As we conclude our conference today, we remember our friend and fellow in struggle, Bassem Abu Rahma, who was killed by the Israeli army last Friday during the weekly peaceful demonstration. Our hearts and prayers go out to his family and we wish them peace in these hard times. Our thoughts and prayers are also with Tristan Anderson and his family. Tristan, an American solidarity activist, was shot and seriously injured by the Israeli army last month while he was visiting Ni’lin village.
The Fourth Bil’in Conference for Non-Violent Resistance is held this year at a critical stage of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. As Israeli violence and oppression against the Palestinian people to force it into submission has intensified, and an extremist Israeli government ascended to power, the Palestinian leadership is unacceptably divided and weakened.
Since its inception Israel has taken great pains to destroy all signs of Palestinian culture and target Palestinians who chose cultural production as their method of resistance. Edward Said explained “Culture is a way of fighting against extinction and obliteration”, and it is basic to colonial policy to present the colonized as primitive, backward and uncultured.
Ground breaking musicians and artists from Montreal took the stage on Sunday, April 12th for the seventh edition of Artists Against Apartheid at La Sala Rossa, occurring within the international campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israeli apartheid and in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation.
Photo: Denis Lemelin, the national president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.
As the international campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions in opposition to Israeli apartheid policies and in solidarity with Palestine grows upwards of a hundred people gathered in Montreal for a conference on the subject this past week at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).
evening featuring celebrated musicians from Montreal united against Israeli apartheid
Montréal, March, 2009 — Les Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois (RVCQ), the annual festival honouring Quebec cinema, has just wrapped its 2009 edition with the awards evening. Special congratulations to Richard Brouillette, who won the Prix Pierre et Yolande Perrault / Meilleur espoir documentaire for his film Encirclement : Neo-Liberalism Ensnares Democracy and also to our friends at Péripheria, who won the short film award for Three mothers by Daniel Schachter.
You may not be aware, but one award was cut from the Rendez-vous this year.
I was involved in pushing for the festival to drop the prize for Tolerance through cinema (le prix de la Fondation Ruth et Alex Dworkin pour la promotion de la Tolérance à travers le cinéma). Please find below an open letter signed by almost 60 members of the Quebec film community supporting the decision by the RVCQ to no longer present this controversial award. This letter was sent to the Rendez-vous on January 19, 2009.
Dear Alain Dancyger, directeur général, Les Grands Ballets canadiens de Montréal
In 2008, Jean-Luc Godard, the celebrated French film maker, one of the founding members of the French New Wave in 1960s cinema, declined an invitation to be a participant in The Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival. Godard’s refusal to attend the festival was a recognition of the importance of the Anti-Apartheid boycott movement called for by many Palestinian, Israeli and Human Rights organizations world-wide.
This letter is an appeal to you by Tadamon!, a Montreal-based collective which works in solidarity with struggles for self-determination, equality and justice in the Middle East and is deeply involved in the international campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the Israeli government.
featuring hip-hop, jazz and experimental music in opposition to Israeli apartheid.
