Introduction: Writing five years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, US military expert Anthony Cordesman published an account of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. “Preliminary Lessons of the Israeli-Hezbollah War” created enormous interest in the Pentagon, where it was studied by planners for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and passed hand-to-hand among military experts in Washington. Cordesman made no secret of his modest conclusions, rightly recognizing that his study was not only “preliminary”, but that it took no account of how Hezbollah fought the conflict or judged its results.

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A refugee sits near the fence of Rweished camp, 50 km off the Jordanian / Iraqi border.

On the border between Iraq/Jordan and Iraq/Syria today live hundreds of Palestinian families who fled the US war to find themselves stranded in no-mans land. These families live in tents, in squalor, with little certainty or hope for the future, like their parents and grandparents did after their expulsion from their own homeland in the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) by the Israelis. The Al-Hol, Al-Tanaf, Al-Ruweished and Al-Walid refugee camps in the Iraqi desert are examples of the on-going Nakba that Palestinian refugees face. The fate of the 34,000 Palestinian refugees who once lived in Iraq can be added to the many tragic stories of the US invasion and occupation of that country.

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In a low profile lecture at the Faculty of Law at McGill University last Thursday, Irwin Cotler articulated a biased, view of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and presented a vision for its future that not only fails to address the root causes of the conflict, but intentionally distorts them.

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BEIRUT: “We have the bombs,” jokes hip-hop MC and occasional graffiti artist RGB, aka Rajab Abdul Rahman (RGB refers to the root letters of his first name). He shakes the plastic bag he is holding in his hands so the spray cans inside clang and echo hollowly in an otherwise empty parking lot. RGB and his colleagues – 6K, Fish and Rat – empty the contents of the bag on the ground, distribute the cans, pull their scarves up to mask their faces and begin. Bands of silver and black paint spread across a bullet-scarred wall. Hours later, they step back to survey the night’s labor. Boldly emblazoned across the wall are graffiti letters taller than their creators, proclaiming in capital letters: “Beirut Never Dies.”

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A United Nations committee has called on Israel to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their property and land in Israel and to ensure that the bodies responsible for distributing property, such as the Jewish National Fund, not discriminate against the Arab population.

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Hizbullah’s claims that the 34 day war waged on Lebanon in 2006 was pre-planned appear to have been validated by the Israeli Prime Minister. The Israeli Government has, until now, stuck firmly to the line that the war was not anticipated before the kidnapping of two of its soldiers by Hizbullah. However Israeli daily Haaretz revealed last Thursday that PM Ehud Olmert has admitted otherwise to Israel’s Winograd Commission.

Washington D.C. – Lebanon’s Minister of Defense Elias Murr met with the newly appointed U.S. Secretary of Defense on Thursday at the Pentagon.

Murr’s U.S. trip has echoed the support of the United Nations, State Department and Pentagon.

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Palestinian women stopped at Qalandia checkpoint on their way to work.

Original copy of the declaration and report from the press conference available from, the Stop the Wall Campaign, Palestine .

Today, 11th of February 2007, we, the Palestinian labour federations, vocational and professional trade unions, and the grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, have convened a press conference to announce a call for solidarity with our workers and the Palestinian people endorsed by the General Union of Palestinian Workers, Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, the Coalition of Independent Democratic Trade Unions and other professional unions.

This call addresses the Arab and International Trade Unions and, in particular, the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions, the Arab League, the Arab Labour Organization, the International Labour Organization, the International Trade Union Confederation, the Organization of African Trade Union Unity, the Palestinian people and the international community.

We call upon all the above to:
* Boycott and divest from Israel;
* Work towards sanctions upon Israel. (…اكثر)

Canadians demand boycott, divestment and sanctions

by Freda Guttman

We in Canada have our own ‘AIPAC’s’, devoted Zionists in bed with our government, and the Christian Right. However, we also have many Palestine solidarity and Arab organizations, as well as grass roots civil groups that have flowered here over the years, and take a dynamic, public position on the occupation, the right of return, the human rights abuses that Palestinians are subjected to, and have wholly embraced the BDS movement. We consider it our mandate to educate the Canadian public on these issues and as well, on our government’s untenable and right wing policies towards the Middle East.

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