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.
Major gaps exist between different narratives on the recent war in Gaza; as major Canadian media outlets and human rights organizations on the ground in Gaza offer strikingly different pictures of the conflict.
U.N. officials have labeled recent Israeli actions as ‘disproportionate’ while the U.N. Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories issued a statement outlining the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip as representing “severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law.”
In discord to U.N. positions on Gaza statements from the Conservative government of Canada consistently painted Israel’s actions as defensive in nature. Editorials across the Canadian media offered a similar line to the Conservative government.
Media coverage in Canada on the latest war in Gaza often failed to clearly represent the situation on the ground in Palestine and also the response in Canada to the latest crisis.
As thousands gathered for unprecedented street protests in solidarity with Palestinian human rights across the country, mainstream media often downplayed the numbers protesting and at times misrepresented the messages expressed at the demonstrations.
Street protests in Canada against the latest Israeli attack on Gaza were the largest Palestinian solidarity demonstrations in Canadian history, while reports from major media outlets, including the CBC, did not accurately convey the unprecedented size of the protests.
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.
