Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) has published a new report titled, “Extra-judicial executions … Official, Declared Israeli Policy” covering Israeli extra-judicial executions against Palestinians during the period from 1 August 2006 till 30 June 2008. The report is the ninth of its kind in a special series on extra-judicial executions by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) against Palestinian activists during Al-Aqsa Intifada.

The first part of the report discussed international standards prohibiting extra-judicial executions. These included the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) and additional protocols and the Rome Statute. The second part discussed the official Israeli position vis-à-vis extra-judicial executions. Israeli legislative, executive, and judicial authorities officially support this policy, making Israeli the only state in the world that officially commits these crimes.

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On Sunday June 14th, the Jewish National Fund held their annual fundraising banquet in Vancouver at the Four Seasons Hotel. The JNF is one of the primary organizations responsible for the historic and ongoing colonization of Palestinian lands for the development of Jewish-only settlement. This has resulted in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and contributed to the apartheid system in Israel. Despite its racist history and policies, the JNF is granted status as a charity in Canada, enabling it to raise millions of dollars through tax-deductible donations, including annual fundraising dinners held across Canada.

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Tuesday, July 1st, 9pm, 2008
in the lot beside l’Insoumise
2035 St-Laurent
(between Ontario and Sherbrooke)
metro St-Laurent

Join us for a double-bill of fabulous documentary films under the moon in downtown Montreal. Tadamon! will be presenting two excellent films reflecting on struggles against land theft and colonization in Palestine and Turtle Island. Presented as part of the mobilization for the demonstration “400 years of colonialism and militarism: nothing to celebrate!” in Quebec City on July 3rd.

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Photo: Maan Images. Palestinians in Gaza take cover during clashes with Israeli troops during demonstrations marking 60 years of Palestinian dispossession from their homeland. May 15th 2008.

“The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet but not to make them die of hunger,” said Dov Weissglas, Sharon’s closest advisor, a few years ago. Today, Israel is slowly choking occupied Gaza, indeed bringing its civilian population to the brink of starvation and a planned humanitarian catastrophe.

If the US government is an obvious accomplice in financing, justifying and covering up Israel’s occupation and other forms of oppression, the European Union, Israel’s largest trade partner in the world, is not any less complicit in perpetuating Israel’s colonial oppression and special form of apartheid.

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Broadcasts from Beirut VII: Rami Zurayk professor, activist in Beirut: Land and People.

A Tadamon! interview project aiming to highlight progressive voices from the ground in Lebanon on the ongoing conflict, voices independent from major political parties…

May 2008 saw political turmoil in Lebanon reach its most violent peak since the end of the official end to the Lebanese civil-war in 1990. A negotiated political treaty has brought temporary peace however fails to address the poverty at the core of this tension.

This interview with professor Rami Zurayk in Beirut presents a critique of the recent Doha agreement. Critics argue that the Doha agreement is a testament to how mainstream Lebanese political leaders continue to neglect the ongoing economic crisis, compounded by Israel’s military attack in 2006. Lebanon’s agricultural areas in the south were particularly devastated, leading to major internal displacement following Israel’s attack, as farm lands remain strewn by thousands of cluster bombs dropped by the Israeli military.

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Call to support the first major student union in Quebec or Canada to back
the international campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel…

Montreal May 2008: Across the world grassroots movements struggling in opposition to Israeli apartheid are marking the 60th year of the Palestinian Nakba (”catastrophe”) – 60 years of dispossession, ethnic cleansing and exile for Palestinians resulting from the creation of the state of Israel.

A grassroots response in opposition to Israeli apartheid is growing throughout the world sparked by an appeal launched by Palestinian civil-society organizations in 2005 for an international campaign directed at the government in Israel, a campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions. This critical campaign is modeled on a successful international campaign similar in nature that played a critical role in bringing an end to the apartheid regime in South Africa.

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What connections can be drawn between the waves of student and popular protest that swept the world in 1968? Amina Elbendary asks Hossam Issa, an Egyptian student in Paris in May 1968…

May 1968 was an exceptional moment in world history, but like moments of protest before and since it had its roots in events long before and its echoes have continued to reverberate long afterwards. In addition to the revolt in Paris in May, 1968 also saw protests in other parts of the world, including Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Mexico, Pakistan and the US. The ongoing war in Vietnam and continuing racial tensions led to student demonstrations in the latter country, notably at Columbia University in New York and at Berkeley in California.

In Egypt’s case, the 1968 events came at a time when the state was already under pressure from failing development goals, and it had resorted to coercive measures in the years leading up to the 1967 defeat. However, popular protest against the regime had been growing since the mid 1960s, and, as Hossam Issa, Professor of Law at Ain Shams University in Cairo recalls, confrontation between students and the authorities had already taken place in summer 1966 when postgraduate students on state-funded study abroad were summoned home to discuss their criticisms of the government with the then president, Gamal Abdel-Nasser.

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In May 1968, student protests in Paris challenged the foundations of the social order in the heart of the industrially advanced West. Al-Ahram Weekly investigates what remains of the wave of student activism that swept the world 40 years ago and recalls events at the time in Egypt…

On 20 February 1968, and while Cairo University students were preparing for a general meeting the following day to discuss the political situation following the June 1967 defeat of the Egyptian army at the hands of the Israelis, news of the lenient court sentences handed down to Air Force commanders for their role in the defeat triggered a wave of angry protests that reverberated across the country.

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Adam Hanieh. Socialist Project: the Bullet.

In July 2005, over 170 Palestinian organizations urged the world to adopt a campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel in the manner of South Africa Apartheid. This call was signed by all the main Palestinian trade union federations, as well as refugee, women and student organizations from across Palestine and the Arab world. It represented the broadest political statement in Palestinian history, precipitating a powerful global solidarity campaign that has grown dramatically over the last few years.

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Photo: Lebanese woman admits Israeli military destruction in south Lebanon 2006.

A cluster bomb dropped on Centre Block on Parliament Hill could also reach in its spread the East Block, Senate, Supreme Court, Sparks Street pedestrian mall, Ottawa Visitors Center, and parts of the Wellington and Metcalfe thoroughfares. Such is the range, and randomness, of the weapon.

Made up of hundreds of “bomblets” that scatter when a bomb is dropped, cluster bombs not only kill and injure civilians during attacks, but “continue to take life, limb and land from them long after the conflict has ended,” according to the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), a network of over 250 non-government organizations in 70 countries, including Canada, that is calling for a complete end to the use of these weapons.

Such is the case in south Lebanon since the summer war of 2006. The UN estimated that of around four million cluster bomblets dropped by Israel during its war with Hezbollah, up to one million remained unexploded, “contaminating fields, schools, rivers and homes.” These have led to the death or maiming of nearly 200 civilians since the conclusion of the conflict.

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