press release, Saturday, October 31st, 2009.

Photo: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign graphic.

Montreal, October 31 – On the scariest day of the year, members of Middle East solidarity groups Tadamon, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) and the Québec BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) Committee will be demanding that the Bay take its creepiest product, Ahava Dead Sea cosmetics, off its shelves.

Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories (www.ahava.co.il) is a privately held Israeli cosmetics company that manufactures products using minerals and mud from the Dead Sea. Ahava products are widely available in high-end department stores and pharmacies throughout the United States, Europe and Canada. But Ahava is hiding the ugly truth — its products are derived from Palestinian natural resources stolen from the occupied West Bank and are manufactured in the illegal West Bank settlement of Mitzpe Shalem. Ahava’s corporate practices violate international law.

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Al Jazeera Wednesday, October 28, 2009.

Photo: Dendoune Nadir. Palestinian Sharihan Hannoun evicted from East Jerusalem

Israeli authorities have torn down several Palestinian houses in occupied east Jerusalem, defying international calls to halt the demolitions in the disputed city.

Gidi Schmerling, a Jerusalem municipality spokesman, said the houses in the Shuafat, Zur Baher, Silwan and Jabel Mukabar neighbourhoods were pulled down on Tuesday because they had been built illegally.

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Report November 30th, 2009. Bil’in Popular Committee

Photo: Valerian Mazataud Protests in Bil’in, Palestine.

Adeeb Abu Rahmah was arrested on 10 July this year, and is still held in custody for taking part in organizing the village’s demonstrations. Demonstrators wore masks of his face and called for his release.

Two injured and several demonstrators suffered from tear gas inhalation from canisters thrown at them by the Israeli occupation soldiers in their attempt to suppress the weekly protest of Bil’in citizens and solidarity groups.

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photo essay by Valerian Mazataud

Photo: Valerian Mazataud. Palestinians in Bil’in raise Palestinian flag at weekly protest.

Bil’in village in Palestine holds protests every Friday in opposition to the Israeli apartheid wall, which cuts directly through Bil’in’s agricultural territory, effectively annexing over fifty percent of the village lands.

Every week villagers from Bil’in, backed by international and Israeli activists, gather to protest the Israeli ‘separation wall’, a popular protest ritual that has made international headlines globally, Protests in Bil’in have attracted thousands of international activists to join the Palestinian-lead protests, including celebrated South African anti-apartheid campaigner Desmond Tutu.

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Inter Press Service, Mel Frykberg, 28 October 2009

Photo: Palestinian activist confronts Israeli occupation solider at Bil’in weekly protest

Jerusalem – Israeli authorities are increasingly targeting and intimidating nonviolent Palestinian grassroots activists involved in anti-occupation activities who are drawing increased support from the international community.

Several weeks ago masked Israeli soldiers stormed the home of Ehab Jallad from The Jerusalem Popular Committee for the Celebration of Jerusalem as the Capital of Arab Culture for 2009.

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interview with Lebanese activist Natalie Abou Shakra by Stefan Christoff

Photo: Zoriah (c) Destruction in Gaza after Israeli bombing winter 2009.

Politicians and activists across the Middle East, from Beirut, to Casablanca, express open solidarity with the Palestinian people, however not often do social activists make the direct trip to Gaza.

In 2008 Lebanese activist Natalie Abou Shakra joined the Free Gaza movement, traveling to Gaza on the movement’s SS Dignity, which broke the Israeli siege arriving on the shores of the Gaza Strip in 2008 with medical and humanitarian aid in open defiance of Israel’s military blockade on Gaza.

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criminalization of social movements & the anti-terrorism crusade

Thursday, November 5th 2009
6:30 pm Pavillon J-A-DeSève (DS)
UQAM, Rm DS-1580
320 Sainte-Catherine Street E.
graphic obey

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27 October 2009, Amnesty International

Photo: Nicholas Marcroft (c) Drinking scarce water in occupied Palestine.

“Israel allows the Palestinians access to only a fraction of the shared water resources, which lie mostly in the occupied West Bank, while the unlawful Israeli settlements there receive virtually unlimited supplies. In Gaza the Israeli blockade has made an already dire situation worse,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s researcher on Israel and the OPT.

In a new extensive report, Amnesty International revealed the extent to which Israel’s discriminatory water policies and practices are denying Palestinians their right to access to water.

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report Al Jazeera Tuesday, October 27, 2009.

Photo: Palestine across the Dead Sea, viewing from Jordan.

Israel is denying Palestinians adequate access to clean, safe water while allowing almost unlimited supplies to Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, human rights group Amnesty International has said.

“Swimming pools, well-watered lawns and large irrigated farms in Israeli settlements… stand in stark contrast next to Palestinian villages whose inhabitants struggle even to meet their domestic water needs,” the group said in a report released on Tuesday.

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Timothy Seidel, Electronic Intifada, 11 October 2009.

Photo: Zoriah (c) Open sky amongst rubble in Gaza, Palestine.

As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.” Luke 19:41-42

Dominus Flevit on the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem is the name of a church and a site of pilgrimage for many Christian travelers to the “Holy Land.” Literally, Dominus Flevit means “the Lord wept” in Latin and is remembered as the site where Jesus stopped to look out over Jerusalem to weep and ask this striking question to all who would follow him.

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