Canada’s government has failed to respond to the ongoing crisis in the Gaza Strip.
Today, Montreal families recently visiting relatives in Gaza remain trapped under the Israeli bombardment, having received no assistance from Canadian consulate authorities in the Middle East or in Ottawa.
Canada’s first trade accord signed outside the western hemisphere was with Israel in 1997. International trade relations with Canada, the U.S. and the European Union are essential components to Israel’s economy, creating external markets for Israeli products to be sold, while embedding Israeli economic activity within the international market. Today, Palestinians are appealing for an international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel, in response to the ongoing occupation of Palestine defined by a military enforced apartheid facing the Palestinian people.
Throughout the Middle East a strong campaign against the normalization of economic and political relations with Israel remains. Kole Kilibarda is an organizer with the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid in Toronto, which is campaigning against the Israel-Canada free trade agreement. Kilibarda explains the details of the Canada-Israel trade agreement, while offering a critique on Canada’s interest in maintaining a trade accord with Israel.
Listen to an interview with Sam Hadeeb from the Popular Committee Against the Siege in Gaza. In the face of ongoing Israeli military actions directed at the Gaza Strip, which have taken the lives of over one-hundred Palestinians within the past week — including children — a popular committee has formed in Gaza, which has been coordinating a series of popular direct actions and appealing for protests lead by social justice movements throughout 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.
An economic association agreement between the European Union and Israel lends international political legitimacy to the Israeli government, while providing a critical export market for Israeli goods and products, an essential element to Israel’s international trade policy.
Growing debate is occurring within Europe concerning the E.U.-Israel agreement in the face of Israel’s continuing occupation of Palestinian land and systemic abuses of Palestinian human rights as documented by international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International. A critical provision within the economic agreement stipulates that both the E.U. and Israel respect human rights, a provision that has clearly been ignored in the continuation of the agreement, despite wide-spread abuses of Palestinian human rights by Israel.
Gaza Strip remains under siege. Until today Israel continues to impose collective punishment on the 1.5 million Palestinians of Gaza, who face chronic shortages of electricity, fuel, food and basic necessities in the context of an ongoing campaign of military violence executed by the apartheid state of Israel.
In the heart of Montreal Denis Kosseim, of the Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine (CJPP) waves a Palestinian flag during a solidarity demonstration with Gaza on Saturday, February 9th.
As part of the international Israeli Apartheid Week that occurred in cities across Canada and around the world, a series of events occurred in Montreal to mark Israeli Apartheid Week in February 2008. Israeli Apartheid Week is now in its fourth consecutive year and in 2008, Israeli Apartheid Week occurs during the 60th year of the Palestinian Nakba (”catastrophe”)– 60 years of dispossession, ethnic cleansing and exile for Palestinians resulting from the creation of the state of Israel.
Le cinéaste Malcolm Guy, à travers une lettre ouverte aux Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois, se retire du jury du prix annuel 2008 de la Fondation Alex et Ruth Dworkin. Cette récompense, à laquelle est jointe une bourse de 5000 $, a pour but de favoriser la tolérance dans le domaine du cinéma.
