the majority shareholders of Indigo/Chapters, Heather Reisman and Gerry Schwartz, who established the HESEG Foundation for Lone Soldiers, a program of financial support for former ‘lone soldiers,’ or non-Israeli mercenaries who leave their country to fight in the Israeli military. Israeli ‘lone soldiers’ participated in the devastating 2006 war on the people of Lebanon and continue to enforce the illegal occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Across Canada a growing number of people are supporting the Boycott Chapters/Indigo campaign as part of the international campaign to push for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against the apartheid state of Israel.

organized by:

Palestinian and Jewish Unity (PAJU)
Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR)
Tadamon! Montreal

information:
tel: 514 664 1036
email: info[at]tadamon.ca