by Jooneed Khan rabble.ca | October 29, 2010

Photo Palestinian flag at demonstration signed in solidarity with Gaza.

The worldwide campaign to boycott Israel as an apartheid state took a giant Canadian leap forward last weekend with a three-day BDS Conference in Montreal (boycott, divestment and sanctions) that saw the coming together of separate and diverse initiatives into what a South African trade union delegate called “an unstoppable movement.”

At a time when the old western-dominated colonialist-militarist world order is in decline, when the loot-and-run, slash-and-burn, bomb-and-rebuild capitalist model is in crisis, when western civil societies are clamoring for a more participative democracy to combat corruption, secrecy and the lies of their security-obsessed states, and mobilizing globally to save the planet, has the Palestinian cause become a symbol of the struggle for human values for a new generation and a new century?

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Audio recording opening Quebec Boycott Divestment & Sanctions BDS conference

Photo: Paul Di Stefano. Opening panel @ Quebec/Canada wide BDS conference.

This panel will present and assess the achievements and aims of the BDS movement internationally and in Palestine over the past 5 years, and speak to the challenges ahead for the BDS movement in Québec, Canada and around the world.

Featuring Omar Barghouti, Coordinator, Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and the Boycott National Committee (BNC), Palestine Areej Ja’fari, Coordinator of the Palestine Freedom Project, West Bank Stephen Faulkner, Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).

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photos from World Education Forum by Wolf Bonpiedbonoeil

Photo: World Education Forum solidarity demonstration at global forum in Ramallah.

Photographs documenting the World Education Forum in Palestine currently taking place in Palestine. Thousands have gathered from around the world to join the World Education Forum and are participating in hundreds of workshops, cultural events and meetings to promote quality accessible education globally, while highlighting specifically the struggle of Palestinians to access education in the face of Israeli apartheid. The World Education Forum, initiated via the World Social Forum process, takes place in occupied Palestine as the international movement for boycott, divestment & sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid grows.

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H2Oil film screening at World Education Forum via Cinema Politica & Tadamon!

Friday October 29th
Ramallah Palestine, room T101
screening 19h-20h30
World Education Forum
download conference program

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CKUT radio interview with Palestinian writer/author Ali Abunimah

Photo Jessie Boylan Palestinians demonstrate in Bil’in, West Bank.

Listen to an interview with Palestinian writer/author Ali Abunimah on the growing popular protest movement against Israeli apartheid in Gaza, throughout the West Bank and particularly in the agricultural village of Bil’in.

Popular protests are growing in the West Bank, pointing to an expanding, organized grassroots response to the Israeli military occupation at the community-based level in Palestine, a direct response to the realities of Israeli apartheid beyond the Palestinian Authority politicians walking the halls of political power in D.C. pushing forward a negotiation process that has lead to little results.

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Why McGill & Concordia Universities must sever their links with Technion University

report updated April 2011download full document
Photo: window in Palestinian home smashed by Israeli military bullet.

McGill and Concordia universities maintain bi-lateral exchange programs with the Technion University in Israel. What does this mean in the broader context of the denial of justice for Palestinians, the systematic discrimination they face within Israel, and the occupation and forced exile they suffer outside? The following document outlines the various levels of militarization that are created by, and fostered at the Technion, through its complicity in the Israeli military-industrial complex, and perpetuation of systematic discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel.

In this research, we examine the importance of the Technion University in arms research and technology and the repressive use of this technology by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Through cooperative research programs with Israeli defense companies like Elbit and Rafael, McGill and Concordia are directly participating in the creation and development of technology for Israel’s ‘separation barrier’, parts for battle tanks, and various unmanned aircraft. Palestinian students who are citizens of Israel endure unjust treatment and inequality in all levels of state education, and Technion University is no exception. They are often denied access to programs, housing and funding, and denied the right to publicly demonstrate against these injustices.

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Quebec/Canada Conference on the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) Movement

Saturday October 23rd 9h -10h30
Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM)
Pavillon des Sciences de l’Éducation
1405 St-Denis (corner René-Lévesque)
Room N-M140 (pavilion N métro level)
Montreal, Quebec, metro Berri-UQAM

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Artistic community workshops @ Quebec/Canada Conference on BDS Movement

Saturday October 23rd / Sunday October 24th 2010
Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM)
Pavillon des Sciences de l’Éducation
1405 St-Denis (corner René-Lévesque)
room NM 140 (pavilion N métro level)
Montreal, Quebec, metro Berri-UQAM

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Laila El-Haddad guardian.co.uk Thursday 16 September 2010

Photo A Palestinian boy flies his kite through the streets of Khan Younis in Gaza.

Ask any resident of Gaza what their thoughts are on the US-sponsored “direct talks” between Israel and Mahmoud Abbas’s Ramallah government, and you’re likely to hear one of three responses:

1) Surely, you jest;

2) Something’s rotten in Ramallah;

3) Negotiations?

There is very little patience in Gaza for this latest set of talks. They are not only being conducted without a national consensus by what is broadly considered an illegitimate government, but they also completely marginalise the Gaza Strip and overlook the blockade and asphyxiation it has suffered for more than four years.

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by Nima Shirazi September 2010.

Photo Kent Klich Northern Gaza Strip, Israeli air strike on Gaza home.

“Before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived…We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house.”

Moshe Dayan, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff, speaking at the funeral of an Israeli farmer killed by a Palestinian in April 1956.

The public debate over the Israeli Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign was reignited recently with the news that the illegal West Bank colony of Ariel would soon be opening its newly-constructed, multi-million dollar cultural center and would host performances by several of Israel’s leading theater companies in its auditorium, built – tragically – by the very Palestinian construction workers that Israel has occupied and dispossessed. The announcement marked the first time these notable Israeli drama groups would be performing outside of the 1949 Armistice Line in Israeli-occupied Palestine.

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