Diana Ralph grew up in a progressive Jewish family in postwar America. Her father’s work as a lawyer at the Nuremberg war crime trials, when she was still an infant, cemented his support for the state of Israel.
But when his daughter, as a young woman, questioned Israeli policies after the Six Day War in 1967, she saw a side of her father she hadn’t witnessed before.
Thursday, April 10th, 2008: Israel’s Ambassador to Canada, Alan Baker, was humiliated by demonstrators at the posh Queen Elizabeth Hotel in downtown Montreal.
Protestors successfully disrupted a lunch-in sponsored by the Quebec-Israel Committee, marking “60 years of relationship” between Canada and Israel. After effectively evading hotel security and the Montreal police, social justice activists burst into the appointed conference room, abruptly bringing to a halt the pro-apartheid discourse of Israel’s ambassador to Canada.
L’ambassadeur d’Israël au Canada, Alan Baker, était venu parler hier des 60 ans de relations entre les deux pays et plaider pour leur approfondissement dans les domaines économique et culturel. L’intervention d’environ 25 manifestants l’a cependant obligé à aborder aussi des questions plus politiques, dont, évidemment, le conflit israélo-palestinien.
L’ambassadeur Baker venait de rappeler que le Canada est un des 30 États membres des Nations unies à avoir appuyé la création de l’État d’Israël, en 1947, lorsqu’un petit groupe d’activistes a réussi à pénétrer dans la salle de conférence de l’hôtel du centre-ville de Montréal où il prenait la parole, lançant des tracts et criant: «Israël hors de Palestine!» et «Non à l’apartheid israélien!»
Lebanon’s Nahr el-Bared refugee camp, once home to an estimated 30,000 Palestinian refugees, remains in ruins, almost completely destroyed. Reconstruction efforts of the camp have been slow in the past months. As the military battle between the Lebanese military and the shady armed organization Fatah al-Islam raged, news of Nahr el-Bared filled the pages of newspapers across the world. Now military combat has halted in September 2007, Nahr el-Bared lies in rubble as displaced Palestinian refugees in Lebanon slowly are returning to their former home destroyed by an often indiscriminate military campaign lead-by the Lebanese army.
Today, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon continue to live as second-class citizens, without basic legal rights, a symbol of the continued dispossession of the Palestinian people. 2008 marks 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. The Palestinian refugees of Nahr el-Bared present one of the clearest symbols of the continued dispossession of the Palestinian people around the world, the largest documented refugee population on earth.
The General Labor Confederation (GLC) on Monday called a one-day general strike in Lebanon for May 7 because of the government’s refusal to raise the minimum wage from LL300,000 to LL960,000 per month. While an economist labeled the minimum wage “atrocious,” the GLC’s strike call also has political overtones, as GLC chief Ghassan Ghosn organized a series of sparsely attended demonstrations last year in front of various ministries. He has long been a vocal critic of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s government, while the minimum wage has sat at LL300,000 for more than a decade.
Tyre, Lebanon — Soon after the U.S. destroyer USS Cole was deployed off Lebanon’s shore Feb. 28 to “preserve political stability”, a group of young men gathered around in the embattled agricultural town Qana in south Lebanon, and voiced their fears.
“Everyone feels there is a war coming,” said Salman Ismael, a 22-year-old university student. “Especially after the killing of (Hezbollah commander) Imad Mughniyeh and what is happening in Gaza. And now U.S. ships come to the waters of Lebanon. Israel wants to improve her army in the Middle East after its defeat in 2006, she wants the Arabs to be scared of her.”
On March 27, 2008 Students Against Israeli Apartheid at York University (SAIA-York) organized a rally in Vari Hall (the central campus space) in order to: (1) commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, (2) call for an end to the starvation policies and siege imposed on Gaza by the Israeli apartheid regime with Canadian complicity and (3) demand that the university hold a debate on the boycott of Israeli academic institutions that are complicit in the perpetuation of apartheid.
GAZA CITY: You would think the baby boy named Yousef has his life ahead of him. But who knows, with a child born to Palestinian parents from Gaza. What’s more, Yousef was born in an Israeli prison.
He is the only one of Fatima al-Zeq’s nine children who is with her for that reason — she was arrested nine months ago. But these days the baby is not with her. He developed stomach pain, began to vomit, and has been transferred to a hospital inside Hasharon prison in Israel.
