closing event for Israeli Apartheid Week 2009 co-presented with Cinema Politica
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has recently ordered an inquiry into the attacks against UN facilities in the Gaza Strip, including educational facilities. While Ban Ki-moon, Amnesty International, and many other human rights groups are looking for answers regarding Israeli military aggression in the Gaza Strip, McGill has shamefully excluded itself from the process of seeking truth and establishing justice and equality.
A recent motion submitted to SSMU’s General Assembly that called for the condemnation of Israel’s bombing of educational institutions in Gaza was not even given a chance to be discussed or debated; as it turns out, even human rights can be “postponed indefinitely.”
The last few months have seen a global surge in support for the movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israeli Apartheid. Important solidarity actions have occurred across the globe, including: a wave of student occupations across the UK; union resolutions in Europe, New Zealand and Australia; and, most recently, the historic action of South African dockworkers refusing to unload Israeli ships.
These actions register important steps forward in building solidarity with the Palestinian people and show that popular opinion is beginning to shift towards an understanding of Israel as an apartheid state that must be isolated in the manner of the struggle that was waged against South African Apartheid.
At the same time, pro-Israel organizations have responded to the strength of the BDS movement with the familiar tactics of repression, stifling of dissent and bureaucratic harassment. This article details a remarkable case of repression against student organizing at the University of Toronto (UofT).
“For the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.” –Martin Luther King Jr., Beyond Vietnam, April 4, 1967
We salute the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) in Durban, and Western Australian dock worker members of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), for refusing to handle Israeli cargo.
Theirs is a courageous response to Israel’s attack on Palestinians in Gaza that, since December 27 alone, have left some 1,400 dead and 5,000 wounded — nearly all of them civilians.
This action is in the best tradition of dock workers in Denmark and Sweden (1963), the San Francisco Bay Area (1984) and Liverpool (1988), who refused to handle shipping for apartheid South Africa; Oakland dock workers’ refusal to load bombs for the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile (1978); and West Coast dock workers’ strike against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (2008).
March 30, 2009: Global day of action for boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel.
In December 2008, Israel decided to mark the 60th anniversary of its existence the same way it had established itself – perpetrating massacres against the Palestinian people. In 23 days, Israel killed more than 1,300 and injured over 5,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
The irony of history is that Israel targeted those Palestinians – and their descendants – whom it had expelled from their homes and pushed into refugee-hood in Gaza in 1948, whose land it has stolen, whom it has oppressed since 1967 by means of a brutal military occupation, and whom it had tried to starve into submission by means of a criminal blockade of food, fuel and electricity in the 18 months preceding the military assault. We cannot wait for Israel to zero in on its next objective. Palestine has today become the test of our indispensable morality and our common humanity.
We therefore call on all to unite our different capacities and struggles in a Global Day of Action in Solidarity with the Palestinian people and for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel on March 30th.
In an unprecedented action, the first following the recent Israeli war on Gaza, workers of an Egyptian Fertilizers Company in Suez protested on Saturday February 7th against the export of fertilizers to Israel.
The Fertilizers Egyptian Company is owned by Sawiris family, Naguib Sawiris ranks 62 in Forbes’ world’s richest list, while his father Onsi ranks 96 and his brother Nassif ranks 226, under the name Orascom construction company. Fertilizers Egyptian Company signed an agreement to export 1000 tons of phosphate fertilizer to Israel, at a rate of 100 tons per week. An estimated 800 Egyptians work at this factory.
Join us to make 2009 a year of struggle against apartheid and for justice and peace!
Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is an annual international series of events held in cities and campuses across the globe. Israeli Apartheid Week aims to educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns as part of a growing global BDS movement. In Montreal, local solidarity groups and individuals are planning nine full days of awareness-raising events ranging from lectures and workshops to film screenings.
South African dock workers announced their refusal to offload cargo from a ship carrying goods from Israel scheduled to arrive in Durban on Sunday.
It follows the decision by dock workers there to strengthen the campaign in South Africa for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against “apartheid” Israel, a statement said.
The pledge by union members in Durban “reflects the commitment by South African workers to refuse to support oppression and exploitation across the globe,” the workers said.
Photo: Protesting complicity of the Canadian government with Israeli military actions.
Thousands marched on the streets of Montreal throughout recent weeks to protest the Israeli military campaign in Gaza which took an estimated 1300 Palestinian lives in the Gaza Strip. Beyond Montreal protests mounted around the world from Europe, to the Middle East, to Latin America, mobilizations for Gaza that mark some of the largest Palestinian solidarity demonstrations in recent history.
Protests in Montreal in solidarity with Gaza were documented by photojournalist Darren Ell. Tadamon! features selected images from an extended visual slide-show.
As the world monitors a fragile ceasefire in Gaza across the Gaza Strip, Palestinians are slowly rebuilding after the devastating military attack, which saw the U.N. administered schools, the Islamic University of Gaza, hundreds of homes and civilian infrastructure bombed in Israeli air strikes across Gaza.
