Photo: Kevin Walsh. Riot police in front Concordia University, September 2002.
This past August, Concordia President Judith Woodsworth was the opening speaker at a Conference entitled, “Israel on Campus: Defending Our Universities.”
Moviegoers who were hoping for world class cinema at this week’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) may find themselves at the centre of a growing controversy steeped in international politics.
Considered to be one of the five most prestigious film festivals, the TIFF this year introduced the City to City programme, a new theme to its traditional programming grid, “that will explore the evolving urban experience while presenting the best documentary and fiction films from and about a selected city.”
Festival organisers say they have chosen Tel Aviv to be the focus of the inaugural edition of the programme.
Photo: Wissam Nassar, MaanImages. Palestinian solidarity messages on national flag.
MONTREAL – Members of Montreal Palestine solidarity collective Tadamon! and fans of Montreal poet and singer Leonard Cohen will gather today in Montreal’s Plateau neighbourhood to call on the singer to cancel his concert in Tel Aviv planned for later this month.
By performing in Israel, Cohen is ignoring the 2005 appeal by 171 Palestinian organizations which calls on the international community to join the peaceful movement to end Israeli apartheid and occupation through the implementation of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against the Israeli state until it complies with international law and respects Palestinian human rights.
As members of the Canadian and international film, culture and media arts communities, we are deeply disturbed by the Toronto International Film Festival’s decision to host a celebratory spotlight on Tel Aviv. We protest that TIFF, whether intentionally or not, has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine.
In 2008, the Israeli government and Canadian partners Sidney Greenberg of Astral Media, David Asper of Canwest Global Communications and Joel Reitman of MIJO Corporation launched “Brand Israel,” a million dollar media and advertising campaign aimed at changing Canadian perceptions of Israel. Brand Israel would take the focus off Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and its aggressive wars, and refocus it on achievements in medicine, science and culture.
BILIN, West Bank — Every Friday for the past four and a half years, several hundred demonstrators — Palestinian villagers, foreign volunteers and Israeli activists — have walked in unison to the Israeli barrier separating this tiny village from the burgeoning settlement of Modiin Illit, part of which is built on the village’s land. One hundred feet away, Israeli soldiers watch and wait.
The protesters chant and shout and, inevitably, a few throw stones. Then just as inevitably, the soldiers open fire with tear gas and water jets, lately including a putrid oil-based liquid that makes the entire area stink.
It is one of the longest-running and best organized protest operations in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it has turned this once anonymous farming village into a symbol of Palestinian civil disobedience, a model that many supporters of the Palestinian cause would like to see spread and prosper.
Bil’in, situé à l’ouest de Ramallah, est un village typique de la Méditerranée orientale à bien des points de vue: des maisons blanches disposées le long de rues qui épousent les méandres et contours naturels des collines; des vergers, des jardins, des pâturages; l’attitude accueillante et généreuse des habitants; beaucoup d’enfants espiègles et sages. Cependant, ceux de Bil’in vivent dans les mêmes conditions déplorables que tant d’autres en Cisjordanie: une colonie israélienne a été construite illégalement sur leurs terres, et la clotûre dite “de sécurité” dévore d’autres hectares pour les séparer de ce qui leur appartient. Personne n’a le droit de circuler librement: ni vers la ville la plus proche, ni vers la plage, ni vers leur capitale, Jérusalem.
Although this was likely unintentional, Terrine Friday’s article “Students misinformed …” (24 August 2009) speaks strongly in favour of the Community-University Research Exchange (CURE) program and of the CURE project proposed by the Montreal social-justice collective Tadamon.
Tadamon’s CURE project submission proposed that a student investigate institutional ties between Montreal universities and Israeli corporations, government agencies and other organizations that support the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.
20 August 2009: Once again the night in Bil’in was disrupted by a raid ending with the arrest of one the members of the Village’s Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements. This occurred the night after the childrens demonstration where the children had chanted slogans like “We want to sleep,” “Stop the night raids”.
The house of Bil’in Popular Committee member and vice president of the Bil’in village council, Mohammad Abu Rahma, (age 50), known by his friends as Abu Nizar, was raided shortly before 2am on Thursday morning. About 25 soldiers with their faces painted in black had come to the village on foot.
Peggy Curran’s article entitled “Activist group stirs up storm” (August 14, page A6) is filled with inaccuracies and misrepresentations, some of which bear directly on the Montreal social-justice collective Tadamon!. For the record, we would like to identify and correct some of these inaccuracies and misrepresentations.
