The Congress of South African Trade Unions is outraged and disgusted at the latest massacres by the Israeli Occupation Forces in Gaza, which have claimed an estimated 100 Palestinian lives in the past five days alone, most of them civilian women and children. The Israelis have even targeted ambulances, trapping the injured people inside.
As long as there has been Zionism, there have been anti-Zionist Jews. Indeed, decades before it even came to the notice of non-Jews, anti-Zionism was a well-established Jewish ideology, and until the second world war commanded wide support in the diaspora. Today, as cracks show in the presumed monolith of Jewish backing for Israel, increasing numbers of Jews are interrogating and rejecting Zionism. Nonetheless, the existence of anti-Zionist Jews strikes many people – Jews and non-Jews – as an anomaly, a perversity, a violation of the first clause in Hillel’s ethical aphorism: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”
Feb. 13, Imad Moughniyeh, a senior commander of Hezbollah, was assassinated in Damascus. “The world is a better place without this man in it,” State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said: “one way or the other he was brought to justice.” Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell added that Moughniyeh has been “responsible for more deaths of Americans and Israelis than any other terrorist with the exception of Osama bin Laden.”
Joy was unconstrained in Israel too, as “one of the U.S. and Israel’s most wanted men” was brought to justice, the London Financial Times reported. Under the heading, “A militant wanted the world over,” an accompanying story reported that he was “superseded on the most-wanted list by Osama bin Laden” after 9/11 and so ranked only second among “the most wanted militants in the world.”
GAZA CITY: Two F-16 missiles were all it took to bring down the five-story headquarters of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU).
The Union, established in 1965, is one of the forerunners of the movement calling for an international boycott of Israel, and imposition of sanctions on it until Israel meets its obligations over UN resolutions, borders, and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland.
Gaza’s humanitarian situation is at its worst since Israel occupied the territory in 1967, say UK-based human rights and development groups.
Montreal, March 7, 2008: A wide spectrum of community associations, NGO’s and labor unions have united to launch a joint appeal to people across Canada and to government of Canada to call for peace in Palestine.
