Picketers outside Indigo’s downtown bookstore last Saturday urged shoppers not to enter because the Chapters-Indigo’s CEO heads a foundation that supports foreign soldiers who fight in the Israeli army.
The demonstration was set to coincide with the 20th anniversary of massacres that took place at the Sabra and Chatila Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.
Statement Prepared by the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid & Tadamon! Montreal.
MONTREAL: This week is the 25th anniversary of the massacres at the Sabra & Chatila Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Today we commemorate the lives of those who were murdered or ‘disappeared’, as well as the thousands of others who died in Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the Lebanese civil war.
Montreal, September 18th 2007: The Montreal network of the Coalition against Israeli Apartheid welcomed former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney during a launch of his autobiography at Indigo bookstore by unfurling a banner denouncing the apartheid situation under which Palestinians are living.
Dearest Janet: It’s a very beautiful fall day here in Beirut, 25 years ago this week since the 16-18 September 1982 Massacre at the Palestinian refugee camps at Sabra-Shatila. Bright blue sky and a fall breeze. It actually rained last night, enough to clean out some of the humidity and dust.
Fortunately, not enough to make the usual rain-created swamp of sewage and filth on Rue Sabra, or flood the grassless burial ground of the mass grave (the camp residents named it Martyrs Square-one of several so-named memorials now in Lebanon) where you once told me that on Sunday, 19 September 1982, you watched, sickened, as families and Red Crescent workers created a subterranean mountain of butchered and bullet-riddled victims from those 48 hours of slaughter. Some of the bodies had limbs and heads chopped off, some boys were castrated, crosses carved into some of the bodies.
Activists demanding a better fate for Palestinians have chosen a potent accusation—the new apartheid—to rally support for the growing anti-Israel boycott. Their belief: what forced change in South Africa can provoke change in the Middle East. But it may not be that easy-or that simple
Imagination. Creativity. Inspiration. Three words to stir the soul crown the towering windows of Toronto’s flagship Indigo bookstore. At ground level, shoppers pass in and out of wood-framed glass doors, navigating planters and benches intended to create a friendly, front-porch sort of welcome. They take little notice as, on the sidewalk beyond, two women unfurl an off-white canvas banner. Printed on one side are another three words, less poetic perhaps than the store’s motto, but the intended effect is just as moving: Boycott Chapters/ Indigo.
How long will the state erect military checkpoints in residential areas, treating them as though they were camps sheltering wanted people and gunmen, while all the Palestinian camps, which shelter criminals and wanted people, enjoy freedom of movement, politically, militarily and in terms of security, as though they were security islands independent of Lebanon politically, militarily and in terms of security?
—Jibran Tuwayni, al-Nahar (July 18th, 2002)
The view expressed by assassinated Lebanese Member of Parliament and editorialist Jibran Tuwayni has become depressingly familiar among Lebanese politicians since the end of the Lebanese civil war. Though Tuwayni was a firebrand of what is now the loyalist camp in Lebanese politics, his perspective is also shared by elements of the current opposition, particularly members of the parliamentary bloc loyal to former Gen. Michel Aoun. There may be more than a grain of truth in the saying that the only thing that unites the Lebanese political factions today is antipathy for the Palestinians living in their midst.
This edition of Radio Tadamon! brings you to the streets, from the ongoing demonstrations throughout Canada calling for a boycott of Indigo/Chapters bookstores due to their support for Israel, to the major demonstrations in Montabello, Quebec surrounding the North American trilateral summit in August 2007.
In its strongest condemnation of Israel since last summer’s war, Human Rights Watch said yesterday that most Lebanese civilian casualties were caused by “indiscriminate Israeli air strikes”.
