PALESTINE SOLIDARITY NETWORK

THE FOURTH ANNUAL EDMONTON ISRAELI APARTHEID WEEK
MARCH 5 – 13, 2012

*** ALL EVENTS FREE ***

Palestine Solidarity Network-U of A presents seven days of presentations, workshops, film screenings, and cultural events in solidarity with Palestine and to raise awareness around the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israeli apartheid. All IAW 2012 events are open to everyone, and are free of charge. We look forward to seeing you there!

IAW 2012 is organized by Palestine Solidarity Network and endorsed and supported by the Canada Palestine Cultural Association, Independent Jewish Voices, Faculty 4 Palestine Alberta, and Edmonton Small Press Association. Individual sessions are also supported by APIRG, Global Exchange, Feminist Edmonton, and the Breath in Poetry Collective.

MONDAY, MARCH 5, 2012

Back to Basics in Palestine: Redefining Our Relationship to a People’s Struggle
IAW 2012 opening keynote by Ramzy Baroud
Monday, March 5 (7:00 – 9:00 pm)
Engineering, Teaching and Learning Complex (ETLC) Room E 1-013
East of 116 Street between 91 and 92 Avenues
(Click here for map)

Help spread the word! Invite your friends to the Facebook event.

The Palestinian struggle for justice has transitioned through myriad of historical and political phases, where the political (and, of course, physical) topography of Palestine and the entire region have been altered, time and again. However, from one war to another, from some ‘peace treaty’ to another, and from one state of siege to another, the underpinnings of the conflict have remained unchanged: an anti-colonial struggle for rights, for equality, for freedom, for justice.

As a result of constant redefinitions of the conflict, the solidarity movement has been challenged repeatedly regarding its understanding of the situation in Palestine, which for some turned into an intellectual debate about ideas, theories, and visions. As sincere as these debates have been, they can be distracting, polarizing and confusing, if not entirely removed from the situation in Palestine.

What does active solidarity actually mean, and how can it be achieved with moral consistency? What is our responsibility as civil society regarding our governments’ action or inaction in relation to the conflict? How can we be of direct contribution to aiding rightful Palestinian demands for equality and justice? Do we need to redefine our relationship to the Palestinian struggle altogether in order for us to practically rebalance the iniquitous paradigm that continues to define the relationship between the Palestinian oppressed and the Israeli oppressor?

About Ramzy Baroud:

Palestinian-American journalist, author, editor and former Al-Jazeera producer, Ramzy Baroud taught Mass Communication at Australia’s Curtin University of Technology, and is editor-in-chief of the Palestine Chronicle.

Baroud’s work has been published in hundreds of newspapers and journals worldwide, including The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Seattle Times, Arab News, The Miami Herald, The Japan Times, Al-Ahram Weekly, Asia Times and nearly every English language publication throughout the Middle East. He has contributed to and was cited and referenced in hundreds of books. He has been a guest on many television and radio programs including CNN International, BBC, ABC Australia, National Public Radio, Press TV, Al-Jazeera and many other stations.

Ramzy Baroud has been a guest speaker at many top universities around the world, including George Mason University, Virginia Commonwealth University, Rutgers University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Manchester, University of Ireland, University of Washington, Penn State University and the University of Kwazulu Natal in South Africa. He has also been a guest speaker at the House of Commons in London. Baroud has spoken and conducted book tours in over twenty countries.

Renowned American scholar, Noam Chomsky said of his work, “Ramzy Baroud’s sensitive, thoughtful, searching writing penetrates to the core of moral dilemmas that their intended audiences evade at their peril. Few are spared his perceptive eye, and only the morally callous will fail to respond to his pleas to look into the mirror honestly, to question comforting beliefs that protect us from facing our elementary responsibilities, and to act to remedy the terrible misery and injustice that he exposes to our view, as we surely can.”

Supported by the Alberta Public Interest Research Group (APIRG) and Faculty 4 Palestine Alberta.

Getting to ETLC:

If you are driving to campus, the most convenient place to park is the Windsor Car Park, located on 116 Street, just north of 92 Avenue. The Engineering Teaching and Learning Complex (ETLC) is located just south of Windsor Car Park.

TUESDAY, MARCH 6, 2012

Poets Against Apartheid – A Night of Rouge Poetry
Tuesday, March 6 (9:00 – 11:00 pm)
Rouge Lounge
10111-117 Street
(Click here for map)

Help us spread the word! Invite your friends to the Facebook event.

Join us at Rouge Lounge for our annual night of spoken word and performance poetry relating the liberation struggle of the Palestinian people. This night will leave you inspired to share the stories of struggle with others and to be part of the growing movement against the injustice of apartheid in Palestine.

Sorry, no minors.

Presented in collaboration with the Breath in Poetry Collective

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2012

Women’s Perspectives on Occupation and Apartheid
Featuring Rela Mazali (via Skype), Anat Matar (via Skype), and Ghada Ageel
Wednesday, March 7 (Noon – 2:00 pm)
Telus Building Room 236/238
Corner of 111 Street & 87 Avenue, University of Alberta Campus
(Click here for map)

Help us spread the word! Invite your friends to the Facebook event.

Three women — both Israeli and Palestinian — active in solidarity with Palestine will share their stories and perspectives on the occupation and how to move towards a just resolution to the question of Israel/Palestine.

Rela Mazali will focus on the militarization of Israeli society. Militarization — continuous and pervasive — is one of the central processes characterizing society and state in Israel. It is a social-political process which is arguably central to every settler society and state engaged, as all of them are or were, in the systematic displacement, dispossession and subjection of an indigenous population. A society practicing or undergoing militarization maintains a state of readiness for, and acquiescence with or even support for, combat, conflict and war, to which it accordingly consents to allocate a huge chunk of its resources, including the bodies, minds and lives of its children. In order to achieve and reproduce, such acquiescence, support and consent in a militarized society, in order to perpetuate and justify this continual social process, militarization obviously requires an image of The Enemy, a proverbial “other,” which it repeatedly constructs and finds ways of providing. So, for instance, in 2008, after Hamas observed an extended period of ceasefire, it was Israel that decided against a renewal, preferring instead to step up its illegal summary executions of Palestinian leaders. This aspect of militarization is obvious and visible. But it’s only from a feminist perspective that another, vital component of ongoing militarization becomes visible and obvious. Militarization requires and produces not just The Enemy but, in addition, an-Other Other: “Her,” a feminized, idealized image of the vulnerable, soft, gentle, warm woman whom the soldier has to protect. Rela’s talk will outline some of the major implications of militarization in the settler society she is part of and lives in, touching particularly on some of the gendered phenomena in militarized Israeli society. She’ll also talk about the feminist activism resisting the reality of deep-running militarization.

Anat Matar will focus on the issue of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails. There are currently over 4000 Palestinian prisoners classified as “security” prisoners in Israeli jails; over 300 of them are administrative detainees, i.e., detainees held in prison without charge or trial – sometimes for years. Anat’s talk will shed some light on political persecution, on the conditions of these prisoners and detainees, on several special groups of prisoners (veteran prisoners – including Israeli citizens, organizers of demonstrations, members of the legislative council), and also on the lack of interest of the Israeli public in this issue. She will also offer a comparison between the Israeli attitude towards Palestinian prisoners and its attitude towards Palestinians in general – since the latter, too, all of them, are taken merely as “threats” rather than autonomous human beings craving for freedom, independence and political self-control.

Ghada Ageel will focus on the impact of military occupation and an apartheid regime on Palestinian people’s basic and fundamental rights to food, life, land, education, health care, parenthood, safety, and freedom. From a woman’s perspective and through lived stories, Ghada will shed light on the odd and oppressive limbo that Palestinians, both in West Bank and besieged Gaza, endure on a daily basis and will tell a tale of a nation that has been made to live with broken hearts, expecting to grieve at any minute.

Among the questions that Ghada will attempt to answer are: What does it mean to be a refugee in one’s own land, stateless with no citizenship, no rights and no power over one’s own or ones family’s lives? What does it mean to be directly connected to an endless conflict that impacts every single aspect of daily life? How does it taste to live under hardship, humiliation and devastation all day/every day? How does it feel to be deprived to see one’s husband, father, brother or son for years and perhaps decades? How possible is it at all to plant seeds of hope amid these exceptional circumstances of suffering and dispossession?

About the speakers:

Rela Mazali is an author, an independent scholar, and a feminist anti-militarist activist from Israel. Active against Israel’s occupation since 1980, one of the founders of the New Profile Movement to Civilize Israeli Society (in 1998) and the Coalition of Women for Peace (in 2000), one of eight women from Israel nominated for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize by the 1,000 Peacewomen project, a member of the Jury of Conscience of the World Tribunal on Iraq in 2005, co-founder and co-coordinator of the disarmament project, Gun Free Kitchen Tables in 2010. Rela’s latest book is Home Archaeology (in Hebrew 2011), and she is also the author of Maps of Women’s Goings and Stayings (2001), WhaNever (in Hebrew 1987). Among her recent articles: “A Call for Livable Futures,” “Telltale Maps: Narrated Resistance in a Jewish Palestinian Contact Zone,” and “Ethnically Constructed Guns and Feminist Anti-Militarism in Israel.” (aia Skype)

Anat Matar is a senior lecturer at the Department of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University, and a longtime anti-occupation activist. She presently sits on the steering-committee of Who Profits? – Exposing the Israeli Occupation Industry, and is the chair of the Israeli Committee for the Palestinian Prisoners. She recently edited, along with Adv. Abeer Baker, a collection of analyses and testimonies about Palestinian political prisoners, entitled Threat – Palestinian Political Prisoners in Israel. (via Skype)

Dr. Ghada Ageel is a third generation Palestinian refugee. She was born and raised in the Khan Younis Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip, were she attended high school and completed a BA in Education. In 1999, Ghada won the Jerusalem Studies’ Scholarship of the University of Exeter in Britain, where she completed her Master’s degree in Middle East Politics, and her PhD in Refugees Studies. Sine then, Ghada has worked with several organizations and institutions in Canada, UK and Palestine. She currently lives in Edmonton and works at the Canadian Red Cross.

Also presented as part of Feminist Edmonton’s Feminist Week.

THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 2012

Occupy the Occupation!
Corporations, Profit and the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
IAW 2012 keynote by Dalit Baum
Thursday, March 8 (7:00 – 9:00 pm)
Engineering, Teaching and Learning Complex (ETLC) Room E 2-002
East of 116 Street between 91 and 92 Avenues
(Click here for map)

Help us spread the word! Invite your friends to the Facebook event.

Who has a financial stake in the continued Israeli occupation of Palestine? The talk will provide an introduction to the economy of the Israeli occupation, with a focus on corporate complicity and accountability. Can the 99% influence these economic interests to isolate and weaken the 44-year-old occupation of Palestine? Using examples of economic activism initiatives from all around the world we will discuss this emerging new global movement, its strategies and goals.

Dalit Baum, Ph.D., is a co-founder of Who Profits from the Occupation, an activist research initiative of the Coalition of Women for Peace In Israel. During the last five years, Who Profits has become a vital resource for dozens of campaigns around the world, providing information about corporate complicity in the occupation of Palestine.

Dalit is a feminist scholar and teacher in Israel, who has been teaching about militarism and about the global economy from a feminist perspective in Israeli universities. As a feminist/ queer activist, she has been active with various groups in the Israeli anti-occupation and democratization movement, including Black Laundry, Boycott from Within, Zochrot, Anarchists against the Wall and Women in Black.

This year she works out of San Francisco as the regional program coordinator of the Middle East program of AFSC – the American Friends Service Committee- and with the Economic Activism for Palestine Program of Global Exchange, which supports corporate accountability campaigns in the U.S.

Supported by the Alberta Public Interest Research Group (APIRG) and Global Exchange. Also presented as part of Feminist Edmonton’s Feminist Week.

Getting to ETLC:

If you are driving to campus, the most convenient place to park is the Windsor Car Park, located on 116 Street, just north of 92 Avenue. The Engineering Teaching and Learning Complex (ETLC) is located just south of Windsor Car Park.

FRIDAY, MARCH 9, 2012

From Turtle Island to Palestine: Apartheid, Colonialism and Indigenous Self-Determination
A public lecture and discussion with Mike Krebs
Friday, March 9 (3:30 – 5:00 pm)
Education Centre South Room 128
113 Street and 87 Avenue, U of A Campus
(Click here for map)

Help us spread the word! Invite your friends to the Facebook event.

Mike Krebs is a Vancouver-based Indigenous activist, writer, and researcher of Blackfoot and European descent. He is a founding member of the Boycott Israeli Apartheid Campaign in Vancouver and long-time organizer in the BDS movement. Mike’s research focuses on how Canada’s longstanding support for Israel’s policies of apartheid toward the Palestinian people relates to Canada’s own historic and ongoing colonization of Indigenous peoples, and the implications for doing BDS work from within a “fellow” settler society.

MONDAY, MARCH 12, 2012

Roadmap to Apartheid
Advance Preview Film Screening
Monday, March 12 (7:00 – 9:00 pm)
Telus Building Room 134
Corner of 111 Street & 87 Avenue, University of Alberta Campus
(Click here for map)

Help us spread the word! Invite your friends to the Facebook event.

About Roadmap to Apartheid:

There are many lessons to draw from the South African experience of Apartheid relevant to conflicts all over the world. Roadmap to Apartheid explores in detail the apartheid comparison as it is used in the enduring Israel-Palestine conflict. As much an historical document of the rise and fall of apartheid, the film shows us why many Palestinians feel they are living in an apartheid system today, and why an increasing number of people around the world agree with them.

Featuring interviews with South Africans, Israelis and Palestinians, Roadmap to Apartheid winds its way through the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and inside Israel, moving from town to town and issue to issue to show why the apartheid analogy is being used with increasing potency. It analyzes the similar historical narratives of the Jewish people and the Afrikaaners to the tight relationship the two governments shared during the apartheid years, and everything in between. The effectiveness of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that helped end apartheid in South Africa is also compared to its effectiveness in the Israeli context to end the occupation, and bring justice and dignity to all.

Narrated by Alice Walker.

Winner of Overall Prize and the Expert Panel Prize in the First International Israeli Apartheid Video Contest, presented by Stop the Wall and ItIsApartheid.

This film is dedicated to Dennis Brutus, an anti-apartheid hero to us all. Rest in Peace, Dennis. Apartheid will end.

For more information visit roadmaptoapartheid.org.

TUESDAY, MARCH 13, 2012

Poetic Injustice
A night of poetry with Palestinian-American poet Remi Kanazi
Tuesday, March 13 (9:00 – 11:00 pm)
Rouge Lounge
10111-117 Street
(Click here for map)

Help us spread the word! Invite your friends to the Facebook event.

Join us at Rouge Lounge for the closing event of Israeli Apartheid Week 2012: a special night of poetry at Rouge Lounge, featuring acclaimed Palestinian-American poet Remi Kanazi.

Sorry, no minors.

Presented in collaboration with the Breath in Poetry Collective

About Remi Kanazi:

Remi Kanazi is a Palestinian-American poet, writer, and activist based in New York City. He is the editor of Poets For Palestine (Al isser Group, 2008). His political commentary has been featured by news outlets throughout the world, including Al Jazeera English, GRITtv with Laura Flanders, and BBC Radio. His poetry has taken him across North America, the UK, and the Middle East, and he recently appeared in the Palestine Festival of Literature as well as Poetry International. He is a recurring writer in residence and advisory board member for the Palestine Writing Workshop.

Remi is the author of the long-awaited collection Poetic Injustice: Writings on Resistance and Palestine, a diverse mix of unabashed resistance poems. Laced with searing indictments of occupation, ethnic cleansing, and war, Remi tackles some of the most important issues facing the world today. The collection also includes forty-eight three-line poems for Palestine and a full-length spoken word poetry CD.

You can find out more about Remi and Poetic Injustice at poeticinjustice.net.