The following interviews were conducted in the lead up to the first-ever conference on Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Against Israeli apartheid, with three of the conference’s key participants.

The conference, “The struggle continues: Boycotting Israeli Apartheid“, is happening in Toronto from October 6th to the 8th.  

• Talk given by Rafeef Ziadah during Tadamon’s Fires of War :: Voices of Resistance event in Montreal: Audio link.

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Israeli Apartheid: Racism, Occupation &  Discrimination

A public talk on Israeli Apartheid with Jamal Juma’a of the International Stop the Wall Campaign.

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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 4th, 7:30pm.
School of Community & Public Affairs
Concordia University
Donations Appreciated.
2149 MacKay (above de Maisonneuve)
Metro Guy-Concordia
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Boycotting Israeli Apartheid: The Struggle Continues
Conference on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto, 6-8 October 2006

Register now. (If you are planning to go to this conference from Montreal, you are welcome to coordinate travel with us at Tadamon.)

Featuring:
Jamal Jum’a – Coordinator, Stop the Wall Campaign (Palestine)
Willie Madisha – Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)
Salim Vally – Palestine Solidarity Committee (South Africa)

As the Israeli states works to finalize its apartheid laws, walls, and the bantustanization of the indigenous Palestinian people and prepares to eliminate popular resistance to its aggression in the region, the Palestinian and Lebanese people remain steadfast under increasingly brutal conditions. Meanwhile, the economic and political leaderships of Western governments, with the US and Canada at the forefront, have increased their efforts to normalize international relations with the Israeli apartheid regime.  

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Before the Israeli assault on Lebanon, Tadamon! delegation member Stefan Christoff visited Mar Elias and Borj el Barajneh, two of the Palestinian Refugee Camps located in Beirut. Palestinians have been living in the camps for generations but are still being denied the right of return to their homeland. At the same time, they are denied many of their basic economic and civil rights by Lebanon.

 

Christoff’s photo essay documents the state of these two camps and the continued struggle. 

By Patrick Cockburn in Gaza
Published: 08 September 2006
Gaza is dying. The Israeli siege of the Palestinian enclave is so tight that its people are on the edge of starvation. Here on the shores of the Mediterranean a great tragedy is taking place that is being ignored because the world’s attention has been diverted by wars in Lebanon and Iraq.
A whole society is being destroyed. There are 1.5 million Palestinians imprisoned in the most heavily populated area in the world. Israel has stopped all trade. It has even forbidden fishermen to go far from the shore so they wade into the surf to try vainly to catch fish with hand-thrown nets.

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By Amira Hass

Let us leave aside those Israelis whose ideology supports the dispossession of the Palestinian people because “God chose us.” Leave aside the judges who whitewash every military policy of killing and destruction. Leave aside the military commanders who knowingly jail an entire nation in pens surrounded by walls, fortified observation towers, machine guns, barbed wire and blinding projectors. Leave aside the ministers. All of these are not counted among the collaborators. These are the architects, the planners, the designers, the executioners. (more…)

Ussama Abu el-Sheikh writing from Shatila refugee camp,

Beirut, Electronic Lebanon, 6 August 2006

I just wanted to express that this war reinforced my ideas that what we need is a collective solution for everyone, not individual solutions such as are offered here and there. Just as being “educated” will not replace my loss of identity…

My name is Usama Abu el-Sheikh, and I am from Tabaria, Palestine. I am of course a refugee and have never been to my hometown in Palestine though I learned about it from my grandparents and I read some books about it. I have never been to Tabaria, but I am Tabarian, and will remain so, as I am from Shatila too and will remain so. Although I always dreamt of corresponding with my country and my hometown to see if I still have relatives there, I was unable to because there is no mail between Lebanon and the State of Israel. Ironically, only the missiles of Hizbullah can be sent to Israel. We are not allowed to return, but the missiles go where we cannot. But how can you send love to Tabaria with a missile?
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During this year’s U.S. presidential election campaign, there was almost no mention made of Israel and the Palestinians by either of the major candidates. That is, until the waning days of the race, when John McCain made a last-ditch attempt to cast aspersions upon Barack Obama by highlighting a connection to respected Palestinian-American academic and Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi. “It was shameful for them to try and paint Professor Khalidi as anything but an esteemed scholar and academic,” says lawyer and Palestinian-American activist Noura Erakat. “It was reprehensible.”

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