Canadian Press: Dene Moore. Wednesday, July 11, 2007

MONTREAL (CP): The Hezbollah flag could well figure prominently when Quebec’s Lebanese community marks this weekend’s one-year anniversary of the Israeli bombing of southern Lebanon.

In a city that lost an entire family to Israeli bombs, supporters of the outlawed terrorist group have increasingly flouted the ban and become more vocal in their support.

“Who is Hezbollah? What have they done? What is their history and where do they come from? That’s what we should be talking about,” said Hussein El-Akhras, whose nephew died in the bombings. The man’s wife and children also died.

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By Haim Bior, Haaretz Correspondent

Photo:`Isawiya, East Jerusalem. June 2005. Photo by: Shabtai Gold.

Britain’s Transport and General Workers’ Union has called upon its 800,000 members to boycott Israeli-made products based on what they term Israel’s “criminal policies in Palestinian territories.”

(…اكثر)

By Avi Issacharoff and Aluf Benn, Haaretz Service

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Saturday sent back the list of Palestinian prisoners slated for release to the Shin Bet and Justice Ministry, demanding the removal of several dozen names. Olmert ordered that a new list be drawn up of prisoners with more time remaining on their jail sentences.

(…اكثر)

Report from Dajij, Lebanon

Deadline for Submissions: 30 June 2007

As the spaces of our city are slowly being taken over by those who claim to be the sole bearers of its history; as the places in which we have grown up and lived are being turned into guarded enclaves; as Beirut is being overtaken by those who would destroy it in order to preserve the patriarchal sectarian status quo, the time for us to reclaim it has arrived with a pressing urgency.

(…اكثر)

Photo Essay: Yasmine Ryan, the Scoop. Wednesday, March 14th

Hizbullah’s claims that the 34 day war waged on Lebanon in 2006 was pre-planned appear to have been validated by the Israeli Prime Minister. The Israeli Government has, until now, stuck firmly to the line that the war was not anticipated before the kidnapping of two of its soldiers by Hizbullah. However Israeli daily Haaretz revealed last Thursday that PM Ehud Olmert has admitted otherwise to Israel’s Winograd Commission.

(…اكثر)

By Alan Johnston, BBC News, Gaza

A UN human rights envoy has compared Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories to elements of apartheid.

The UN’s Special Rapporteur, John Dugard, describes the regime as being designed to dominate and systematically oppress the occupied population.

(…اكثر)

Download / View a film outlining the current effects of cluster bombs in Lebanon produced in late 2006 by IRIN news office of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

To download the film in English click HERE to view the film in Arabic click HERE.

Tadamon! Weblog of Cluster Bomb Incidents in Lebanon:

Since the U.N. brokered ceasefire Tadamon! Montreal has maintained an online record of cluster bomb incidents in Lebanon. The guns may be more silent, but hundreds of thousands of cluster bomblets sprayed over south Lebanon in at least 770 Israeli strikes still pose a deadly danger to humans and animals. Since the ceasefire on August 14, 156 persons [as of October, 2006] have become victims of cluster munitions, 90% of which were civilians, one third of which are under the age of 18 years.

What the Canadian Foreign Minister did not see or discuss during his visit

GAZA CITY, GAZA: Despite the impression cast by corporate news coverage, there is never anything like “calm” here in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The casualty count for 2006 released by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem reports that Israeli forces killed 660 Palestinians, while 17 Israeli civilians were killed, 13 of them in the West Bank. The violence is often spectacular, as during the summer and fall siege operations in Gaza that killed more than 450 Palestinians under withering aerial bombardment, artillery barrages and two major ground invasions. But, as an unusually frank headline in the current edition of the Economist rightly stated, “It’s the little things that make an occupation.”

When Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay visited Israel this week, it was these “little things” that he missed–like the more than 530 fixed checkpoints and roadblocks identified in a joint UN-IDF count in the occupied West Bank. These obstacles make simple travel between neighbouring Palestinian villages often impossible, particularly when added to the more than 7,000 “flying checkpoints” that spring up at the whim of the Israeli army, anywhere and at anytime. As the Economist pointed out, “arbitrariness is one of the most crippling features of these rules.”
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Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister, Peter Mackay, who recently traveled to Afghanistan, is planning a larger visit to the Middle East region, with the stated aim of promoting “peace and dialogue”. The Conservative Foreign Minister MacKay will arrive in Lebanon and Palestine in the coming days.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister, Peter MacKay, who recently traveled to Afghanistan, is planning a larger visit to the Middle East region, with the stated aim of promoting “peace and dialogue”. Conservative Party Foreign Minister MacKay will arrive in Lebanon and Palestine in the coming days.

Tadamon! Montreal issues this appeal in an effort to highlight the Conservative government’s role and position as an imperialist player in the Middle East.

Canadian intervention in the region is best illustrated by the Conservative government’s open support for Israel’s brutal assault on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 and by Canada’s ongoing military presence in Afghanistan.

Despite common mythology, Canadian policy has seldom been “balanced” or “neutral” concerning the Middle East. Successive Canadian governments have unconditionally supported Israel. History doesn’t substantiate Canada’s supposed role as the “neutral one”.

Canada’s position must be subject to critique in its entirety and in the context of broader Western intervention in the Middle East. The Canadian government openly supports the ongoing occupation of Iraq, despite world opinion having turned against U.S. policy. Canada was the first country in the world to withdraw all financial aid to the Palestinian people after the democratic election of Hamas in the Occupied Territories, sending millions of Palestinians into devastating poverty.

Within the context of Canadian policy in the region, Tadamon! calls on people in Montreal, Canada and in the Middle East to express their opposition to Canadian intervention in the Middle East. (…اكثر)