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.
closing event for Israeli Apartheid Week 2009 co-presented with Cinema Politica
Open Letter to university community on Palestinian Rights and Canadian Universities
The last two years have seen increasing efforts to limit advocacy of Palestinian rights on Canadian universities, amounting to a pattern of the suppression of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.
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).
