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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Daily Stary, by Matthew Mosley. Thursday, May 14, 2009

Photo: Tanya Traboulsi. Scrambled Eggs perform in Beirut, Lebanon.

BEIRUT: “The choice of artists is very personal,” says Ziad Nawfal of his latest album, “The Ruptured Sessions.” “I really have to like what they do.” It seems that Nawfal isn’t alone in his tastes. A capacity crowd at the album’s April 30 launch party at Hamra’s Walimat Wardeh restaurant craned their necks around bodies and pillars to catch a glimpse of the featured artists at work.

The disk is a compilation of material recorded live on Nawfal’s Monday evening Radio Liban show “Ruptures.” “I started inviting young artists into the studio to talk about themselves and the music they like,” said Nawfal over the phone several days after the album launch. “They’d also play three or four tracks of their own.”

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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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photo essay by ActiveStills.

Photo: Israeli military teargas unleashed on popular protests in Bil’in.

Since 2005 Bil’in village has held weekly demonstrations to protest the ongoing construction of the Israeli apartheid wall. Protests have been coordinated by the Bil’in village popular committee with support from international and Israeli activists.

Ongoing protests in Bil’in have attracted attention internationally and have become a symbol of Palestinian popular resistance to contemporary Israeli colonization. Israeli military repression towards the protests is consistent and has often been deadly, as eighteen Palestinians have been killed during the peaceful protests including Palestinian activist Bassam Ibrahim Abou Rahme who was shot and killed by the Israeli military in April 2009.

Active Stills is an Israeli photography collective that has actively documented the popular struggle against the Israeli apartheid wall in Bil’in. Active Stills photographic documentation has been widely reproduced and shown around the world in various efforts to illustrate both the Palestinian popular resistance and the realities experienced by Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation.

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