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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ORIENTATIONS pour la SOLIDARITÉ MONTRÉALAISE AVEC LE LIBAN suite à l’attaque israélienne de 2006 

Tadamon! [Solidarité! en arabe], est un collectif d’activistes pour la justice sociale. Basé à Montréal, il fournit appui et solidarité aux mouvements de justice économique et sociale au Liban.

En se basant sur la délégation 2006 de Tadamon! au Liban et sur les efforts d’organisation menés à Montréal contre l’appui du gouvernement Conservateur à l’assaut militaire israélien contre le Liban, Tadamon! a déterminé de nouvelles priorités pour les mois à venir.

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by Daniel Freeman-Maloy

Canadian Dimension, November/December 2006 Issue

Under Paul Martin’s Liberals and Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, the Canadian government has rapidly shed any pretense at having an independent foreign policy. In Haiti, Canadian forces joined their U.S. and French counterparts in carrying out the coup d’ tat of 2004, overthrowing the elected Lavalas government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and instituting a foreign occupation of the country. In Afghanistan, similarly, thousands of Canadian troops are engaged in combat operations to defend the U.S.-ledoccupation and allow the U.S. military to focus its resources on Iraq. For years, escalating Canadian support for Israel has been part of this trend. In recent months, it has become more unabashed than ever.

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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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Beirut –www.samidoun.org– On Saturday November 4, 2006, the National Demining Office, and the National Steering Committees for Mine Risk Education and Victim Assistance will call upon Lebanese civil society to participate and mobilize in a national day against cluster munitions.

This event is intended to send a message to the international community prior to the Review Conference of the COnvention on Certain Conventional Weapons in Geneva, taking place from November 7-17. This message presents an important opportunity for states to seriously review the devastating humanitarian impact attributed to cluster munitions.

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Canada: Peacekeeper. Humanitarian. Election monitor. Really?

The Dominion’s special issue on Foreign Policy takes a look beyond the official mythology to research and examine the actual role of Canadian mining companies, military operations, development agencies, NGOs, and diplomats. Articles look at Canada’s involvement in Guatemala, Venezuela, Somalia, South Asia, Afghanistan, Palestine, First Nations and others. It includes:

Selectively Terrified: How Hezbollah became a terrorist organization in Canada.