October 20, 2009. Bil’in Popular Committee

Photo: Mary-Ellen Davis. Palestinian flag flying at popular protest in Palestine.

As part of the Village’s campaign against the construction of settlements on their lands, Bil’in has filed an unprecedented legal claim in Canada against two Canadian companies and their Canadian director. The claim arises from the construction of apartment buildings and the marketing and selling of residential units in the Modi’in Illit settlement which is built, in part, on the lands belonging to Bil’in. The lawsuit has been filed in the Canadian Province of Quebec where those companies and their director are registered and live.

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M. Parent, Mme Pauzé, et tous les membres de la Centrale des syndicats du Québec,

Photo: Motaz Satellites en Qalqilia – Palestine.

Tadamon! tient à féliciter les membres de la Centrale des syndicats du Québec pour l’adoption récente, avec une grande majorité, d’une résolution visant à soutenir l’appel au boycott d’Israël lancé par 171 organisations palestiniennes. Cet appel s’inscrit dans la campagne internationale du BDS (Boycott, désinvestissement et sanctions) dont le but est de dénoncer, sans relâche, le système d’apartheid israélien, jusqu’à ce qu’Israël se conforme au droit international et aux principes universels des droits de la personne.

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Vous êtes invité(e)s au party d’halloween de l’année!

Samedi, 31 octobre 2009
12h30 à 16h30
Carré Phillips
en face de La Baie
Sainte-Catherine et Union
(Métro McGill)

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ISM visits Linan Yosif Abo Gholbi on her release from prison

Photo: Freda Gutman Former Palestinian political prisoner Linan Yosif Abo Gholbi.

On Monday, October 5, 2009, a group of ISM’ers visited Linan Yosif Abo Gholbi in her extended family’s home near Nablus, at the invitation of Tanweer, a grass roots organization based in Nablus. She is one of the 20 women prisoners who were recently released from Isreali prisons in exchange for a video from Hamas proving that Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured in 2006, was still alive.

Generations of Linan’s family have been fighters and PFLP activists in the Palestian struggle for justice. Many have died, many have been imprisoned. Her parents have spent years visiting their children in various prisons and at the moment one of her brothers is in jail.

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Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada, 8 October 2009.

Photo: Palestinian youth in the Gaza Strip, Palestine.

The uproar over the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) collaboration with Israel to bury the Goldstone report, calling for trials of Israeli leaders for war crimes in Gaza, is a political earthquake. The whole political order in place since the 1993 Oslo accords were signed is crumbling. As the initial tremors begin to fade, the same old political structures may appear still to be in place, but they are hollowed out. This unprecedented crisis threatens to topple the US-backed PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, but it also leaves Hamas, the main Palestinian resistance faction, struggling with fateful choices.

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Link by Jillian Kestler-D’amours, October 13, 2009.

Photo: Stefan Christoff. Wires in sky, Ein el-Hilweh, Palestinian camp, Lebanon.

Pictures of Fouad Sakr’s family line the walls of his modest Park Extension apartment in Montreal north.

“My son’s wedding in Lebanon,” said Sakr, pointing to a framed photograph displaying the smiling faces of his son, his son’s bride, his wife and himself.

On the other side of the room, school photos of Sakr’s granddaughters hang beneath two recognizable images: a small Palestinian flag and the Lebanese cedar tree, the country’s national symbol.

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Al Jazeera October 2009.

Photo: Palestinians in Gaza struggle for food in area damaged by Israeli bombings.

Poverty in the Gaza Strip has tripled this year under the Israeli blockade, according to the UN agency helping refugees living there.

John Ging, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza, told reporters on Thursday that the number of Gazans considerered “abject poor” had tripled to 300,000 this year, equal to one in five Gazans.

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Daily Star Tuesday, October 13, 2009.

Photo: Mary-Ellen Davis. Nahr el-Bared refugee camp destroyed pictured in late 2007.

BEIRUT: Demonstrators gathered in their thousands at Downtown Beirut’s Martyrs Square Monday to protest against government failure to begin reconstruction to Nahr al-Bared refugee camp. Organizers claim some 2,000 protestors from all over Lebanon attended the peaceful demonstration, watched over by soldiers and a dozen police in riot gear.

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photos by Sabrien Amrov

Photo: Sabrien Amrov. Qurna performing at Artists Against Apartheid.

At the Quebec Social Forum thousands converged in Montreal from throughout Quebec for concerts, workshops and conferences focused on building social justice movements. On Saturday, October 10th hundreds gathered at cégep du Vieux Montréal for the tenth edition of Artists Against Apartheid, presented as a main cultural event within the Quebec Social Forum.

Featured at the concert was Qurna a conceptual and experimental music project of Iraqi Maqam music, lead by Omar Dewachi on oud and featuring Jérémi Roy on double bass, Pierre-Guy Blanchard on percussion, Sam Shalabi on oud, Radwan Moumneh on saz, Xarah Dion on synth and Zayid Al-Baghdadi on nay. Sabrien Amrov documented the concert via photograph presented now on-line.

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Sami Hermez, Electronic Intifada, 1 October 2009.

Photo: ‘No tank parking’ graffiti in Palestine.

Over the last three years, the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel has been gaining stride. Individuals around the world have been joining this call, from organizing actions in supermarkets in France and Great Britain protesting Israeli products made in settlements, to filmmakers withdrawing movies from film festivals, to prominent Israelis making a public stand with the BDS movement. Only recently, a multi-billion dollar Norwegian wealth fund divested from the Israeli arms company Elbit, while other companies, like Veolia, a French conglomerate involved in building and managing the Jerusalem light-rail, have suffered setbacks due to the bad publicity the boycott movement has generated.

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