Helem keeps up counseling and publishing efforts, but legal and media advocacy take back seat for now

By Paige Austin
Special to The Daily Star
Wednesday, November 22, 2006

BEIRUT: Helem has undergone a subtle transformation in recent months. Lebanon’s pioneering gay and lesbian rights organization has scaled back its advocacy efforts in quiet acknowledgment of politicians’ preoccupation with other issues – and its own potential for igniting backlash. Helem’s full-time coordinator, Georges Azzi, says the shift is in part a reflection of the political turmoil in Lebanon in the aftermath of this past summer’s war with Israel. (more…)

A Presentation from HABBOUBA AOUN of the Landmine Resource Center in Beirut on Israeli Cluster Bombs & their impact on the Lebanese people.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24th, 8pm
Center Communautaire Musulman de Montreal [CCMM]
3300 Cremazie East, corner of St. Michel
[Saint-Michel Metro]
Donations Appreciated.

Join the Al Hidaya Association of Montreal & Tadamon! for an interactive slide-show & presentation from HABBOUBA AOUN of the Landmine Resource Center in Beirut.

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US prosecutor charges 2 for helping air Al-Manar

NEW YORK: Two men have been charged with terrorist offences in New York for allegedly providing access to a television station banned in the United States and linked to Hizbullah, prosecutors said Monday. Pakistani-born Javed Iqbal, 42, and US citizen Saleh Elahwal, 53, are accused of conspiring to provide viewers with satellite broadcasts by Al-Manar, considered the mouthpiece for the Lebanese resistance party.

They face a sentence of up to 110 years in jail if convicted on the charges of providing material support or resources to a foreign “terrorist” organization. (more…)

A Multimedia Journey Through the 34-Day War in Lebanon & Its Aftermath

An evening featuring an interactive multimedia presentation on the recent war on Lebanon and its aftermath, with award-winning independent reporter Ana Nogueira of Democracy Now! & photojournalist Andrew Stern….

THURSDAY, November 30th, 7pm
Atwater Library
1200 Atwater.
corner St. Catherine
[Atwater metro]
Suggested Donation, 5-10$

Translation into En. Fr. & Arabic Available, * Childcare Provided

Film Screening with filmmaker David Martinez visiting from San Francisco.

SATURDAY, November, 18th, 7pm
School of Community & Public Affairs
2149 MacKay [above de Maisonneuve]
Metro Guy-Concordia
Suggested Donations 5$.

Join filmmaker David Martinez for an intimate screening of 500 Miles to Babylon a one-hour documentary film currently in post-production about Iraq under U.S. occupation. Narrated by the filmmaker, using footage shot in Iraq during the past years threaded with graphically animated archival sequences to provide historic context, the film will address the current war not simply is a conflict over petroleum profits or a scheme to fill a company’s coffers, but as part of a larger American imperial project.
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The UN troops claim they are in Lebanon toprotect the Shia. The Shia think they’re there to protect Israel from Hizbollah. Is this because the peacekeepers are really a Nato army in disguise?

The blue and white UN flag looks good in the morning over these soft, pale hills. For all of 28 years, it has flown beside Irish battalions, Nepalese battalions, Senegalese battalions, Finnish battalions, all kinds of battalions, from every worthy neutral nation you can imagine. But now the flag snaps over French battalions, Spanish battalions, Italian battalions, German naval units, over the offices of four Nato generals, two French, one Spanish and one Italian. (more…)

Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz reported on 14 November that the high failure rate of these cluster munitions was because “Israel opted for cheaper, unsafe cluster bombs”.

Haaretz – During the second Lebanon war, Israel made use of American-made cluster bombs that left behind thousands of unexploded bomblets, even though Israel Military Industries produces cluster bombs that leave nearly no unexploded munitions. The main reason for the use of the U.S.-made weapons: Israel uses military aid funds to purchase cluster bombs from the U.S., and in order to buy IMI-made bombs, the Israel Defense Forces would have to dip into its own budget.

“The consideration is budgetary,” a defense related source said. This, despite the fact that each cluster bomblet costs a mere $10.

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MONTREAL: As Israeli continues its brutal assault on the Gaza Strip, Montrealers took the streets to voice solidarity with the Palestinian people. Hundreds of demonstrators marched through the heart of Montreal reflecting growing international outrage toward the latest attack on Gaza.

“Intifada! Intifada! Long Live the Intifada!” shouted demonstrators marching under rainy skies, in contrast to the silence of Canadian politicians in response to Israeli war crimes committed in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun.

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From International Socialist Review (ISR), Issue 50, November – December 2006.

By HADAS THEIR

It looked as if a tornado had torn through the residential building and partments, ripping off balconies and roof supports, tearing down massive walls and collapsing whole blocks inwards upon their occupants. Many of the dead were sandwiched inside these ruins. In the streets, where Israeli bulldozers had swept away the rubble with military briskness, the people of Sidon walked in a daze.
    – Journalist Robert Fisk describes the scene at Sidon, where many Lebanese and Palestinian refugees had fled to, trying to escape Israeli raids.(1)

They are all terrorists.
    – An army officer when asked why bulldozers were destroying houses in which women and children lived.(2)

I was not even six when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, too young to be conscious of war and politics. My only memory of the war is the day that my uncle, then thirty-one, serving in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), died – my mother wailing in agony, the shattered expressions on my grandparents’ faces. I would sit with my grandparents for hours in the living room, gently stroking their arms, attempting to ease their pain. For the conquering army, death and suffering is an unavoidable consequence of resistance to occupation. In this case, the six hundred or so IDF deaths, led to a rare development of a peace movement in Israel. But for the conquered, their only crime was to be, by their very existence, in the way of the occupier’s ambition.
    – The author

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  YAHMOUR – Daily Star: The tiny Southern village of Yahmour is situated between Nabatiyeh and Arnoun. Strewn around the village, which is home to some 450 families, are seemingly endless olive groves and tobacco fields. During the 34-day war in Lebanon this summer, Israeli air strikes hit Yahmour particularly hard. Less than half of the houses are still standing, many of them only partially so.

Now, with the early onset of the rainy season, tempestuous weather is forcing villagers to endure further hardships.

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