Montreal: Commemorating the Nakba

Photo: Beersheba, Palestine pictured prior to 1948.

Every May, Israelis celebrate the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. For Palestinians, however, this anniversary is known as the Nakba or “catastrophe” in Arabic because it commemorates the illegal expulsion of the Palestinian people from their homeland by Zionist forces in 1948.

In establishing Israel, the Zionist colonizers dispossessed more than 750,000 Palestinians of their dwellings, farmlands, and orchards and forcibly exiled them from their neighbourhoods, villages, towns and cities. Despite Palestinian resistance to this colonial project, Israel was founded on May 14 1948 and a quarter of a million Palestinians who had fled their homes in search of safety were suddenly physically and legally alienated from their historical and ancestral lands since Israel refused to let the Palestinian refugees return to their homes. A further half million or so would become refugees during the war that followed the declaration of Israeli statehood.

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cross-Canada speaking tour: June 5-22, 2009.

featuring:
Mohammed Khatib.
Popular Committee Against the Wall, Bil’in, Occupied Palestine

Emily Schaeffer.
Israeli lawyer representing the village of Bil’in

Bil’in, a Palestinian village in the West Bank, has become an internationally celebrated symbol of Palestinian popular resistance to the ongoing construction of the Israeli apartheid wall and settlements on their land. Since 2005, villagers have led weekly protests, with the active participation from both Israeli and international solidarity activists, in opposition to illegal Israeli colonization and annexation of Palestinian land.

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Ma’an News Agency. 23 / 05 / 2009.

Photo: ActiveStills. Armed Israeli soldier.

Jerusalem – Ma’an – Israeli police and armed border officials shut down the Palestinian National Theater in East Jerusalem on Saturday, in an effort to quash the Palestine Festival of Literature and prevent international writer and poets from addressing Palestinians.

The weeklong festival, sponsored in part by the British Council and UNESCO, was scheduled to begin at 6:30 with two panel discussions by authors from Canada, Britain, South Africa and Australia. The second annual festival will travel around Palestine and decided to begin and end events in Jerusalem in honor of Al-Quds Capital of Culture 2009.

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cinematic benefit for cross-Canada Bil’in speaking tour.

THURSDAY MAY 28th 20h00
suggested donation: $5-10
Bar Populaire
6584 blvd St. Laurent
(metro Beaubien)

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Radical movements from the Weather Underground to Prisons to Palestine.

SATURDAY MAY 16 2009 19h00
featuring: Laura Whitehorn & Susie Day
1400 de Maisonneuve Ouest
Room LB-125, de Sève Cinema
Concordia University
Montreal, Quebec

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B’Tselem, April 2009. Testimony: Majed al-‘Odeh, quarry worker.

Photo: Scott Weinstein. Graffiti in Hebron painted by Israeli settlers.

I work in a quarry in Beit Fajjar. I have a car with an Israeli license plate. It is in terrible condition, but the registration is valid and I use it to get to work.

Since the second intifada broke out, I have not gone out for fun or on any trips, because we have nowhere to take a trip. My whole life is work. I wanted a bit of a change, so I decided to take a trip with three friends. Last Thursday evening [2 April], we drove in my car from Beit Fajjar on the a-Rashayida road, heading to the Dead Sea.

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within the Suoni per il Popolo | photo: Matthew Cassel

SUNDAY JUNE 7
20h00 $8 in advance | $10 at door
La Sala Rossa
4848 St. Laurent
Montreal, Quebec

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photos by Ehab Lotayef and Khalil Allioui.

Photo: Ehab Lotayef. Solidarity picket with Bil’in outside Indigo in Montreal.

A protest was held in downtown Montreal in solidarity with the ongoing weekly protests in Bil’in, Palestine and to commemorate Palestinian activist Bassam Ibrahim Abou Rahme the eighteenth Palestinian killed during popular protests in Bil’in village against the Israeli apartheid wall which have occurred each week since 2005.

This protest was held in downtown Montreal at Indigo bookstore within the cross-Canada campaign launched in December 2006 to target the majority shareholders of Indigo/Chapters, Heather Reisman and Gerry Schwartz, who established the HESEG Foundation for Lone Soldiers, a program of financial support for former ‘lone soldiers,’ or non-Israeli mercenaries who leave their country to fight in the Israeli military.

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boycott Israeli apartheid | end Canada and Quebec complicity with Israeli apartheid

SUNDAY MAY 24 13h30
Demonstration: Norman Bethune Square
corner Guy and de Maisonneuve Blvd.
(metro Guy-Concordia)
Montreal, Quebec.

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Farid Esack, The Electronic Intifada, 10 May 2009.

Photo: Israeli apartheid wall cutting into Palestine.

My dear Palestinian brothers and sisters,

I have come to your land and I have recognized shades of my own. My land was once one where some people imagined that they could build their security on the insecurity of others. They claimed that their lighter skin and European origins gave them the right to dispossess those of a darker skin who lived in the land for thousands of years. I come from a land where a group of people, the Afrikaners, were genuinely hurt by the British. The British despised them and placed many of them into concentration camps. Nearly a sixth of their population perished.

Then the Afrikaners said, “Never again!” And they meant that never again will harm come unto them with no regard to how their own humanity was tied to that of others. In their hurt they developed an understanding of being God’s chosen people destined to inhabit a Promised Land. And thus they occupied the land, other people’s land, and they built their security on the insecurity of black people. Later they united with the children of their former enemies — now called “the English.” The new allies, known simply as “whites,” pitted themselves against the blacks who were forced to pay the terrible price of dispossession, exploitation and marginalization as a result of a combination of white racism, Afrikaner fears and ideas of chosen-ness. And, of course, there was the ancient crime of simple greed.

I come from apartheid South Africa.

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