Join the Campaign to free Tarek Loubani and John Greyson

To sign the petition and receive updates please visit:
http://tarekandjohn.com/

Two Canadians, Dr. Tarek Loubani and filmmaker John Greyson, were arrested by Egyptian police on Friday, August 16 in Cairo.

They were en route to the Gaza Strip, where they are working on an academic and medical collaboration between the University of Western Ontario (UWO) and the main hospital in the Gaza Strip, the al-Shifa hospital.

Tarek Loubani is an emergency room medical doctor and assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Western Ontario (UWO). He is one of the architects of the Canada-Gaza academic collaboration, a project that has brought doctors from UWO to Gaza to train physicians in Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) and Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS).

John Greyson is a professor at the Department of Film at York University and an award-winning film-maker. He is in the initial stages of working on a film to be produced in the region.

John and Tarek arrived in Cairo on August 15 with the intention of traveling to Gaza immediately. Given the volatile situation in Egypt, travel to the border with Gaza was problematic and they delayed their travel plan by one day.

John and Tarek entered a police station on Friday evening, as they were lost and needed help with directions back to their hotel. At this point they were promptly arrested. At 4pm Toronto time (10pm Cairo time), Tarek called his primary contact in Canada with the very short message: “we are being arrested by Egyptian police”.

Canadian consular officials have visited them where they are being held, and we have been told that they are “okay”. Currently their status or condition has not been confirmed, nor have friends and family been able to speak to them directly.

We demand that Egyptian authorities to release John and Tarek immediately.

Please visit the Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/events/404849106288317/?ref=22

For more information:
Tel: 514-664-1036
E-mail: info@tadamon.ca

Join us for a Tadamon! Interactive Workshop on Palestinian Political Prisoners

Wednesday August 7, 2013
6:30pm-8:30pm
Graduate Students Association (GSA) Lounge
Concordia University
2030 Mackay
(Metro Guy-Concordia)

Join Tadamon! for a workshop exploring the struggles of political prisoners in Palestine. The historical context of political imprisonment in Palestine will be charted, the realities faced by prisoners will be reviewed, and administrative detention discussed. The workshop will also highlight resistance to political imprisonment both inside and outside of prisons, including the recent hunger strikes and mass demonstration. Discussion will then turn to the global BDS campaign against G4S and its complicity in securing Israeli apartheid. This workshop will be presented in English, with whisper translation available.

For more information:

Tel: 514-664-1036
E-mail: info@tadamon.ca

Stop the Ethnic Cleansing in the Naqab

Friday August 2, 2013
12pm-1pm
In front of Indigo Bookstore
1500 McGill College (corner St Catherine)
Metro McGill

Often referred to as the “Nakba in al-Naqab”, the Prawer-Begin Plan was adopted by the Knesset on June 24 2013, paving the way for the mass expulsion of Palestinian Bedouin communities from their lands in the Naqab (Negev) desert. Should it be fully implemented, the plan would result in the destruction of the confiscation of 800,000 dunums of land, the destruction of 35 unrecognized villages, and the expulsion of an estimated 70,000 Bedouins in what many are calling the single-largest act of displacement of Palestinian citizens of Israel since 1948.

On July 15th, thousands of Palestinians took to the streets from Haifa to Hebron to protest the implementation of the Prawer Plan. Despite mass arrests and considerable repression at the hands of the Israeli Occupation Forces, the struggle against displacement and dispossession continues. On August 2nd, join Tadamon at the Palestinian and Jewish Unity picket in front of Indigo Bookstore as part of a global day of action to demand an end to the Prawer Plan and demonstrate solidarity with Palestinian Bedouin communities in the Naqab.

For more information:
Tel: 514-664-1036
E-mail: info@tadamon.ca

International Solidarity with Palestine

Wednesday June 19, 2013
6 pm to 8pm
Café Artère
7000 Avenue du Parc
Metro Parc, or Bus 80

On May 31, 2010, Israel intercepted, boarded and attacked the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters, killing ten and injuring dozens of activists. Comprised of civilian vessels, the Gaza Freedom flotilla had been carrying much-needed food, construction material, and medical equipment to the people of Gaza. In addition, the Flotilla had also aimed to break the brutal Israeli-imposed siege, which suffocates the economy, curtails reconstruction, constricts freedom of movement and affects every facet of day-to-day existence for the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza.

Join Tadamon! for a discussion with Palestine solidarity activist Manuel Tapial to mark the three-year anniversary of the Gaza flotilla massacre. A member of the Cultura, Paz, y Solidaridad network in Spain, Manuel was aboard the Mavi Marmara at the time of the attack. The event will also feature a screening of “Flotilla: An Attack on Solidarity”, a short film that highlights footage captured at during the raid and documents the events that unfolded.

For more information:
Tel: 514-664-1036
E-mail: info@tadamon.ca
Website: www.tadamon.ca

Join us on Mother’s day, May 12th, 2013, to Commemorate Al Nakba

Sunday 12/5/2013 @1pm
Métro Guy Concordia
1455 de Maisonneuve, West
Montreal, Quebec

This year, we commemorate the Nakba (the 65th anniversary of the very sad Palestinian catastrophe) on Mother`s Day in honour of all the mothers who struggle for social justice and for peace in Palestine.

Bring your flags, bring your pots and pans! Let`s make some noise for Palestine!

A poem by Mahmoud Darwish famous Palestinian poet in honor of his mother and Palestine.

My Mother

I long for my mother’s bread
My mother’s coffee
Her touch
Childhood memories grow up in me
Day after day
I must be worth my life
At the hour of my death
Worth the tears of my mother.

And if I come back one day
Take me as a veil to your eyelashes
Cover my bones with the grass
Blessed by your footsteps
Bind us together
With a lock of your hair
With a thread that trails from the back of your dress
I might become immortal
Become a God
If I touch the depths of your heart.

If I come back
Use me as wood to feed your fire
As the clothesline on the roof of your house
Without your blessing
I am too weak to stand.

I am old
Give me back the star maps of childhood
So that I
Along with the swallows
Can chart the path
Back to your waiting nest.

The Ninth Annual Israeli Apartheid Week!

9th annual Israeli Apartheid Week featuring inspiring conferences, workshops, film screenings, demonstrations, and cultural events to raise awareness around the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israeli apartheid.

(more…)

Tadamon! Stands in Solidarity with Brooklyn College Students for Justice in Palestine

Statement of Support for Brooklyn College Students for Justice in Palestine:

We Condemn Attacks Against Advocates for BDS and Palestinian Rights!

We deplore the efforts of politicians and others to bully student activists and faculty and to smear supporters of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel as anti-Semites.

In recent days, opponents of an event on BDS to be held on campus February 7th have attacked the organizers and scheduled speakers, internationally renowned philosopher Judith Butler and Palestinian human rights activist Omar Barghouti, as well as the political science department and university administration for co-sponsoring the event. This is just the latest in a series of incidents involving attempts to silence criticism of Israel at Brooklyn College.

Opponents of the February 7 event have made deeply offensive and inflammatory accusations against supporters of BDS, with State Assemblyman Alan Maisel going so far as to warn of “the potential for a second Holocaust here.” Other prominent critics include lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who has openly called for the United States and Israel to use torture, and State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a follower of the late Meir Kahane, an Israeli-American rabbi whose racist Kach movement has been outlawed by the US and Israel as a terrorist organization for advocating the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories and for carrying out violent terrorist attacks against Palestinians and others.

It is outrageous and perverse to conflate BDS proponents and our stance in support of equal rights and freedom for Palestinians with anti-Semitism and Nazism. Contrary to the claims of these detractors, the BDS movement is an inclusive, nonviolent, civil society-led campaign whose goal is to pressure Israel into respecting Palestinian human rights and abiding by international law, in the absence of action on the part of the US government and international community to do so. It is comprised of people of all faiths and backgrounds, including many Israeli and American Jews. Leaders of the BDS movement have always rejected and condemned any and all forms of racism and bigotry, including anti-Semitism. As SJP-BC’s mission statement says, we “reject any form of hatred or discrimination against any religious or ethnic group.”

As supporters of Palestinian rights and of academic freedom and free speech on campus, we commend Brooklyn College President Karen Gould for showing leadership and not succumbing to pressure from bullies like Dershowitz and Hikind, who seek to suppress criticism of Israel by smearing advocates of Palestinian freedom and equality as bigots.

For nearly 65 years, Palestinians have been dispossessed, colonized, and denied the most basic of human rights and freedoms by Israel. For more than 45 years, they have endured a brutal and illegal Israeli military occupation that becomes more entrenched each day. Today 66 to 69 percent of the 11.6 million Palestinians are refugees, the survivors and descendants of the approximately 750,000 Palestinians who were ethnically-cleansed during Israel’s creation in 1948, are prevented from exercising their internationally-recognized right of return to the land and homes they were expelled from simply because they are not Jewish, while those Palestinians who remained inside Israel after 1948, who make up about 20% of the population today, face widespread institutionalized discrimination and are treated as second- or third-class citizens. As the international community looks on and does nothing to hold Israel accountable for its actions, global civil society is taking the lead with BDS.

In light of the attacks, we pledge our continued support to SJP’s efforts to educate the public about Israel’s grave and systematic abuses of Palestinian human rights and the racist, apartheid regime Israel has instituted in the territories it controls between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

For more information, visit SJP Brooklyn College’s website at www.brooklynsjp.com or email brooklyncollegesjp@gmail.com.

From Turtle Island to Palestine, we must all be “Idle No More”

“You who come from beyond the sea, bent on war,
don’t cut down the tree of our names,
don’t gallop your flaming horses across
the open plains….
Don’t bury your God
in books that back up your claim of
your land over our land,
don’t appoint your God to be a mere
courtier in the palace of the King”

– Mahmoud Darwish, The Penultimate Speech of the “Red Indian”

Indigenous people have risen up across Canada in the Idle No More movement, a mass call for Indigenous sovereignty, self-determination and rights, against colonization, racism, injustice, and oppression. As Palestinians, who struggle against settler colonialism, occupation and apartheid in our homeland and for the right of Palestinian refugees – the majority of our people – to return to our homeland, we stand in solidarity with the Idle No More movement of Indigenous peoples and its call for justice, dignity, decolonization and protection of the land, waters and resources.

We recognize the deep connections and similarities between the experiences of our peoples – settler colonialism, destruction and exploitation of our land and resources, denial of our identity and rights, genocide and attempted genocide. As Palestinians, we stood with the national liberation movement against settler colonialism in South Africa, as we stand with all liberation movements challenging colonialism and imperialism around the world. The struggle of Indigenous and Native peoples in Canada, the United States, have long been known to the Palestinian people, reflecting our common history as peoples and nations subject to ethnic cleansing at the hands of the very same forces of European colonization.
(more…)

Mark your calendars for the ninth annual Israeli Apartheid Week, which will be taking place from March 6th to 13th at campuses across Montreal.

Last year, Montreal joined over a 100 cities around the world in holding a series of workshops, film screenings, conferences, and concerts aiming to raise awareness surrounding the realities of Israeli apartheid. Join us this year as we continue to build momentum around the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign and the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. More details to follow in the months to come.

ABCs of BDS series: “Do we have a role in the Palestine-Israel conflict?”

MONDAY JANUARY 21
Time: 2:00pm-4:30pm
Location: DeSeve Cinema
Concordia University

As part of the GSA winter orientation series, this event will focus on Palestine solidarity work and specifically on one the most growing forms of global solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, that of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions.
(more…)