Every once in a while Ibrahim Hawash, 42, calls his wife Noha from his nightshift job to make sure that she has followed the treatment course prescribed by their family doctor for the involuntary urination of their four children, who are in primary school. The doctor says that the four children lost their ability to control urination due to the fear they underwent when Israeli army jets bombed a home near theirs in the Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip during the “Warm Winter” military campaign three weeks ago. The four children still remember the terrifying night when they woke frightened up to the sound of a thundering explosion in the area and found that the glass of their home’s windows had fallen onto their bed.

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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.

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BAGHDAD: While the number of US troops killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion stands at 4,000, up to three times as many Iraqi soldiers have died – and the number of civilians killed runs into tens and probably hundreds of thousands. The icasualties.org Web site, based only on published reports, shows that around 8,000 members of the Iraqi security forces have died since the March 2003 invasion. Last year, however, the Iraqi government put the figure at 12,000.

There is no agreement when it comes to civilian casualties, particularly as many deaths are never reported in the media.

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In commemoration of the 60th year of the Palestinian Nakbah (Catastrophe),
NECEF and SPHR present Israeli Historian and Professor Ilan Pappé.

Tuesday March 25th, 7:30pm
Concordia University, room H-110
1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. West

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Representatives of 25 Egyptian and Arab syndicates, led by Mohamed Salmawy and Ibrahim El-Moalem, chairman of the Arab Publishers Union, submitted a memorandum to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 24 February explaining the reasons behind the Arab protest at Israel’s invitation as guest of honour at this year’s Paris Book Fair, which opened in the French capital last week.

“Honouring Israel, and celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of Israel’s independence, a state which constantly violates international peace and the basic human rights of the Palestinian people, can only be seen as an unjustified provocation for Arab and international public opinion,” the memorandum read.

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Hundreds of protesters gathered in downtown Montreal on Saturday, March 15th to participate in an international day of action against the U.S. military occupation of Iraq and in Canadian cities in opposition to Canada’s military role in Afghanistan.

The current Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip was highlighted within the Montreal demonstration, as a Palestine focused contingent called for an end to Israeli apartheid. Protesters also directed attention on Canadian complicity towards Israeli military policies towards the Palestinians, which have left over one-hundred Palestinians dead in the past weeks.

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JERUSALEM: A United Nations panel voted overwhelmingly this month to condemn Israel for a recent armed incursion in the Gaza Strip that claimed more than 120 lives, many of them civilian.

Thirty-three member countries of the 47-seat UN Human Rights Council endorsed the resolution, which accused Israel of war crimes in its ongoing battles against Palestinian militants in Gaza.

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Yesterday, Occupation forces carried out a widespread demolition operation across the West Bank. Communities in the Jordan Valley were the hardest hit, although people in the Qalqilya district were also affected.

Around 9:00 in the morning, Occupation border police, soldiers and the so-called “civil administration” forces rolled into al-Hadidya with a bulldozer. Residents reported that a massive number of jeeps and soldiers surrounded the small community and began demolition quickly.

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FRIDAY, MARCH 14th, 7pm
McGill University
FDA auditorium (3450 University St.)
entrance from inside the McGill campus
through the Sherbrooke street gates

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Quand il a quitté Montréal, en avril 2007, pour aller passer quelque temps chez sa mère, dans la bande de Gaza, Marouane Aboudraz croyait faire un voyage de trois ou quatre mois, question de présenter ses deux derniers-nés à leur grand-mère.

Mais ce voyage s’est transformé en cauchemar. En juin 2007, le mouvement intégriste Hamas a pris le contrôle de ce territoire palestinien dont les frontières ont été hermétiquement scellées par Israël. Et la famille Aboudraz s’est retrouvée coincée en enfer.

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