Event: Lester Pearson’s Peacekeeping: The Truth May Hurt

March 19, 2012

Lester Pearson’s Peacekeeping: The Truth May Hurt
Book Launch with author and activist Yves Engler
Wednesday, April 4 (7:00 pm)
Telus Building Room 134
Corner of 111 Street & 87 Avenue, U of A Campus
(Click here for map)

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

Written in the form of a submission to an imagined “Truth and Reconciliation” commission about Canada’s foreign policy past, Lester Pearson’s Peacekeeping: The Truth May Hurt will change how you think about this country’s most famous statesman. Rather than an ‘honest broker’ or ‘peacekeeper’ Pearson was an ardent cold warrior who backed colonialism and apartheid in Africa, Zionism, coups in Guatemala, Iran and Brazil, and the US invasion of the Dominican Republic. A beneficiary of US intervention in Canadian political affairs, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate provided important support to the US in Vietnam and pushed to send troops to the American-led war in Korea. Pearson helped construct the post-World War II US empire. This book challenges one of the most important (and useful) Canadian foreign policy myths.

“Canada’s Nobel Peace Prize winner and eminent statesman, Lester Pearson was a major criminal, really extreme. He didn’t have the power to be like an American president, but if he’d had it, he would have been the same. He tried.”
- Noam Chomsky, from the book’s foreword

Yves Engler has been dubbed “one of the most Important voices on the Canadian Left today” (Briarpatch), “in the mould of I. F. Stone” (Globe and Mail), “ever-insightful” (rabble.ca) and a “Leftist gadfly” (Ottawa Citizen). His six books have been praised by Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, William Blum, Rick Salutin and many others.

Presented by Palestine Solidarity Network-Edmonton and the Council of Canadians.

This is a free event (donations accepted), everyone welcome.

Copies of Lester Pearson’s Peacekeeping: The Truth May Hurt will be available for purchase.

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Today! March 12 Israeli Apartheid Week Events

March 11, 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.

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Dalit Baum Interview in Vue Weekly

March 4, 2012

This week’s Vue Weekly features an interview with Dalit Baum, who will present at next week’s Israeli Apartheid Week on Occupy the Occupation: Corporations, Profit and the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, Thursday, March 8 (7:00 – 9:00 pm) at the Engineering, Teaching and Learning Complex (ETLC) Room E 2-002 (East of 116 Street between 91 and 92 Avenues, U of A Campus).

Who profits?
Activist Dalit Baum will discuss the financial side of Israel’s occupation
Bryan Birtles / bryan@vueweekly.com

When the call from Palestinian civil society came out in 2005 for a boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against illegal Israeli settlements, a big piece of the puzzle was missing: not a lot of people knew what kind of products were being manufactured in the settlements, nor which companies were profiting by having their products utilized to facilitate the illegal occupation of Palestine.

Enter Dalit Baum, who will deliver one of the keynote speeches at this year’s Israeli Apartheid Week in Edmonton. Her work with Who Profits from the Occupation, a research initiative she co-founded in Israel, as well as her more recent work in the United States with the economic activism for Palestine program at San Francisco’s Global Exchange, provides context and information about which companies are making money through the systematic discrimination of Palestinians. This research helps inform campaigns all over the world, dealing with issues far beyond the occupation of Palestine.

“The same corporations that limit civil liberties [in Israel] are the same corporations that manufacture tear gas used on the Occupy demonstrators are the same corporations involved with the privatization of prisons [in the US],” explains Baum of the scope of her research. “It’s not just about educating people about what’s going on in Palestine, it’s way beyond that.”

These campaigns are having an effect, says Baum, and their successes are threefold. Not only has the BDS campaign built a worldwide network of activists able to put pressure onto a corporation from a number of different angles, it has also forced Israelis to take a hard look at the policies of their government, as every new boycott becomes big news inside the country. Perhaps most importantly, the BDS campaign is having an effect on the ground, in the illegal settlements in the occupied territories.

“If you look at the settlement industry and the production in settlements, it’s failing,” Baum says. “We have a series of big corporations that have announced they will pull their production from these sites because they’re afraid of litigation, because it’s illegal according to international law, because they don’t want to be involved in something viewed so unfavourably in Europe and they have business in Europe, because of all these reasons. We are building a movement that is not only relevant locally but also has some traction and effect on the ground. We didn’t have that before.”

As a queer activist in addition to an anti-Apartheid activist, “pinkwashing” is something Baum has dealt with for years. Seeking to discredit the anti-Apartheid movement, opponents will call Israel “the only democracy” in the Middle East or proclaim it the only country in the region with respect for gay rights. Baum rejects these arguments as propaganda.

“Why all of a sudden do you care about gay and lesbian Palestinians when you don’t care about them any other day of the week?” she asks rhetorically. “It’s preposterous how this is used as a form of propaganda … when people hear how Israel actually treats, for example, queer Palestinian youth looking for asylum—they don’t give these people any kind of asylum.

“There’s seven million Israeli citizens and then four million Palestinians who have no civil rights but are controlled by the same government—that’s a very flawed democracy.”

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The Arab World and Palestine

March 10, 2011

An op-ed in this week’s Vue Weekly by PSN’s Siavash Saffari on the uprising in the Arab world and the implications for Palestine. The topic will be explored in more detail during Edmtonton Israeli Apartheid Week on Wednesday, March 16 at 7:00 pm in Telus Building 236/238 with a panel entitled The Season of Revolt: New Arab Uprisings and Implications for Apartheid.

The Arab world and Palestine:
What do the democratic movements mean for a struggling Palestinian state?
Siavash Saffari

For 18 fateful days, the world watched as events unfolded in Egypt. While people around the globe found inspiration in Egyptian protesters’ steadfastness as they fought against the dictatorship, here in North America the major concern of many political circles and media reports was the hegemonic interests of the US empire, especially where it concerned the Israel-Palestine question.

There is no doubt that any democratic change in Egypt will have an effect on the country’s relationship with Israel. Egypt under Mubarak was an important friend to Israel, providing, among other things, 40 percent of Israel’s natural gas needs and helping to maintain a brutal and illegal siege on Gaza. In the words of Aluf Benn, editor-at-large for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, “Without Mubarak, Israel is left with almost no friends in the Middle East.”

It leaves some commentators wondering if this tsunami of social and political change will be a catalyst for a mass movement demanding Israel’s recognition of Palestinians’ equal rights. So far, that hasn’t happened. Nevertheless, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza held rallies in solidarity with Egyptian protesters and in defiance of the Fatah-and Hamas-imposed bans against such rallies. And, there are reasons to believe that Palestinians, too, might witness a turning point in their struggle against a decades-old occupation, and an expanding structure of apartheid.

With the failure of the secular-nationalist political elite to bring an end to the Israeli occupation, and with the limitations of Islamism in creating a broad social movement, in recent years we have witnessed the growing popularity of the Palestinian anti-apartheid movement. The movement is the convergence of various individuals and groups around a common agenda with an emphasis on universal human rights, commitment to non-violence and grassroots activism, and cooperation with Israeli and international solidarity activists and networks.

In 2001, a number of South African and Palestinian civil society groups launched the International Anti-Apartheid Movement against Israel. But it was the 2005 call for an international campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel by over 170 Palestinian parties, trade unions and non-governmental and grassroots organizations that solidified the anti-apartheid movement within Palestinian civil society. It also made possible the prospect of a popular resistance with an appeal to international law, universal human rights and opposition to colonialism, apartheid and racism.

The BDS campaign was formed around three objectives: an end to colonization and occupation of all Arab lands and dismantling of the Israeli-West Bank barrier wall; recognition of the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and respect, protection and promotion of the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands as per UN resolution 194.

While a growing movement around the world is assembling under the BDS banner, here in Canada Harper’s Conservative government has effectively become Israel’s closest friend and ally. From supporting the 2006 invasion of Lebanon and the 2008-09 assault on Gaza, to condemning the calls on Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Canada has also vetoed key UN motions on the rights of Palestinian refugees, to cutting funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, and labeled any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism. The Conservative government’s position has consistently been unqualified support for Israel. In fact, both Canadian and Israeli officials insist that “Israel now has no better friend in the world than Canada.”

It came as no surprise when the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lawrence Cannon declared that Canada’s chief concern with regard to Egypt is a stable transition that would protect the peace treaty with Israel. This time, there was little talk about supporting democracy and human rights.

While the government’s official policy has been one of unconditional support for Israel, in recent years the Canadian civil society has established strong links with the anti-apartheid movement. Many Canadian unions including the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario, Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) and la Centrale des syndicats du Quebec (CSQ), have joined the broad coalition that is forming around the anti-apartheid movement.

Most significantly, Israeli Apartheid Week, which is held in cities around the world this month, began as a Canadian initiative. It was launched in 2005 by students at the University of Toronto with the idea of raising awareness about the structures of legal, political, economic, social and cultural domination imposed on Palestinians within Israel and in the occupied territories. In its seventh year, IAW continues to make a significant contribution to the opposition of Israeli apartheid and to bolster support for BDS.

Siavash Saffari is a political science doctoral student at the University of Alberta and an organizer with Palestine Solidarity Network.

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The Revolution Continues After Mubarak’s Fall

February 12, 2011

The Electronic Intifada‘s Ali Abunimah looks at the regional impact of the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.

The revolution continues after Mubarak’s fall
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 12 February 2011

Yesterday evening, after it was announced that Hosni Mubarak had met the first demand of the revolution and left office, I headed toward the Egyptian embassy in Amman. The joy on the streets was something I had never experienced before.

From all directions people came, pouring out of cars stuck in gridlocked traffic on Zahran Street and into the side street where the embassy sits. They were young and old and families with children. Egyptian laborers — the unacknowledged back bone of much of the Jordanian economy — sang, carried each other on their shoulders and played drums. Egyptian flags waved and signs were held high.

The chants were as varied and lively as the crowd which grew to thousands: “Long Live Egypt!,” “The people overthrew the regime!,” “Who’s next?,” “Tomorrow Abbas!” Some people showered the crowd with sweets, as fireworks burst overhead. Everyone took pictures, recording a moment of victory they felt was made by the Egyptian people on behalf of all of us.

After Tunisia, a second great pillar of oppression has been knocked down, at such great cost to hundreds who gave their lives, and many millions who saw their lives destroyed for so many years. It was a night for joy, and the celebrations continue today.

After the celebrations are over, the revolution too must go on, because it will not be complete until the Egyptian people rebuild their country as they wish it to be.

But standing in the streets of Amman there was no mistaking that the Egyptian revolution will have a profound impact on the whole region. Arab people everywhere now imagine themselves as Tunisians or Egyptians. And every Arab ruler imagines himself as Ben Ali or Mubarak.

Read the rest of this entry »

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How Canada Subsidizes Illegal Israeli Settlements

January 31, 2011

An excellent article on Counterpunch by Montreal activist and author Yves Engler.

Enabling Crimes Against Palestinians
How Canada Subsidizes Illegal Israeli Settlements

By Yves Engler

Canada’s tax system currently subsidizes Israeli settlements that Ottawa deems illegal. However, the Conservative government says there’s nothing that can be done about it.

In June of last year, Guelph activist Dan Maitland emailed Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon concerning Canada Park, a Jewish National Fund of Canada initiative built on land Israel occupied after the June 1967 War. Three Palestinian villages (Beit Nuba, Imwas and Yalu) were demolished to make way for the park.

A few weeks ago Maitland received a reply from Keith Ashfield, Minister of National Revenue, who refused to discuss the particulars of the case but provided “general information about registered charities and the occupied territories.” Ashfield wrote that “the fact that charitable activities take place in the occupied territories is not a barrier to acquiring or maintaining charitable status.”

This means Canadian organizations can openly fundraise for settlements Ottawa (officially) deems illegal under international law and get the government to pay up to a third of the cost through tax credits for donations. To justify the government’s position, Ashfield cited a September 2002 Federal Court of Appeal case (Canadian Magen David Adom for Israel v. Minister of National Revenue), which reversed the Canadian Revenue Agency’s previous position.

The exact amount is not known but it’s safe to assume that millions of Canadian dollars make their way to Israeli settlements every year. In 1997, when it was more of a legal grey area, tax lawyer David Drache claimed that “there are hundreds of [Canadian] organizations … supporting organizations directly or indirectly beyond the Green Line,” referring to the internationally-recognized armistice line between Israel and the occupied West Bank.

In the late 1990s, Israel’s largest settler group, Yesha, raised more than $700,000 a year in Canada. When former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited in the mid-1990s, the Canadian Arab Federation’s Jehad Aliweiwi said he “left with more than $1 million in tax-deductible funds, with no secret as to the destination.” Through the 1990s the Press Foundation was probably the largest known source of funds for settlements, raising as much as $5 million annually for settlers in the occupied West Bank town of Hebron and in the occupied Golan Heights, which was captured from Syria in 1967.

Illegal settlements are not the only questionable activities in Israel that Canadians subsidize through their tax system. A mid-1990s survey found more than 300 registered Canadian charities with ties to Israel, a relatively wealthy country. Every year Canadians send a few hundred million dollars worth of tax-deductible donations to Israeli universities, parks, immigration initiatives and, more controversially, “charities” that aid the Israeli army in one way or another.

One example is Aid to Disabled Veterans of Israel or Beit Halochem (Canada), which brings soldiers singled out as heroes by the Israeli military on trips to Canada. Many Canadians, including the Charles R. Bronfman Foundation, support the Libi Fund — “The Fund For Strengthening Israel’s Defense.” In early 2008, Major Gil Chemke, a member of Israel’s elite search and rescue team, toured the country on behalf of the Canadian Magen David Adom for Israel (CMDAI), which operates in the occupied West Bank. Established to assist wounded soldiers and the population during disasters, CMDAI has raised millions of dollars. Chemke drummed up financial contributions for CMDAI by showing “behind-the-scenes video footage of a rescue operation in Lebanon for a female air crew member whose helicopter was shot down by Hizballah” during Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon.

Established in 1971, the Association for the Soldiers of Israel in Canada (ASI) provides financial and moral support to active duty soldiers. In 2009, ASI (Canada) — which provides tax receipts through the Canadian Zionist Cultural Association — and El Al airlines granted a 50 percent discount on flights to Israel from Canada for families of “lone soldiers” who join the Israeli military.

While it’s legal — and government will foot part of the bill — to finance charities linked to a foreign army responsible for numerous war crimes and settlements that contravene international law, Ottawa has made it illegal for Canadians to aid a hospital operated by the elected Hamas government.

Ottawa’s post-11 September 2001 terrorist list makes it illegal to financially assist Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the Abu Nidal Organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, the Palestine Liberation Front, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and groups associated with these organizations. Only one Israeli group, the marginal Kahane Chai, is on the list.

On 25 December, Hamas criticized Canada for re-listing it a “terrorist” entity. “The decision is a clear bias to Israel,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told Xinhua. “This encourages Israel to commit more crimes against the Palestinian people.”

Ottawa makes it difficult for Canadians to support many Palestinian groups all the while subsidizing expansionist and militaristic Israeli institutions. Canadians of good conscience should protest and demand change.

Yves Engler is the author of Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid and the Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy. For more info: http://yvesengler.com

Leave a Comment » | Canada, Commentary/Analysis, Independent Media, Settlements | Permalink
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Event: To Shoot an Elephant

January 6, 2011

To Shoot an Elephant (Film Screening and Discussion)
Thursday, January 13 (6:00 pm – 8:00 pm)
Room 165, Education Building (U of A Campus)
87 Avenue and 113 Street
(Click here for map)

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

On December 27, 2008, Israel launched a 22-day assault on the Gaza Strip that resulted in the death of more than 1300 people, and wounding an additional 5400. In the the three-week-long massacre, hospitals and schools were bombed and 22,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. This documentary, filmed and directed by international activists, provides us with an eye-witness account of the onslaught that ensued.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Postscript on the New McCarthyism

December 20, 2010

An interesting article on the CPCCA/ICCA by Murray Dobbin from the Tyee.

Postscript on the New McCarthyism
Stephen Harper is succeeding in his efforts to make it a crime to criticize Israel.

By Murray Dobbin, Dec 20, 2010
thetyee.ca

A year ago I wrote a column reflecting on the activities of the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism (CPCCA), the Canadian branch of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism. The latter is an international pro-Zionist group whose sole task is to redefine anti-Semitism to mean virtually any criticism of Israel. It developed at the behest of Israel when international criticism of the apartheid state began to seriously damage the image Israel so carefully established over decades — you know the one, where Israel is the tiny democratic state whose existence is threatened by its powerful neighbours. It was a masterful bit of myth-making and lasted a long time.

But in virtually every country in the world that image is now permanently tarnished. The success of the BDS campaign — Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) — is the other side of the campaign to expose Israel’s brutal occupation of the West Bank and its continued oppression of the 1.5 million Palestinians essentially imprisoned in Gaza. The BDS campaign is also having a major impact on Israel and the “new anti-Semitism” campaign hopes to slow it down.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Vote Online in the Israeli Apartheid Video Contest

December 13, 2010

The 10 finalists in the Israeli Apartheid Video Contest (sponsored by It Is Apartheid Collective and the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign) can now be viewed online and voted on until December 15.

Contest winners will be announced on itisapartheid.tv on January 7, 2011.

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Audio Highlights from Montreal BDS Conference

November 30, 2010

Audio highlights from the Montreal BDS Conference.

More than 600 activists from Quebec, Canada, and the United States gathered in Montreal from 22-24 October for a weekend-long conference on growing the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. The opening public panel at the conference offered reflections on the five years since the unified Palestinian call for BDS was first made, including views from Palestine and South Africa. Much of the weekend drew participants together in sector-oriented working groups and on Sunday the final session offered a report back to a crowd of hundreds.

This audio report by Gretchen King features keynote speakers Areej Ja’fari (Palestine Freedom Project), Stephen Faulkner (Congress of South African Trade Unions) and Omar Barghouti (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and the Boycott National Committee). The audio report includes highlights from the final session, such as the conclusions of Judy Da Silva, an indigenous activist who traveled from Grassy Narrows in northwestern Ontario to participate in the conference.

Gretchen King has been creating independent media productions since 1998. She has produced programming on Palestine for nearly a decade, including co-coordinating an award-winning international 18-hour audio commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Nakba in 2008. In Montreal, Gretchen has served as Community News and Production Coordinator at CKUT Radio 90.3 FM since 2001. This report was produced by CKUT Radio (www.ckut.ca) for The Electronic Intifada.

Leave a Comment » | BDS, Canada, Independent Media | Permalink
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