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.
JERUSALEM: The United Nations agency in charge of Palestinian refugees on Friday called on Israel to open crossings into the Gaza Strip and warned of a humanitarian crisis if further restrictions are imposed.
“We don’t believe that just having humanitarian goods coming in is enough, we need other supplies to come in. People need other things besides food and medicine,” UNRWA Commissioner General Karen Abu Zayd told reporters.
Mahmoud Abbas has to stay home. As things stand right now, he must not go to Washington. Even his meetings with Ehud Olmert are gradually turning into a disgrace and have become a humiliation for his people. Nothing good will come of them. It has become impossible to bear the spectacle of the Palestinian leader’s jolly visits in Jerusalem, bussing the cheek of the wife of the very prime minister who is meanwhile threatening to blockade a million and a half of his people, condemning them to darkness and hunger.
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.
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.
BEIRUT: Israeli surveillance drones cut through Lebanese skies on Monday and hovered above Southern as well as Bekaa regions. The Lebanese Army reported that an Israeli surveillance drone soared above the Southern village of Alma al-Shaab at 9:30 a.m. Monday and headed north toward the Bekaa regions of Riyaq and Baalbek. The plane left Lebanese skies at around 4 p.m.
Listen to an interview with the Washington editor of Harpers Magazine, Ken Silverstein, who recently published an article entitled, “Parties of God: The Bush doctrine and the rise of Islamic democracy”, which examines the current democratic developments in the Middle East within the context of the U.S. supported War on Terror.
Download the report from Ghassan Bannoura of IMEMC from the A-Infos Radio Project.
Listen to a report produced by Ghassan Bannoura of the International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) on the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the occupied Palestinian West Bank on Thursday, August 2nd for the first time since Hamas took control of Gaza. It’s the latest in a series of strides Washington has taken to show its support for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and to push for Middle East peace talks. On the day of Rice’s visit to the occupied Palestinian territories the Israeli Army carried out several invasions in the West Bank, kidnapping twelve Palestinians.
