JERUSALEM: A United Nations panel voted overwhelmingly this month to condemn Israel for a recent armed incursion in the Gaza Strip that claimed more than 120 lives, many of them civilian.
Thirty-three member countries of the 47-seat UN Human Rights Council endorsed the resolution, which accused Israel of war crimes in its ongoing battles against Palestinian militants in Gaza.
Yesterday, Occupation forces carried out a widespread demolition operation across the West Bank. Communities in the Jordan Valley were the hardest hit, although people in the Qalqilya district were also affected.
Around 9:00 in the morning, Occupation border police, soldiers and the so-called “civil administration” forces rolled into al-Hadidya with a bulldozer. Residents reported that a massive number of jeeps and soldiers surrounded the small community and began demolition quickly.
Quand il a quitté Montréal, en avril 2007, pour aller passer quelque temps chez sa mère, dans la bande de Gaza, Marouane Aboudraz croyait faire un voyage de trois ou quatre mois, question de présenter ses deux derniers-nés à leur grand-mère.
Mais ce voyage s’est transformé en cauchemar. En juin 2007, le mouvement intégriste Hamas a pris le contrôle de ce territoire palestinien dont les frontières ont été hermétiquement scellées par Israël. Et la famille Aboudraz s’est retrouvée coincée en enfer.
On March 11th 2008 Montreal’s experimental band Jerusalem in My Heart and crew crammed into the CKUT studios and pulled off an incredible live set in a room that, I guarantee you, was a lot smaller than they make it sound…
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.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions is outraged and disgusted at the latest massacres by the Israeli Occupation Forces in Gaza, which have claimed an estimated 100 Palestinian lives in the past five days alone, most of them civilian women and children. The Israelis have even targeted ambulances, trapping the injured people inside.
