Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights @ uOttawa

Happy Summer!

2010-05-02T11:04:00.002-05:00

Dear friends,

SPHR @ uOttawa would like to thank-you for your support during this past year. 2009-10 was a success on a grand scale: we witnessed new levels of participation and awareness among the student body and our community at large, and we have you to thank.

Don't hesitate to email sphr.uofo@gmail.com for more information, and please don't be afraid to get involved for the 2010-11 school year. SPHR is always looking for new people to help out with awareness campaigns, events, etc. We need your participation to be effective.

ALSO: A very exciting event is taking place at uOttawa this coming Thursday (May 6) at 7 pm. Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and co-founder of the Palestinian National Initiative, is coming to Ottawa to speak about "Palestinian Political Dynamics and the Realities for Middle East Peace." Hosted by the wonderful people at CJPME, tickets are $15 ($10 for students with ID) and can be purchased at the door or online.

Full event details can be found here: http://cjpme.org/EventVenueDetails.aspx?EventVenueID=53

Dr. Barghouti is a captivating speaker, and surely one of the Palestinians' best hopes for a just peace. Don't miss this event.

All the best for a wonderful summer, and stay tuned for more information about upcoming events. Thank-you again for your continued support.

Best wishes,
SPHR @ uOttawa

News: IAW success, Barghouti tour

2010-03-09T11:43:00.002-05:00

Hello friends,

first off, thank-you to everyone who came out and supported SPHR and SAIA at this year's Israeli Apartheid Week. The response was truly overwhelming, and we appreciate immensely your support.

On March 22 at Carleton, the righteous folks at CJPME are hosting a special evening with Mustaffa Barghouti, Palestinian Presidential Candidate and Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. You may remember Dr. Barghouti from a well-received appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart late last year. Full event details here.

Facebook event page here.

Dr. Barghouti is truly one of the best hopes for a just peace the Palestinians currently have. This is an event you won't want to miss, and we hope to see you there.

Stay tuned for more news and fab happenings in the coming weeks.

Best wishes for a pleasant spring.

Israeli Apartheid Week 2010 @ uOttawa and Carleton

2010-02-10T15:23:00.002-05:00

Mark your calendars - the 6th International Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) will take place across the globe from from the 1st to the 14th of March 2010!

Since it was first launched in 2005, IAW has grown to become one of the most important global events in the Palestine solidarity calendar. Last year, more than 40 cities around the world participated in the week's activities, which took place in the wake of Israel's brutal assault against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. IAW continues to grow with new cities joining this year.

IAW 2010 takes place following a year of incredible successes for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement on the global level. Lectures, films, and actions will highlight some of these successes along with the many injustices that continue to make BDS so crucial in the battle to end Israeli Apartheid.

Students Against Israeli Apartheid-Carleton and Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights uOttawa are very excited and proud to announce the confirmed speakers for Ottawa's Israeli Apartheid Week 2010:

Monday March 1: Student-to-Student Solidarity in the Fight Against Apartheid
Featuring: Nada Elia, Andrew Stachiw and Yafa Jarrar
Carleton University, Azrieli Theatre 301

Tuesday March 2: Queer-Friendly, Multicultural, Green: Debunking Israel's Myths
Featuring: Natalie Kouri-Towe, Saron Ghebressellassie and Ilaria Giglioli
University of Ottawa

Mercredi 3 Mars: La Lutte Pour l'Autodetermination en Palestine
Denis Lemelin, président national du Syndicat des travailleurs et travailleuses des postes (STTP)
Université d'Ottawa, Pavillon Colonel By B012

Wednesday March 3: Cinema Politica presents Have You Heard From Johannesburg? Apartheid and the Club of the West
Carleton University

Thursday March 4: Fighting Racism, Fighting Apartheid
Featuring Naeem Jeenah, Gabriel Ash, and Nahla Abdo
University of Ottawa, Fauteux Hall 147

Friday March 5: Indigenous Sovereignty from Turtle Island to Palestine
Featuring: Dr. Jamal Zahalka, MK and Dr. Paula Sherman, Ardoch Algonquin First Nation
Carleton University, Fenn Lounge, Residence Commons Building

Saturday March 6: Verses vs Apartheid II
A night of spoken word and music to end apartheid. Details coming soon!

Watch for the full schedule with speaker bios and confirmed locations coming later this week!

To endorse or donate to Israeli Apartheid Week, send an email to saia.carleton@gmail.com

For more information, contact saia.carleton@gmail.com or visit http://carleton.saia.ca

ICDW event: "The Economic Crisis in Palestine"

2010-01-22T15:15:00.005-05:00

Join SPHR @ uOttawa for a very informative, interactive workshop as a part of ICDW at uOttawa: "The Economic Crisis in Palestine" will present information about the history and current situation in Israel/Palestine in addition to an intimate discussion about the effects, on the ground, of the economic crisis in Palestine.

This workshop will include a role-playing activity with simultaneous narration and a slide show so that participants can physically learn about the historical process of displacement of the Palestinian population from the 1920s until 2004. The workshop will discuss displacement and refugee populations, US-Israeli financial aid, the Apartheid wall, social, historical and political contexts to the current situation, and parallels in the colonization of Palestine and North America.

Following this workshop, there will be a presentation about the global economic crisis and its effects in Palestine. Issues such as foreign aid, border closures, and contrasts to Israel's economy will be discussed.

When: Friday, January 29, 4 pm.
Where: UCU 205

This is a special event not to be missed: please come and support ICDW and SPHR, and stand with Palestine at uOttawa. Knowledge is a tool - use it.

"Eyes in Gaza" with Dr. Mads FTW.

2010-01-21T21:42:00.022-05:00

SPHR @ UofO would like to thank everyone who attended our event "Eyes in Gaza" with Dr. Mads Gilbert this past Monday night at the University of Ottawa. I believe it a safe assumption that everyone in the room was touched by Dr. Gilbert's presentation on both the situation in Gaza now and during the invasion, as well as what we can do to help the Palestinian people on a practical level.

Which brings up a good point - there are many ways in which we have the power to effect positive change in the everyday lives of the Palestinians. What is often advertised by the mainstream media as a "hopeless situation" is, in reality, anything but. It is our responsibility as global citizens to get informed and involved. Running the risk of sounding clichéd,"you can't stay neutral on a moving train."

Mads was highly appreciative of the warm reception on the first night of his tour. Look out for the English translation of his and his colleague Erik Fosse's new book "Eyes in Gaza," due out later this year. If his lecture was any indication, it should be a remarkable read.

Dr. Gilbert is touring across Canada and the United States in the coming weeks; help spread the word by telling friends and family in other cities to show up. I can guarantee that it will be the best decision you've made all day. For more information, click here.

From everyone at SPHR, thank-you again for helping make this event a success. Please stay tuned to this site for more information on SPHR-related activities in the coming months. And please, follow us on Facebook ("SPHR UofO") and Twitter ("sphruofo") for more news and information.

Best wishes,
SPHR @ uOttawa

"Eyes in Gaza" with Dr. Mads Gilbert

2010-01-03T11:36:00.001-05:00

Dr. Mads Gilbert, internationally acclaimed doctor, Head of the Department of Emergency at the University of North Norway, Professor, and local politician embarks on a journey to describe his experiences in Palestine last winter, during "Operation Cast Lead." During the Israeli offensive against the people of Gaza, Dr. Mads Gilbert and Dr. Erik Fosse were the only two foreign doctors allowed into the region, spending days and nights at the busy and over-crowded Al-Shifaa Hospital in a region forbidden to the rest of the world. With a complete blockade on Gaza, including medical aid and media, Dr. Mads Gilbert became a common face, keeping the world informed of the atrocities taking place in the virtual prison known as Gaza. As such, he was seen on Al-Jazeera, BBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and more.

Dr. Mads Gilbert described his experience in Gaza as the most horrific, terrible thing he has ever witnessed. A long time activist and solidarity worker for the rights of Palestinians, he co-authored the book "Eyes in Gaza" with Dr. Erik Fosse on the realities of this offensive. And now, Dr. Gilbert has kindly taken the time to embark on an SPHR North American tour- on 14 different campuses- to continue sharing his experiences and the stories of Palestinians silenced. This tour is taking place approximately one year after 1300 Palestinians perished, with thousands more injured, and the stories and experience that Dr. Gilbert will share is like no other.

As a leading medical expert and moving speaker, Dr. Mads Gilbert will share with us stories and experiences we are likely to never forget. Please join SPHR @ uOttawa for this very unique event.

Date:	Monday, 18 January 2010
Time:	19:30 - 21:30
Location:	Fauteux Hall, Room 147 B - University of Ottawa

Admission by donation: $5 - 10.

Top Ten Brands to Boycott This Holiday Season

2009-12-08T14:43:00.002-05:00

The Bay Area Campaign to End Israeli
Apartheid has created a list of the top ten companies to avoid during the holiday
season in support of the Palestinian-led call for boycott, divestment and
sanctions of Israel. The list is also available on its website:
http://www.baceia.org/2009/11/top-ten-brands-to-boycott/

While there are many Israeli and multinational companies that benefit from
apartheid, we put together this list to highlight ten specific companies to
target. Many of these produce goods in such a way that directly harms
Palestinians — exploiting labor, developing technology for military
operations, or supplying equipment for illegal settlements. Many are also
the targets of boycotts for other reasons, like harming the environment and
labor violations.

*1. AHAVA*

This brand’s cosmetics are produced using salt, minerals, and mud from the
Dead Sea — natural resources that are excavated from the occupied West Bank.
The products themselves are manufactured in the illegal Israeli settlement
Mitzpe Shalem. AHAVA is the target of CODEPINK’s “Stolen Beauty”
campaign<http://www.stolenbeauty.org/article.php?id=5104>
.

*2. Delta Galil Industries*

Israel’s largest textiles manufacturer provides clothing and underwear for
such popular brands as Gap, J-Crew, J.C. Penny, Calvin Klein, Playtex,
Victoria’s Secret (see #10) and many others. Its founder and chairman Dov
Lautman is a close associate of former Israeli President Ehud Barak. It has
also been condemned by Sweatshop Watch for its exploitation of labor in
other countries such as Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey.

*3. Motorola*

While many of us know this brand for its stylish cellphones, did you know
that it also develops and manufactures bomb fuses and missile guidance
systems? Motorola components are also used in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs
or “drones”) and in communications and surveillance systems used in
settlements, checkpoints, and along the 490 mile apartheid wall. The US
Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
<http://www.endtheoccupation.org/>has launched the “Hang
Up on Motorola” campaign <http://www.hanguponmotorola.org/>.

*4. L’Oreal / The Body Shop*

This cosmetics and perfume company is known for its investments and
manufacturing activities in Israel, including production in Migdal Haemek,
the “Silicon Valley” of Israel built on the land of Palestinian village
Al-Mujaydil, which was ethnically cleansed in 1948. In 1998, a
representative of L’Oreal was given the Jubilee Award by Israeli Prime
Minister Netanyahu for strengthening the Israeli economy.

*5. Dorot Garlic and Herbs*

[This entry contains Bay Area-specific information] These frozen herbs that
are sold at Trader Joe’s are shipped halfway around the world when they
could easily be purchased locally. Trader Joe’s also sells Israeli Cous Cous
and Pastures of Eden feta cheese that are made in Israel. QUIT, South Bay
Mobilization, and other groups have targeted Trader Joe’s with a “Don’t Buy
into Apartheid” campaign.

*6. Estee Lauder*

This company’s chairman Ronald Lauder is also the chairman of the Jewish
National Fund, a quasi-governmental organization that was established in
1901 to acquire Palestinian land and is connected to the continued building
of illegal settlements. Estee Lauder’s popular brands include Clinique, MAC,
Origins, Bumble & Bumble, Aveda, fragrance lines for top designers, and many
others. They have been the target of QUIT
<http://www.quitpalestine.org/>’s “Estee
Slaughter Killer Products”
campaign<http://www.quitpalestine.org/esteeslaughter/estee.html>
.

*7. Intel*

This technology company that manufactures computer processors and other
hardware components employs thousands of Israelis and has exports from
Israel totaling over $1 billion per year. They are one of Israel’s oldest
foreign supporters, having established their first development center
outside of the US in 1974 in Haifa. Al-Awda (the Palestinian Right to Return
Coalition) <http://www.al-awda.org/>has urged action against Intel for
building a facility on the land of former village Iraq Al Manshiya, which
was cleansed in 1949.

*8. Sabra*

This brand of hummus, baba ghanoush and other foods is co-owned by Israel’s
second-largest food company The Strauss Group and Pepsico. On the “Corporate
Responsibility” section of its website, The Strauss Group boasts of its
relationship to the Israeli Army, offering food products and political
support.

*9. Sara Lee*

Sara Lee holds a 30% stake in Delta Galil (see #2) and is the world’s
largest clothing manufacturer, which owns or is affiliated with such brands
as Hanes, Playtex, Champion, Leggs, Sara Lee Bakery, Ball Park hotdogs,
Wonderbra, and many others. Similar to L’Oreal (see #4), a representative of
Sara Lee received the Jubilee Award from Netanyahu for its commitment to
business with Israel.

*10. Victoria’s Secret*

Most of Victoria’s Secret’s bras are produced by Delta Galil (see #2), and
much of the cotton is also grown in Israel on confiscated Palestinian land.
Victoria’s Secret has also been the target of labor rights’ groups for
sourcing products from companies with labor violations, and by environmental
groups for their unsustainable use of paper in producing their catalogues.
That’s not sexy!

Remember, it’s also important to let these companies — and the stores that
sell them — know that we will not support them as long as they support
Israeli apartheid!
__________________________________________________

From all of us at SPHR, best wishes for a wonderful holiday season.

In solidarity,
SPHR @uOttawa

Nov. 16 - Speaking Event with Professor Marc Ellis: "Does Judaism equal Israel?"

2009-11-06T16:21:00.005-05:00

Join us for a special lecture by Professor Marc H. Ellis, an American intellectual, liberation theologian, and University Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Baylor University. Professor Ellis will take on the difficult moral questions about Jewish support for the state of Israel, as well as examining "how Israel has replaced God and gutted the prophetic moral core of Judaism."

Ellis' current writings deal with contemporary Judaism , Jewish liberation theology, Jewish-Arab relations, and justice and peace studies. His impressive body of work has been praised by figures as diverse as Noam Chomsky and the Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The late Edward Said described him as "a man to be listened to with respect and admiration." Professor Ellis' most recent book is titled "Judaism Does Not Equal Israel: The Rebirth of the Jewish Prophetic."

This discussion will take place Monday, November 16th at the University of Ottawa, Fauteux Hall, room 147 at 7:30 p.m. Entry is by donation (suggested: $5 to $10).

This is truly a unique event not to be missed and we hope you will join us.
Co-sponsored by Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights at uOttawa and Independent Jewish Voices.

For more information, please email sphr.uofo@gmail.com. Don't forget to join our Facebook event page and help to spread the word.

Right to Education campaign @ uOttawa

2009-11-05T19:23:00.002-05:00

Student Federation at the University of Ottawa adopts Palestinian Right to Education campaign

Ottawa, November 2, 2009 – In a victory for justice, University of Ottawa students successfully passed a motion affiliating their student federation to the Right to Education Campaign, a Palestinian student initiative to counter the effects of occupation on their education. Despite some opposition from Zionist and Conservative voices, the motion was successfully passed by a vote of 74 to 52.

Parts of the motion cited education as a “fundamental human right” and that the “[Israeli] occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the ongoing closures, military roadblocks, and the construction of an illegal wall prevent thousands of students and teachers from reaching their universities and schools”. The campaign commits the SFUO to support the call for international action against violations against the basic right to education in the occupied Palestinian territories, and to build connections to Palestinian Universities through initiatives such as exchanges. The SFUO campaigns committee is bound to the campaign for at least a year, when the campaign can then be reconsidered.

Mahmoud Hmouz, member of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights which put the motion forward, stated that “this victory proves that the tide is turning in Canadian Universities. Students in Canada know about the violations their peers in Palestine face and are no longer willing to stand idly by.” Robert Prazeres, also a member of SPHR points out that “we in Canada are not as far removed from the struggles of Palestinian students as we may think we are. Our universities support the ongoing injustices through links to the Israeli Academy while they ignore the plight of the Palestinian Academy and Palestinian Students. This is our response to that discrepancy.”

For more information, or to view the entire motion, contact:

Mahmoud Hmouz (English) at 613-335-4225, email mhmouz@hotmail.com
Robert Prazeres (English or French) at 613-447-4931, email bobpraz@gmail.com

Dr. Uri Davis Canadian Tour Organized by CJPME

2009-06-21T18:25:00.004-05:00

The following event is being organized by Canadians for Justice and
Peace in the Middle East (CJPME).

Does the JNF deserve tax-exempt status in Canada?  Hear Dr. Davis'
compelling arguments against the JNF privileged status in many
Western countries.

In Canadian cities this week, CJPME is hosting Dr. Uri Davis, author and
lecturer on Canadian tour.  Dr. Davis' lecture, entitled: Apartheid Israel:
Possibilities for the Struggle Within is based on his book by the same
title.  Mr. Davis will talk about the one-state and two-state options for
Israel-Palestine.  Dr. Davis describes himself as an anti-Zionist
Palestinian-Hebrew citizen of the Apartheid State of Israel.  Join
us for a surprising and refreshing perspective on the challenges facing
Israelis and Palestinians today.

Ottawa: Friday, June 26th, 7:00 p.m.
Saint Paul University - Amphitheatre, 223 Main Street
Admission is $10 to cover tour costs.

Dr. Uri Davis, has devoted his academic work since 1975 to a critical
examination of the philosophy and practice of political Zionism. His
most well-known books include:
* Israel: An Apartheid State;
* The Jewish National Fund;
* Citizenship and the State: A Comparative Study of Citizenship
Legislation in Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon;
* Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within
Uri Davis has been active in the field of defending human rights in
general, and the rights of the Palestinian people in particular since
1965. He is the chairperson of AL-BEIT: Association for the Defense
of Human Rights in Israel; senior director for legal and political affairs
of Mosaic Communities: Association for Multinational Housing in Israel;
Honorary Research Fellow at the Universities of Exeter and Durham in
the UK; and Observer-Member of the Palestinian National Council (PNC).

Note: Only the Ottawa date and locations have been posted.  For
more information or dates and locations of the London, Toronto, and
Montreal lectures, please visit CJPME's website at www.cjpme.org

Right of Return Conference

2009-06-05T13:14:00.001-05:00

In collaboration with CEPAL, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights at the

University of Ottawa invites you to the
Right of Return Conference 2009

It will be held on Saturday, June 20th in Montpetit 203 (125 University,
University of Ottawa campus).

There is NO COST for this event.

The schedule will be as follows:
4:00p.m. - 6:00p.m.: "Right of Return 101" presented by Samah Sabawi
6:00p.m. - 7:00p.m.: Dinner (Will be provided free of charge)
7:15p.m. -   : Refugees Will Return: Stories and Realities of Palestinian
Refugees presented by Monzer Zimmo and Shauna Trainor

Essay about Palestine

2009-04-23T15:31:00.007-05:00

Final Palestine Essay
Courtney Irwin
April 14, 2009
University of Ottawa

This paper will attempt to dispel the pervasive stereotypical image of what it means to be a terrorist and what narrow minded characteristics must be possessed in order for a group to be classified as such. Western governments, as a result of their power and influence, have the ability to manipulate the internationally accepted notion of terror and create an “us versus them” dichotomy towards the Eastern world. This occurs specifically in regards to terrorism. Because Western governments hold this authority in the international community, the definition is subjective, and restricts the ability for them themselves to be considered terrorists, even if they are party to those activities. The particular example of Palestine and Israel will be focused on heavily because it is a current, relevant illustration of how the narrow minded definition of terrorism serves to maintain particular interests. The government of Israel is presently carrying out apartheid in the Gaza Strip and it will be argued that this is a clear example of state terror. The Israeli government is not being scrutinized for their blatant human rights violations by the international community and there is very little appeal to deem them responsible for state terror because the current definitions are inclined to support Western states and sovereign governments. Thus, the subjective definition allows Western governments who practice state terror to operate freely while states like Palestine fall victim to these injustices. If there was a universal definition, then injustices such as the current apartheid in Palestine could be prevented and remedied. The international attention of the attacks on September 11th will be compared with the siege on the Gaza Strip to demonstrate the asymmetrical nature of the definition of terrorism. The rhetoric that is used for definitions and notions of terrorism are subjective; hence, they are representative of the Western idea of terrorism and serve to maintain particular interests which allow injustices to transpire without scrutiny.

Although there is not a universally agreed upon definition of terrorism, there are many themes and commonalities that can be seen across hundreds of definitions, especially in the Western world. Brian Jenkins, in his article, “The Changing Characteristics of Twenty First Century Global Terrorism” states that terrorism is “the deliberate intention of causing panic, disorder, and terror within an organized society” (16). In addition, he explains that terrorists “do not try to take and hold ground or physically destroy their opponent’s forces” (Jenkins 21). He notes that they usually do not have the resources or influence needed to pursue that goal. Many academics agree that the aim of terrorism is to gain publicity (22). That is, they anticipate that their incidents of violence will force media attention towards their particular cause (22). Jenkins explains that “Terrorism is aimed at the people watching, not at the actual victims” (22). Furthermore, the six basic terrorism tactics revealed by Jenkins are “bombings, assassinations, armed assaults, kidnappings, barricade and hostage situations and hijackings” (Jenkins 23).The problem with this partial explanation of what constitutes terrorism is that it allows those states that practice terrorism to participate in those acts unrestrained while small groups are marginalized and deemed as immoral. This simplistic definition fails to consider a major actor in terrorism, which are governments themselves.

This understanding of terrorism is inadequate because it neglects those states that are participants of terrorism. The most blatant example of a state that uses terrorism is Israel. Although they are not a Western nation, they are entirely supported by the United States. The power and influence that the United States has over the international community is clear, as the actions of the Israeli government against Palestinians are virtually unknown in comparison with the meagre attempts of the Palestinians to defend themselves. The comprehension of the definition of terrorism must be challenged here, as the Palestinian people are often seen as terrorists while the actual state terror employed by Israel remains unchallenged. Charles Kegley, in his article, “The Characteristics, Causes, and Controls of the new Global Terrorism: an Introduction”, defines state terror as “terrorist tactics practiced by a state within its own borders, such as the genocide performed by Nazi Germany” (9). If this definition includes genocide as a form of terrorism, then it can undoubtedly be argued that the Israeli government are perpetrators of state terror.

The plight of Palestinians in Gaza is a direct result of the actions of the Israeli military who are currently engaging in literally terrorizing and forcing apartheid on a group of people. The war on Gaza has led to over “5000 people wounded, 20 000 homes damaged, 15% of all buildings in Gaza damaged or destroyed, 50 000 homeless, and 400 000 without water” (“Factsheet: Israel’s War on Gaza”). In addition, fifty United Nations facilities, twenty one medical facilities damaged or destroyed, twenty mosques, and ten water sewage pipes were damaged or completely destroyed totalling an estimated over two billion dollars in damage (“Factsheet: Israel’s war on Gaza”). Additionally, 48% of all medical facilities were destroyed including fifteen hospitals and forty-three health care centres (“Factsheet: Israel’s war on Gaza”). Thirty-nine schools, forty-two public civilian facilities, one hundred and seven privately owned workshops and small industrial and commercial plants have all been completely destroyed (“Stop the Genocide in Gaza!”). Ninety police and security installations and twenty five sites that were used for military purposes by armed groups have been obliterated by the Israeli military (“Stop the Genocide in Gaza!”). In the most recent siege on Gaza, over three hundred children and seventy-five women were killed in the Gaza Strip (“Stop the Genocide in Gaza!”). Moreover, Palestinian prisoners who can be arbitrarily jailed for years without any reason are subject to torture and degrading treatment (Jarrar 2009). Yafa Jarrar, a Palestinian woman, spoke at the University of Ottawa, and described the cells that Palestinians are kept in as “twenty people kept within a three metre by five metre area with very little food, no access to soap or hygiene, no change of clothing and unable to communicate with family” (Jarrar 2009). Also, in Gaza, the unemployment rate is the highest in the world at over 80% and two thirds of the population are without power and running water (“Factsheet: Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza Following Israeli Assault”.). The Israeli government has created “Jewish only” roads that run through Palestinian land making it extremely difficult to traverse across the city to see family, get to work, get medical attention etc (Shulamit 2007). This is a list of some of the injustices that occur on a daily basis for Palestinians in Gaza, but it is by no means exhaustive.

The Israeli government controls all the borders, the airspace and territorial waters, Gaza’s infrastructure and economy, and decides who may enter and leave the Gaza Strip (“Factsheet: Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza Following Israeli Assault”.). This way, humanitarian and medical aid by the rest of the world can remain out of a place that so desperately needs it. Dr. Abdel Rahman Lawrendy visited the University of Ottawa after being in Gaza in January 2009 and described the hospitals as “without morphine, Tylenol, and Advil; the refugee camps as extremely overcrowded, disease ridden and lacking proper sewage treatment” (Lawrendy 2009). He explained that almost all farms in Gaza were targeted by Israeli military as they shot countless livestock and pulled out hundreds of years old olive trees and burnt down barns (Lawrendy 2009). Furthermore, he noted that many mosques, hospitals, and schools were actually shot at from close range; that is, they were not accidently bombed, rather, they were particularly targeted to cause terror and kill people (Lawrendy 2009). All of these illegal actions can be compared with the defence that the Palestinian people have come up with against the large Israeli military.

In comparison, Palestinians have defended themselves by shooting makeshift rockets and suicide bombings and have, since 2001, killed a total of nineteen Israeli civilians (“Factsheet: Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza following Israeli Assault”). Ramadan Shalah of the Palestinian Jihad explained “Our enemy possess the most sophisticated weapons in the world...we have nothing...except the weapon of martyrdom” (Raymond 82). Yet still, as a result of the subjective understanding and connotations of the term “terrorism”, Palestinians are often deemed terrorists instead of victims attempting to defend themselves. Richard Falk explains this hypocrisy by stating that “the typical description of terrorism often overlooks the calculating character of recourse to wanton and indiscriminate political violence from a variety of sources, including the deepest recesses of governmental bureaucracy operating in a cool, calculating, rational style” (Falk 54). The actions of the Israeli government, who is strongly supported by the United States, is believed to have more legitimacy then the small group of Palestinians who are fighting for their freedom and the land that is rightfully theirs.

All of these facts point to the realization that the Israeli government is not trying to defend itself from the aggression of Palestinians. They are actually targeting civilians in attempts to colonize and oppress residents of Gaza. Their actions fall under some criteria of the description mentioned previously of what the notion of terrorism is, yet, they are uncontested as terrorists internationally. There is a misconception that because they are a legitimate state, they have legitimacy over Palestinians. All of the Israeli aggression has led to serious psychological and physical damage for Palestinians, especially children who live in constant fear of their families being disappeared or murdered or their houses being destroyed at any moment in time (Jarrar 2009). The attacks have evidently been on civilian “soft targets” to cause the greatest amount of harm. There is an obvious effort to cripple the economy and then the embargo on materials that may enter Gaza is representative of a premeditated decision to subject an entire people to brutality. The description of the general definition of terrorism that was mentioned previously is different in the Israel/Palestine context because the Israeli government is not trying to attract any attention to their terrorist actions. Additionally, contrary to the explanation, they are trying to take hold and physically destroy a group of people. Neither of these are generally accepted as characteristic of a terrorist organization. As a result of the incomplete description of what constitutes terrorism, they are able to partake in these actions and are easily able to manipulate media outlets to project the image of “the terrorists” on Palestinians.

The subjectivity of the notion of terrorism towards the Western understanding of it caters to ignorance of injustices that occur internationally. For example, David Rapoport, in his article, “The Four waves of Rebel Terror and September 11th” states “September 11, 2001 is the most destructive day in the long, bloody history of rebel terrorism” (36). Not to minimize or justify the attacks on September 11th, but since that day almost all researchers and academics in the field of terrorism focus on those actions. David Rapoport is one among countless academics that view the attacks on the World Trade Centre as the only major injustice by terrorists, which is a huge oversight. This act of terror was indisputably horrific and significant for Americans; however, the media and international attention that was on those attacks is notably disproportionate to the amount of attention placed on Palestine presently. Following September 11th was a massive campaign of anti-terrorism internationally with many states participating in rectifying the damage that occurred. The economy of the United States was able to recover and the city of New York was still able to prosper following the attacks. These actions can be contrasted with the lack of international appeal to free the Palestinian citizens from the oppression of the Israeli government, improve their atrocious living conditions, and recognize them as a sovereign state. In addition, the readiness to help the Americans and initiatives taken by other states can be distinguished from the uneasiness by the international community to even question the Israeli government for their illegal actions or try them for their terrorist involvement.

One of the reasons that there is no international appeal to assist Palestinians like there was to help Americans is that the understanding of terrorism is biased towards thinking that governments are moral and legitimate and small groups are immoral. Just because Israel is a democracy with Western support does not mean that they are reasonable in their treatment of Palestinians, the natives of the land in question. The biased understanding of what constitutes terrorism allows the Western concept to pervade the international community thus allowing injustices to occur. The stereotypical image of a terrorist from a Western state perspective must be abolished in order for those states that are guilty of terrorism to be reprimanded for their criminal actions. The widely held misconception that terrorism is a senseless act carried out by desperate individuals or a group upon a legitimate government in order to gain attention to their political goal must be eradicated from our understanding (Jenkins 21). Furthermore, just because large states have more resources and intelligence and are able to influence the international arena does not make them legitimate authorities who can justify terrorism. The belief that large states are moral and groups that act contrary to those governments are immoral is a misconception that must be dispelled in order for there to be justice. The international community together must come up with an appropriate definition that will expand the current explanations to include large states that are just as guilty of committing terrorism as small groups.

The failure of the international community to find an accepted definition of terrorism that refrains from only including the stereotyped image of a terrorist and incorporates state terror helps inequalities pervade the lives of Palestinians. The American support for the Israeli apartheid and their own instances of state terror undeniably will make it difficult to come up with a definition that would reprimand state terrorists. Unfortunately, Palestine is not the only victim of state terror by large governments that is occurring today. Thus, if Israel were to be judged for their actions, Americans would also be scrutinized for their illegal activities. Although there is very little international attention and significance placed on the Israeli apartheid, increased awareness and pressure on the instruments of international law to find states accountable for their illegal actions may eventually lead to self determination for Palestinians. The illegal actions of the Israeli government in deliberately trying to suppress and terrorize an entire ethnic group must be remedied. Their attacks on mosques, schools, hospitals, police stations, farms, and universities can no longer be justified as “counter terrorism”. Their actions are deliberate decisions to cripple the economy and make the life of a Palestinian extremely difficult and not worth living in their homeland. The connotations of the word terrorism must be critically examined so as to include major perpetrators of the act. If the international community were to be successful in agreeing upon a more objective explanation of what signifies terrorism, then the blatant disregard for human rights and the lives of Palestinians could be resolved.

Moving Screening

2009-04-23T15:28:00.004-05:00

CEPAL and SPHR are proud to present the 2009 Palestinian Film Festival.
The festival will feature two films, "The Children of Ibdaa" and "Tale of
the Three Jewels."

When: 25th April, 2009 - 7-10pm
Where: Montpetit Hall, 203.  125 University prt

Snacks will be provided between the showing of the two films and donations
are welcome to help finance CEPAL's volunteers in Palestinian refugee camps
in Lebanon this summer.

Thank you and hope to see you there!

To Boycott Israel... or Not?

2009-04-22T20:23:00.004-05:00

Joel Bleifuss
In These Times

March 30, 2009

At the height of the war in Gaza, author Naomi Klein endorsed the campaign known as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). A coalition of Palestinian groups founded the BDS movement on July 9, 2005, as a way for the international community to put pressure on Israel to reach a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.

In her syndicated column, Klein wrote, “It’s time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.”

Klein, author of the best selling books, The Shock Doctrine and No Logo, has taken heat for her position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Israel is always more emotionally difficult for me,” she told New Voices, a national Jewish student magazine, “I think mainly it’s because of the force of the reaction and the closeness [of the] reaction. It’s not a stranger that is upset about [what I write], it’s people in my family who write me long letters saying, ‘Oh, I hate you!’ ”

Similar strong feelings are on display at Hampshire College, which has been debating whether it should divest from companies that do business in Israel. Hampshire’s Students for Justice in Palestine wants its college to divest from companies like Caterpillar, General Electric, Motorola and United Technologies. In response, Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz has threatened to lead a divestment campaign against Hampshire College if the administration gives in to the students’ demands.

Is BDS the right response? Rabbi Arthur Waskow, a contributing editor of Ramparts and a former fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, says that the BDS campaign will not work. He maintains that significant differences exist between the political situation in apartheid-era South Africa and present-day Israel.

In 1969, Waskow began campaigning for a two-state peace settlement between Israel and Palestine. He is co-author of The Tent of Abraham: Stories of Hope and Peace for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Currently, he is the director of the Shalom Center, a Philadelphia-based organization that he describes as “a prophetic voice in Jewish, multi-religious, and American life that brings Jewish and other spiritual thought and practice to bear on seeking peace, pursuing justice, healing the earth, and celebrating community.”

Recently, Klein and Waskow spoke with In These Times about the efficacy of the BDS strategy.

Naomi, won’t your BDS proposal strategy simply strengthen the position of Israeli nationalists, who will then be able to turn to moderates and say, “We are under attack!”

Naomi Klein: The hard right seems to be strengthening all on its own, if we judge by the results of the recent Israeli elections.

But I’ve noticed a change within Israel. I got quite a few e-mails from Israelis saying, “I’ve always opposed this, but I feel that it is the only option left.” I think that’s a reflection of the feeling of desperation among progressive Israelis who are watching their country move hard right and seeing the level of violence increase exponentially.

Arthur, you were an anti-apartheid activist who supported a BDS approach to South Africa. Are there similarities between the Bantustans, the small areas of South Africa that were under “independent” black rule, and the Occupied Territories?

Rabbi Arthur Waskow: There are similarities, but the BDS approach is not the way to bring about the change that is absolutely necessary.

The most important, and probably the only effective, change that can be brought about is a serious change in the behavior of the U.S. government. That means we need to engage in serious organizing within the United States.

Naomi has written about the failure of carrots in changing the way Israel has behaved so far, and I agree. One carrot the Israeli government has essentially ignored, with the help of the Bush administration, is the offer of the Arab League, led by a surprisingly creative King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. It outlines a general peace treaty between Israel and all the Arab states, on the condition of a peace treaty being negotiated between Israel and a viable, sensible Palestinian state with perhaps some variations on the 1967 boundaries.

But the Israeli government of the last 10 years has been totally uninterested because it thought it could get away with de facto annexing more and more land of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

If the U.S. government had said, “Here’s the deal: the Arab League proposal is what we are after, and we will offer carrots and we will offer sticks, whatever is necessary to bring this about.” Then there would be very serious change, both within the Palestinian territories and Israel.

Real political change within the United States could come through an Abrahamic Alliance, an alliance between big chunks—though, of course, not all—of the Jewish community, the Muslim community, and the Christians.

Boycotts and divestment are not going to do it. I understand that they express a kind of personal purity—”not with my money you don’t”—but they won’t change U.S. policy, which is exactly what needs to be changed.

NK: It is not a question of personal purity. It’s a question of basic solidarity. A call for this tactic has come from coalitions of Palestinian groups representing a very wide spectrum of political parties, labor unions and community groups.

Interestingly, the country which has responded the most seriously to the BDS movement is South Africa, precisely because the parallels are seen most clearly in South Africa.

A lot of this criticism of the BDS movement has been: Why Israel? Why not Sri Lanka? And the point is that, according to basic left principles of solidarity, the tactics should be chosen by the oppressed communities themselves.

In terms of the ultimate solution and what that should be, BDS and Arthur’s calls for an Abrahamic Alliance are not incompatible goals. I think that really what we’re talking about is how you build pressure toward a resolution.

AW: But Naomi, something different is going on inside Israeli Jewish and Israeli Palestinian society than what was going on within white South Africa. Leaving aside the fact that in Israel, about a fifth of the population with some voting power is Israeli Palestinians, within Jewish Israel there is a real internal split.

Even though during the last election Israelis moved to the hard right, a serious body of people is still working for a two-state solution. And the only force in the world that can deliver that is the United States government.

You’re right that many Palestinians have called for divestment, etc., but I disagree that the oppressed automatically get to decide their own tactics. For example, Hamas made a terrible ethical and practical political mistake by responding to the embargo and blockade on Gaza with rocket attacks on civilians in Israel.

I recognize that there had to be resistance, but there were nonviolent alternatives. There were beginning to be “ship-ins,” in the model of sit-ins. Small boats that had been certified as not carrying any weapons, began to cross the Mediterranean carrying medicine and food, especially baby food, to civilians in Gaza. The first couple got through, but then beginning with the massive attack on Gaza, the Israeli navy forced others back.

NK: They rammed one and may have fired shots at another.

AW: Yes. Now, the question is, what would have happened if the Palestinian leadership, including Hamas, had said to Europeans and to Americans, “We welcome this vigorous, assertive, nonviolent resistance to the blockade. We beg for doctors and peaceniks and academics and everybody under the sun to start joining in and bringing these boats, and we appeal for pastors and priests and rabbis and imams to start coming in these boats.” In fact, there was a mass public welcome of the first boats that got through.

But Hamas did not choose that response. Rather they shot rockets into civilian neighborhoods, which is both ineffective and unethical.

NK: Let me clarify. I don’t believe any oppressed community deserves blind support for its tactics. But it’s precisely because there has been so much blanket criticism of any Palestinian armed resistance that I think there is an added responsibility to respect calls for nonviolent solidarity actions like BDS, which are the most effective tactics in the nonviolent arsenal.

AW: But the question is, “What will work?” And when you say what the tactics could be, I agree that sanctions are a thousand times better than shooting rockets at civilian neighborhoods, but they don’t work. The nonviolent tactic of the ship-ins was direct, visible, and could’ve become a massive event. It would’ve been as direct a challenge to the blockade as the sit-ins in the restaurants were to American segregation.

The sit-ins in the American South were extraordinary because people didn’t say, “Pass a new law to end segregation.” They said, “We ourselves are going to end segregation. We imagine the future without segregation, we’re going to do it, and then you all are going to have to decide what to do with us. Kill us or change the law.” So that was extraordinarily effective. For me, the question is, “How do you create that kind of change?”

The Presbyterians and a few other Protestant groups broached the question of divestment from Caterpillar, which was producing the bulldozers that were knocking down Palestinian houses. I told the Presbyterians, “This is a waste of time. What would work would be if you all decided that every Presbyterian Church in America was going to bring an Israeli and a Palestinian at the same time to lay out the Geneva Initiative for a two-state peace treaty and the Presbyterian Church was going to commit itself to lobbying for that with the Congress and the president.” That would’ve been incredibly effective, and still would be, if the churches and some Jews and some Muslims got together on this.

NK: I think those are wonderfully complementary strategies. This problem is going to take everything we’ve got. And that’s why I’m so resistant to taking such powerful tactics as BDS off the table at such a crucial moment. The U.S. government was hardly a world leader when it came to sanctions against South Africa. But when universities and municipalities joined the sanctions movement, it eventually forced the federal government to get with the program.

I support the BDS strategy for Israel because it will work again, and it will work because it cuts to the heart of something that is so important to so many Israelis. And that is the idea of normalcy, the idea that Israel is really an honorary adjunct to North America and Europe—even though it happens to be located in the Middle East.

At the moment, it is possible to lead a very comfortable, very secure, very cosmopolitan life in most parts of Israel—despite the fact that Israel is at war with neighbors. I don’t think Israel has a right to simultaneously rain bombs and missiles on Gaza, to attack Lebanon in 2006, to massively expand the settlements, and also have this state of normalcy within its borders. For justice to come, the status quo will have to first become uncomfortable.

When concerts are canceled in Tel Aviv, when tourists don’t come to Israel, then, I believe, many Israelis will start putting pressure on their political leaders to finally negotiate a lasting peace. So I don’t buy the argument that they’ll just feel isolated and become more right wing. The threat of isolation can be a very powerful tool for progressive change in a country like Israel.

Naomi, Helen Suzman, a white South African who was a leader of the anti-apartheid movement, who died this past January, argued that economic sanctions against South Africa during apartheid had hurt the entire population, particularly the poor. Would not the same thing happen in the occupied territories?

NK: It is true that in South Africa it did hurt the entire population. And the call for sanctions was consciously made despite that fact. And that is why it is so extraordinary, that there has been such a widespread call from Palestinians despite the fact that they will also suffer under BDS.

But we can’t compare the kind of suffering Gazans are facing under the Israeli blockade and embargo to what Israelis would suffer if a BDS campaign were to get off the ground. We’re talking about people in Gaza lacking life-saving medicine, cooking oil and food, versus Israel losing some foreign investment, and not having concerts and some academic conferences. These are not in the same league.

AW: Naomi, you said you see them as complementary strategies, but in the real world, people have to decide what to put their energies into. Do we think that if the Presbyterian church is trying to put its energies into boycotts this time, not just of Caterpillar but of all Israeli society, that that’s going to be workable alongside of, and at the same time as, mobilizing Israeli and Palestinian voices simultaneously in those churches, and then those churches lobbying Congress on these solutions? I don’t believe it.

NK: That is what happened with South Africa. The BDS strategy personalizes the dispute. You follow the money at your own school, your own shopping habits, your own government, and extraordinarily lively debates ensue that are not just about the boycott strategy but are about why the boycott is happening. That’s happening right now at Hampshire College.

The boycott starts the debate, it brings teeth to it so you’re not just signing yet another statement that can be ignored. Or bringing together like-minded people to listen to another speaker or dialogue.

And that’s the dynamic that BDS promises. Just as in South Africa, where you had a lot of industry saying to the apartheid regime, “We can’t live with this any longer,” we would have that dynamic within Israel.

AW: But there is a huge difference between South Africa and Israel. In South Africa, the U.S. government was not pouring billions of dollars into the country. Whereas, in the case of Israel, the U.S. government is. That support seems to me to be far more the point.

The likelihood of Israelis saying, “Wait a minute, this is a serious problem,” is going to be much greater if the Obama administration says: “Here’s the deal. There’s going to be an emergency peace conference in the Middle East. It’s going to come out with a Palestinian state that’s really independent, not chopped up in little bits, and there will be a peace treaty with all the Arab states.” I can see the possibility of a whole new American outlook making peace in the Middle East.

NK: Once again, the question is how do we get to the point where the Obama administration feels the need to get tough and say, “Here’s the deal.” I don’t believe that mere dialogue will bring us there. I’m arguing that BDS is a fantastic movement-building tool precisely because it is a conversation starter; it ignites the debate. It makes the conflict personal in the same way as the amazing grassroots movement we had in the ’80s against South Africa did in the United States. It is only once those debates are raging that there will be the kind of bottom-up pressure on Obama that could lead to a real shift in U.S. policy.

AW: Yes, there needs to be a real life, day-by-day connection to making change happen. But from my point of view, if you could bring Muslims and Jews and Christians together, meeting each other, talking to each other, getting past the fear and stereotypes about each other, if you could get that happening, that would be a piece of the future the way the sit-ins were a piece of the future.

The way to build the movement in the United States is for the people who are here to build a movement among themselves. A big chunk of the unrepresented Jewish population in the United States—somewhere between half and two-thirds of it—agree that there needs to be a two-state solution. Their institutions either don’t agree or won’t do much about it.

Arthur, during the war on Gaza, J Street, which is a new “pro-peace, pro-Israel” group, posted an editorial on its website stating, “We recognize that neither Israelis nor Palestinians have a monopoly on right or wrong.”

In response, Noah Pollack, on the Commentary magazine blog, wrote, “It is time that thinking people start calling J Street what it actually is: an anti-Israeli group.” What is it about Israeli politics that makes it so difficult to discuss?

AW: Well of course Commentary would say that. But it’s not difficult to discuss. In fact, J Street has gone right on and continued speaking out.

Much more to the point, and much more upsetting, was that Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, wrote an op-ed in Forward condemning J Street, saying that J Street’s “words are deeply distressing because they are morally deficient, profoundly out of touch with Jewish sentiment and also appallingly naive.” He represents, in theory, a million Jews. But it didn’t kill J Street.

You can’t do now what was done in the 1970s to the first American Jewish organization to talk about a two-state solution, Breira, which got killed by attacks from the center as well as the right wing of Jewish institutional life. That’s not working this time.

NK: While I understand that the Jewish community is finding voices that are more diverse, we have to be clear that this is not just a Jewish issue. And maybe it shouldn’t even be Jews who lead this issue. In Europe, it isn’t just Jews who are leading this issue.

AW: Well, the other difference between Europe and the United States is that in Europe, the Jewish community, for reasons of history 75 years ago, doesn’t have much political clout. In the United States, the Jewish community does. So changing the Jewish community, building progressive organizations is both possible and necessary in the American Jewish community.

I don’t attack BDS as unethical. I’m saying it won’t work. But there is one major ethical defect to it, I think, which is that it doesn’t embody the future in the present. The future it does not embody is the one most precious and most legitimate for Israel: peace with all the Arab states.

I agree that a policy of all carrots for Israel and all sticks for the Palestinians is both an ethical and practical disaster. But sticks-only for Israel won’t and shouldn’t work, and that’s what the BDS approach feels like. Sometimes that works anyway—it did in South Africa. But it hasn’t worked (and shouldn’t) when used against Palestine—what stronger BDS could there be than the one against Gaza?—and it hasn’t worked (and shouldn’t be used) against Cuba.

In the United States around civil rights, it was embodying the future in the present that worked. What will and should work now is that One Big Carrot of peace, with sticks right behind it if an Israeli government rejects the carrot.

NK: First of all, Israel has received all carrots all the time, and introducing any sticks at all would represent real progress. Also I think BDS does embody the future, because it says that Palestinian lives matter deeply. There is such an asymmetry of outrage on this issue—the uproar about Israeli universities facing a boycott at the same time as Palestinian schools and universities are being bombed, for instance. When we treat Israeli war crimes as deserving of international sanction, we are rejecting this double standard and embodying the future we want, which is a future of genuine equality.

AW: But what would have happened if Hampshire College had twinned itself with the university in Gaza and a university in Ramallah and had done its best to make real-life connections?

NK: Frankly, not as much as what is going to come of their bold BDS stance. At Hampshire College, there have been plenty of exchanges and dialogues of all kinds, but those don’t change the economic and political dynamics of the conflict, which are what need changing.

AW: I agree that that is what needs changing, but I don’t think this is the way to do it. I don’t think we’re going to agree on which set of tactics are best, but I guess people are going to have to make up their own minds. I do think we have to recognize that nothing is going to happen unless the policy of the United States changes.

NK: I agree with that. We just have a disagreement about how we get there. I think BDS changes the dynamic, because it inserts multiple other economic powers into the equation. It would put grassroots pressure on the Obama administration that could become hard to ignore. And also pressure within Israel. I certainly agree that it will piss off Israelis, but I also think we need to acknowledge that ignoring the call is an active position toward Palestinians, it’s not a passive one.

Executive Positions for 2009-2010

2009-04-07T23:48:00.002-05:00

The executive for the 2009-2010 year are as follows:

Secretary
Jenny Doswell

Membership Development & Campaigns Director
Meghan Jorgensen

Organizational Director
Danielle Blab

Media Relations Director
Louisa Worrel

Information and Research Director
Robert Prazeres

External Relations Officer
Pete Beaulieu Blais

Internal Affairs Director
Haya Zaidan

Advertising Director
Caryma Sa'd

Event about Humanitarian Aid in Gaza

2009-03-16T22:40:00.002-05:00

Were you ever curious about what really took place in Gaza? Ever wondered if the news reportings were accurate? Or even what the humanitarian situation on the ground was like?

If so, join us for a unique lecture, presented by Dr.Abdel-Rahman Lawendy, giving
you a true first hand humanitarian account of the implications brought about
by the offensive on Gaza.

When  March 19th, 7:30pm
Where  351 Fauteux, University of Ottawa (57 Louis Pasteur)

Background:
Born & raised in Waterloo, Ontario, Dr. Abdel-Rahman Lawendy has not only
become a role model for many Canadian doctors and humanitarians, but also an
advocate for peace and human rights. At age 19, he travelled to war-torn
Sarajevo as a United Nations volunteer. At age 21, he cycled across Canada
to raise awareness and more than $20,000 for the Bosnian relief effort.

More recently, Dr. Lawendy has travelled to war-torn Gaza during the latest
crisis and was part of the international medical volunteer team who worked
at a local Gaza hospital. He was able to document and chronicle many of the
events. Currently, he is travelling to various campuses to share his
experiences and provide a first hand humanitarian account from a medical
perspective, continuing to promote his message about the importance of peace
and power of people to effect change.

Protests Against Poster Bans

2009-02-24T13:43:00.002-05:00

On Thursday February 26th, join OPIRG-Carleton and show your support for
SAIA and SPHR. Come to a public discussion and TWO RALLIES (one after the
other) to call the Administrations at Carleton and the U of O to account by
asking them to clarify why and how these posters were banned.  Show these
administrations that civil discourse is dependent upon rights to free
expression and organizing, especially around contentious issues.

Date: Thursday February 26th 2009

Time for Carleton: 11:30 - 1:00pm.  The regular shuttle service leaves
Carleton at 1:30pm after the Carleton rally will and arrive at the U of O at
1:50pm.  People will gather at the shuttle drop-off location (across from
Montpetit) to begin the rally at the U of O.  The rally at the U of O will
begin in front of the shuttle bus-stop at 2:00pm.


Meeting location at Carleton: C264 Loeb Building
Meeting location at U of O: shuttle bus-stop (across from Monpetit)

*Event Description: The rally at Carleton will be mostly silent.  People
are invited to symbolically cover their mouths.  The rally at the University
of Ottawa will not be silent.  If you have letters (from groups, unions,
organizations or individuals) you would like to deliver to the university
administrations about the banning of the Israeli Apartheid poster please
bring them with you.  Both rallies will end at the presidents' offices.


*Campus Maps:* http://www2.carleton.ca/campus/  and
http://www.uottawa.ca/maps/maincampus.html

Carleton is accessible by public transit. The O-train as well as the number
4,7 and 117 all have stops at Carleton.  The U of O is also highly
accessible by public transit.  Many main downtown routes stop at the U of
O.  To plan your trip or view transit maps please visit:
http://octranspo.com

All are welcome (you don't need to be a university student). People are
welcome to join both rallies or only one.

Spread the word, bring your friends and show your support for the right to
organize on campus by calling the Carleton and U of O Administrations to
account.

Israeli Apartheid Week 2009

2009-02-23T23:12:00.002-05:00

Israel Apartheid Week

Mark your calendars - the 5th Annual Israeli Apartheid Week will take
place across the globe from March 1-8, 2009!

First launched in Toronto in 2005, IAW has grown to become one of the
most important global events in the Palestine solidarity calendar.
Last year, more than 25 cities around the world participated in the
week's activities, which also commemorated 60 years since the
expulsion of the Palestinian people from their homes and land in
1947-1948. IAW 2008 was launched with a live broadcast from the South
African township of Soweto by Palestinian leader and former member of
the Israeli Knesset, Azmi Bishara.

This year, IAW occurs in the wake of Israel's barbaric assault against
the people of Gaza. Lectures, films, and actions will make the point
that these latest massacres further confirm the true nature of Israeli
Apartheid. IAW 2009 will continue to build and strengthen the growing
Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement at a global level.

Events at the University of Ottawa and Carleton

Monday, March 2nd - 7:30PM
Political Prisoners from Turtle Island to Palestine with Bob Lovelave and Yafa Jarrar.
University of Ottawa, Fauteux 232

Tuesday, March 3rd - 6:30PM
The Invisible Nation: The Story of the Algonquin (presented by IPSMO) with Claudette Commanda, Richard Desgardins, Robert Monderie.
Library and Archives Canada, Auditorium, 395 Wellington Street

Wednesday, March 4th - 7:30PM
Apartheid Israel: Democracy as an Existential Threat with Omar Barghouti, Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
University of Ottawa, Fauteux B147

Thursday, March 5th - 7PM
Boycott Israel - The Apartheid State with Ronnie Kasrils, a Jewish South African and former Minister in an ANC government.
Carleton University, 301 Azrieli Theatre

Friday, March 6th - 7PM
From Warsaw Ghetto to Gaza Ghetto with Suzanne Weiss, a Jewish holocaust survivor, and Samah Sabawi, a Palestinian Canadian born in Gaza.
Carleton University, 102 Azrieli Theatre

Daytime events will be posted at a later date.

URGENT: IAW Posters Banned on Campus

2009-02-23T23:08:00.002-05:00

*University of Ottawa Bans Israeli Apartheid Week Poster - Call to Action
February 21, 2009*

On February 20, 2009, the University of Ottawa became the second Ottawa
administration to ban the posters of Israeli Apartheid Week 2009, following
the lead of Carleton University in a blatant violation of free expression
for students speaking out on human rights. Like Carleton University's
administration, the University of Ottawa's Communications Office used
spurious "human rights" claims to ban the poster. The Communications
Office's short communique to Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights reads:

"A poster from the campus group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights has
recently come to the attention of the Communications Office. All posters
approved by the Communications Office must promote a campus culture where
all members of the community can play a part in a declaration of human
rights recognizing the inherent dignity and equal rights of all students.
Consequently, we will not place this particular poster on our campus
billboards."

Please view the poster here:
http://www.apartheidweek.org/sites/apartheidweek.org/files/Israeli%20Apartheid%20Week%202009%20poster.jpg

This curt note notably fails to explain how the poster by noted cartoonist
Carlos Latuff, depicting an Israeli attack helicopter (labeled "Israel")
firing a missile at a Palestinian child (labeled "Gaza"), does not
"recognize the inherent dignity and equal rights of all students". In fact,
the banning of the poster is a failure to recognize the dignity and equal
rights of Palestinian students and those who seek to expose the violations
of human rights of Palestinians.

The poster is symbolic but it also depicts a factual situation. 430 children
were killed by the Israeli military in its latest attack on Gaza. It seems
that according to a growing number of campus administrations, depicting
these killings on a poster is some kind of human rights violation, while the
killings themselves, or the bombing of a University in Gaza, are not
(neither campus administration condemned the killings of civilians or the
bombing of the Islamic University in Gaza).

In contrast to these campus administrations, the movement for Palestinian
human rights is at the forefront of the struggle to recognize the inherent
dignity and equal rights of all students, and indeed, all people. As the
students at Carleton wrote when the poster was banned on their campus, "the
campaign is proudly anti-racist, and founded on the principles of opposition
to all forms of racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. It draws its
inspiration from the global campaign to end South African apartheid and is
led by many of the same individuals who were at the forefront of that
earlier struggle."

We present the same demands to the University of Ottawa as the students at
Carleton University demanded of their administration:

1. Immediately lift the ban on the Israeli Apartheid Week poster and
publicly apologize for the banning.
2. Explain, publicly and precisely, how the profound error of banning the
poster was made and address how to prevent such violations from occurring in
future.
3. Sponsor a full public debate--ensuring generous access to the entire
university community--on the University of Ottawa's position on the proposed
institutional boycott of Israeli academic institutions.
4. Appoint a university/community Commission to investigate the record of
the University in relation to democratic discourse and equity around issues
of Palestine solidarity.

We call on student organizations, social justice groups and concerned
individuals around the world to support students at the University of Ottawa
and the broader fight for freedom of expression.

Please take the following actions:
* Email/Fax/Call the President of the University of Ottawa, Allan Rock,
demanding that he immediately restore the Charter rights of students and
send a copy of your message of support to the Director of the Communications
Office, Andree Dumulon. Please send a copy of your letter to
sphr.uofo@gmail.com
Allan Rock: email president@uOttawa.ca, fax (613)562-5103, phone
(613)562-5809
Director of communications: email adumulon@uOttawa.ca, phone (613)562-5800
ext. 315

Awareness Event for Gaza

2009-01-15T18:53:00.001-05:00

SPHR is hosting an event at the Agora in the University Centre of the University of Ottawa. This event is an awareness event for the current situation in Gaza and the inhumane attacks suffered by the people. The event will take place all day on Monday, January 19th, so make sure to drop by the University Centre.

Jeff Halper Event

2009-01-15T18:44:00.004-05:00

Israel has committed a new massacre against the besieged people of the Gaza
strip. 360 Palestinians were killed and many more injured during the first
three days of bombing. In the wake of this unprecedented violence, the
Israeli government has mounted an "emergency PR campaign" to legitimize
these war crimes. The Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs has described
this wanton killing as "Israel's right to defend itself." Concerned
Canadians need the information to cut through the spin and learn what is
really happening on the ground in Israel/Palestine...
Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) is pleased to present a pan-Canadian
speaking tour this January 2009 featuring Jeff Halper, Coordinator of the
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)*. Don't miss these two
free events!

Event #1: *Jeff Halper: "Israel/Palestine: Towards Peace or Apartheid?"
When: Sunday January 18, 7PM
Where: Marion Hall Auditorium, University of Ottawa
Halper will present the political situation and look at various options for
resolving the conflict; two states, one state--bi-national or democratic, or
a regional confederation.

Event #2: *Jeff Halper: "Palestine: From Apartheid to Warehousing"
When: Monday January 19, 8PM
Where: Kailash Mital Theatre (Formerly Alumni theatre) Southam Hall,
Carleton University
Israel is attempting to formally impose an apartheid regime over Palestine
in the guise of a two-state solution, which is the thrust of the so-called
"Annapolis Peace Process." But if it can't succeed with that, then it will
simply continue to strengthen the de facto apartheid regime that exists
today, by turning it into a permanent state of warehousing. Taking a cue
from Naomi Klein and others, Halper will show how the Palestinians are the
first entire people to be classified as "surplus humanity," and that Israel
is exporting this model internationally.

Background:
Israeli author and anthropologist Jeff Halper has been one of the leaders of
Israeli peace activism based on non-violent direct action and civil
disobedience to the Israeli occupation. He is the co-founder and coordinator
of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions http://www.icahd.org/eng/.
He took part in the Free Gaza flotilla which broke the Israeli siege of
Gaza. He was nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize by the American
Friends Service Committee, together with Palestinian intellectual Ghassan
Andoni, for his work "to liberate both the Palestinian and Israeli people
from the yoke of structural violence."

PLEASE NOTE BOTH EVENTS ARE FREE, BUT DONATIONS ARE WELCOME!

Sponsored by:
Independent Jewish Voices (IJV Canada)
Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA-Carleton)
Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR-Ottawa)
Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies: Human Rights Program (Carleton
University)
Not In Our Name: Jewish Voices Opposing Zionism (NION)
United Jewish People's Order
Canadian Union of Postal Workers
Canadian Arab Federation
Near East Cultural and Educational Foundation
Canadian Auto Workers
Canadian Friends of Sabeel
Canadian Friends Service Committee
KAIROS: Canadian Ecumencial Justice Initatives

Events for the Upcoming Week

2008-11-23T14:58:00.005-05:00

This coming week is full of events and we want all of our members to be a part of it! SPHR is having three events this week, starting with:

Monday, November 24: SPHR will participate in STAND's event "From Me 2U" Refugee Solidarity Night. This event will educate about human rights violations in Darfur and Palestine nowadays, and educate about the Holocaust. The event will take place at 1848 at 7:00 pm.

Film Fest
Wednesday 26: We will be screening the movie "The Colour of Olives" in Morisset room 256. Doors will open at 7 and screening will start at 7:30. There will be a discussion after the movie.

Thursday 27: "Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land" will be screened on Thursday. The location of for this film is Fauteux room 137. Doors will open at 7 and the movie will start at 7:30. There will be a discussion after the movie.

***** All events are FREE! *****

*There is another tentative event for Saturday so stay tuned for more details.

Hope to see you all next week!

Executive Positions for 2008-2009

2008-09-30T19:34:00.003-05:00

The positions for the 2008-2009 year are as follows:

Secretary
Zeina Sleiman

Membership Development & Campaigns Director
Haya Zaidan

Finance & Fundraising Director
Asmaa Barakat

Information & Research Director
Meghan Jorgensen and Robert Prazeres

Media Relations Director
Lama Mourad

Advertising Director
Jenny Doswell

Internal Affairs Director
Houda Souissi

External Relations Director
Mahmoud Hmouz

Right of Return conference

2008-06-20T21:05:00.001-05:00

60 Years of Exile: The Palestinian Right of Return

A conference sponsored by the Canadian-Palestinian Educational Exchange

Saturday June 28, 2008
8:30AM - 5PM

University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON
Montpetit Bldg, 125 University Street Room 203

$40 Students (ID required at the door)
$65 General Admission

* Lunch included

CEPAL’s first ever Right of Return conference commemorates the 60th anniversary of Al-Nakba (catastrophe), and will encourage discussion among Canadians about the Palestinian Right of Return. The Right of Return will be discussed in reference to several themes, including: 1) Historical insights, 2) International law, 3) Human rights, 4) Culture and identity, and 5) Political considerations.

The conference is also meant to be one of solidarity with the Palestinian people, as well as an opportunity to discuss achieving a just solution to the predicament for Palestinian refugees who remain stateless. This conference is instrumental in highlighting CEPAL’s important work, as the only Canadian organization to work directly with Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. It is critical in fulfilling CEPAL’s mandate to raise awareness about the dire and worsening situation Palestinian refugees face, the options for a just solution to their predicament, and how Canadians can help.

SPEAKERS TO DATE:

Hanan Ashrawi (via live stream, Ramallah)

Norman Finkelstein (Independent Scholar)
Nahla Abdo (Carelton University)
Rex Brynen (McGill University)
Randa Farah (University of Western Ontario)
Norman Finkelstein (Independent Scholar)
Michael Lynk (University of Western Ontario)
Jaber Suleiman (Independent Scholar)

Students, community members, civil servants, Members of Parliament, Ambassadors, foreign diplomats, and anyone interested in the situation of Palestinian refugees and the Right of Return are encouraged to attend.

All proceeds will go towards CEPAL’s 2008 Summer Program in Lebanon.

SPONSORS

The conference is co-sponsored by Al-Awda (Toronto chapter), NCCAR, SPHR, APAC, Rabble.ca, and Libby Davies, MP for Vancouver East NDP.

Human Rights and the Palestinian Right of Return

2008-05-27T20:14:00.001-05:00

Human Rights and the Palestinian Right of Return

A public lecture in commemoration of the 60^th anniversary of Al-Nakba (The Catastrophe)

Sponsored by the Canadian-Palestinian Educational Exchange (CEPAL)

WHEN: May 29, 2008, 7:00 – 9:30PM

WHERE: University of Ottawa, Montpetit Building (125 University Street), Room 203

FEE: $8 Students (ID required) / $10 Adults

Tickets sold at the Door

There will be a discussion period following the lectures.

As part of its educational lecture series, CEPAL presents two speakers offering an examination of the Palestinian Right of Return. Speakers include:

Nahla Abdo, PhD, Professor of Sociology, Carleton University

Terry Rempel, PhD Candidate/Senior Researcher, BADIL Resource Centre for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights

Nahla Abdo is an Arab feminist activist, Professor of Sociology at Carleton

University, Ottawa, Canada. She has extensive publications on women, racism, nationalism and the State in the Middle East with special focus on Palestinian women. Among her recent publications: Women and Poverty in the OPT: Some Conceptual and Methodological Notes, 2007; Violence in the Name of Honour: Theoretical and Political Challenges, 2004 (with Shahrzad Mojab) and Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation: Palestinian and Israeli Gendered Narratives of Dislocation, 2002 (with Ronit Lentin). She is currently completing a manuscript on women and citizenship in Israel.

Terry Rempel is a Research Fellow and PhD Candidate at the University of Exeter, School of Humanities and Social Sciences. He is a founding member of BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights (Bethlehem, Palestine), where he was the Coordinator of Research and Information from 1998 until 2005. His current research areas include a history of the search for durable solutions for Palestinian refugees and refugee political participation.

This event coincides with CEPAL's Right of Return conference which has been postponed to SATURDAY, JUNE 28 in Ottawa. Please visit www.cepal.ca to find out more information about this conference and to register.

ELECTIONS

2008-04-01T13:52:00.002-05:00

SPHR U of O will be having the elections for the 2008-09 Board of Executive Directors on April 11, 2008 from 11:30 am to 1:00 pm (location to be determined). All members are free to run, and we encourage you all to come out and vote.

Positions and descriptions:

Secretary

To provide overall co-ordination to the group and its leaders, chairing and preparing agendas for meetings, and upholding the constitution.

Membership Development and Campaigns Director

To raise the profile of SPHR U of O on campus, and to implement recruitment strategies through campaigns and other activities.

To maintain and update the database of members and active members.

To maintain the necessary correspondence with the SPHR U of O membership and potential membership.

Finance & Fundraising Director

Responsible for financial transaction and ensuring that they are congruent with SFUO policies.

To report on the financial status of the organization to the membership periodically.

Charged with implementing fundraising strategies to fund the association.

To seek out internal and external sponsorship opportunities.

Organizational Director

The Organizational Director will be responsible for the internal structures of the association, including, but not limited to, organizing meetings, writing down the minutes of every meeting, booking rooms and equipment for events, and booking information tables.

Information & Research Director

The Information and Research Director will be responsible for gathering up-to-date information on the situation in Palestine and for maintaining the resource center.

To take responsibility for preparing materials for information tables on a regular basis and updating the information on those tables.

To certify all the information and material with Protection Services.

Media Relations Director

Responsible for all affairs pertaining to the media; including but not limited to, issuing press releases, writing letters to the editor and facilitating media interviews.

Ideally, the Media Relations Director should be bilingual, in order to communicate with both English and French media.

Advertising Director

To design and produce advertising material related to SPHR activities. Duties include but are not limited to creating, printing, and stamping posters, flyers, and tickets for events and campaigns.

To regularly update and maintain the SPHR U of O website.

Internal Affairs Director

To create and maintain relations with other organizations which, are sympathetic to the struggle of the Palestinian people, on campus.

To maintain relations with OPIRG and SFUO, including but not limited to attending meetings related to Action Group Status and Club status respectively.

External Relations Director

The External Relations shall act as the contact with other SPHR branches and attend their meetings if applicable.

To create and maintain relations with other organizations which are sympathetic to the struggle of the Palestinian people, off campus.

If you are running:
Please email the club at sphr.uofo@gmail.com with your name and the position you would like to run for by April 8, 2008. Also prepare a speech no longer than 5 minutes for the day of the election.

Layalee Falasteeniyeh: The 4th night at University of Waterloo

2008-03-06T23:22:00.004-05:00

SFPR Waterloo Presents:
Layalee Falasteeniyeh: 4th Annual Palestinian Cultural Night !

Performances by musicians, singers, oud, a dance group, poetry, skits, displays and more. Appetizers will be provided.

When: Friday, March 14 at 6:00 PM - 11:00 PM
Where: Federation Hall, University of Waterloo, 200 University Ave. W, Waterloo, Ontario
Tickets: $20 for adults ($25 at door), $15 for student/child.

All proceeds will be donated to Gaza

For tickets, contact any of the following:

Rami Alhamad (519) 572-2558 | Majd Al-Shihabi majd.al@gmail.com
AM Variety: 100 Queen Street N, Kitchener, N2H 2H6, Phone: 519-579-7642

Please forward and invite your friends.

VIGIL & PROTEST

2008-03-03T23:42:00.002-05:00

PALESTINE SOLIDARITY GROUPS TO HOLD VIGIL IN RESPONSE TO ISRAELI RAIDS IN GAZA

Dear SPHR Members and Supporters,

In light of the ongoing violence and killing in the Gaza Strip that has left 112 people dead since Wednesday, many of whom are innocent civilians including women and children, Palestine Solidarity groups in the Ottawa area are holding a vigil as a show of support to the Palestinian people.

This vigil will be taking place every night starting on Tuesday, March 4^th, 2008 until Friday, March 7th, 2008 in front of the Unknown Soldier memorial on the corner of Wellington and Elgin Street @ 5PM. This vigil is open to the public and to the media.

In addition, a protest will be held on Saturday, March 8th 2008 @1pm. We will be meeting in front of the A Channel station and marching to Parliament Hill afterwards.

Please distribute to your lists.

In solidarity,

SOLIDARITY FOR PALESTINIAN HUMAN RIGHTS

MARCH 1 at 1pm - STOP ISRAEL'S WARS BOYCOTT CHAPTERS / INDIGO

2008-02-24T17:44:00.003-05:00

NION and CanPalNet-Ottawa would like to call on all those passionate about peace and justice in Israel/Palestine to join us on Saturday March 1st to picket Chapters/Indigo for the support its majority shareholders give to the Israeli occupation (please see below for more details).

Let us join together in solidarity to oppose occupation and apartheid and take a stand for justice, peace and human rights!

To help us organize, please email to confirm your attendance.

STOP ISRAEL'S WARS BOYCOTT CHAPTERS / INDIGO

1PM, SATURDAY, March 1, 2008
At the Chapters at Rideau and Sussex

As the Israeli Occupation passes its 40th year with continuing brutality and the unflinching support of the Canadian government, it's integral for all Canadians who believe in justice and peace in the Middle East to take a stand. The boycott campaign against Chapters has picked up steam across Canada and has become a regular event in many cities. NION (Not in Our Name - Jews Opposed to Israel's Wars) hopes to make this a regular event in Ottawa as well – holding a two-hour boycott every other Saturday outside the Chapters/Indigo on Rideau.

On October 20, 2007 NION Ottawa and Canpalnet began pickets of Chapters every other week. The next action is planned for March 1, 2008. We call on all individuals and groups who oppose Israeli occupation to join us to picket outside Chapters/Indigo at Rideau.

We will meet at Chapters on Rideau from 1 to 3PM.

NOT IN OUR NAME

On July 9, 2005, a call endorsed by 170 Palestinian civil society organizations was announced. It appealed to the people of the world to impose boycotts, divestments and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it recognizes the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law. We came together to form NION during the summer of 2006, in solidarity with the people of Lebanon and Palestine, and against Israel's wars. We stand in opposition to the complicity of the Canadian government with Israel's criminal actions.

WHY BOYCOTT CHAPTERS / INDIGO?

Starting in the summer of 2006, NION and the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid in Toronto began a boycott campaign against Chapters-Indigo. The key reason for this boycott is that Heather Reisman and Gerry Schwartz, the majority shareholders of Chapters/Indigo, started and contribute over $3 million/year to the Heseg Foundation, a charity which supports 'lone soldiers' who come from others countries to fight Israel's wars. On the Heseg board are army and air force chiefs of staff, the former head of Israeli intelligence (Mossad), and Maj. General Doren Almog who has been accused of war crimes by Britain for his role in bombing civilians.

This concern for young mercenaries from around the world is in marked contrast to the lack of support that Heseg gives to the hundreds of Palestinian child prisoners languishing in Israeli military prisons.

For more information about the boycott campaign see:
1)"Why Do We Ask the Indigo CEO to Support Peace, Not War?" at http://www.nion.ca/downloads.htm
2) http://caiaweb.org/indigoboycott

OPPOSE ISRAEL'S WARS

As a group of Jews who are vehemently opposed to the atrocities being carried out in our name, we urge you to join us in standing in solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters. We urge you to join NION Ottawa in opposing Chapters' support of the occupation through the Heseg Foundation.

To help us organize, please reply stating if you will be able to participate in this picket. Hope to see you all there!

Organized by Not In Our Name – Jewish Voices Against Israel's Wars
email: nion.ottawa@gmail.com
web: www.nion.ca

Supported by Canada Palestine Support Network - Ottawa (www.canpalnet-ottawa.org)

Finkelstein pictures

2008-02-19T16:15:00.003-05:00

Professor Norman Finkelstein visited the University of Ottawa campus on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008. The event, hosted by GSAED, was completely sold out. The event sparked much controversy around the university and a cancellation was threatened. Luckily, that did not occur and Professor Finkelstein delivered a great 2 hour lecture.

Photography: Danah Abdulla

Protest Censorship! Who Speaks for McMaster? A Public Forum

2008-02-19T16:05:00.002-05:00

Carpool leaving St. Catharines 10:30 am Feb. 28. 905-984-6515 Susan

Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008

UNITED FOR STUDENT RIGHTS (U4SR) PRESENTS

A Public Forum

Rights & Responsibilities in Political Discussion on Campus:
Who Speaks for McMaster?

Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 12:00pm
Details to be determined

United for Student Rights (U4SR) is holding a Public Forum to discuss the recent shocking decision by McMaster Student Union (MSU) and administration to unequivocally ban on campus the usage of the phrase "Israeli Apartheid". This decision was first passed by the McMaster Provost office, which is second in authority only to that of the President's office.

It has been accepted by McMaster Human Rights & Equity Services (HRES) and, in turn, the MSU. This information was communicated to Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) and McMaster Muslims for Peace & Justice (MMPJ) early in February 2008 by the MSU and HRES. Due to this decision, these MSU approved clubs have not been able to get approval for various initiatives related to Israeli Apartheid. It is the MSU that is directly enforcing this decision, as it is the only campus body with jurisdiction over student clubs.

MSU President, Ryan Moran, explained that though the MSU is not bound by this decision, it has chosen to implement it none the less. U4SR is calling on the MSU to rescind this decision immediately as part of opening up the discussion for all to decide.

Statement of Human Rights & Equity Services: "The university has taken the position that literature which refers to "Israeli apartheid" and activities promoted under the banner, "Israeli Apartheid Week" are unacceptable. The university takes the position that this phrase is in violation of the university's efforts to ensure that all people will be treated with dignity and tolerance."

According to the statement of HRES, banning Israeli Apartheid organizing is a matter of dignity and tolerance. In the view of those who use the term, opposing Israeli Apartheid is a matter of dignity and tolerance for the peoples of the Middle East and world over who are fighting for justice and for human rights. Clearly, there is a contradiction of a political nature between these two views.

U4SR considers this decision unacceptable especially given that the recent decision of the Provost is in keeping with consistent efforts by the McMaster administration, MSU and even Hamilton Police to repress Palestinian solidarity work over the last six years. At every point, Palestinian solidarity views have been presented as anti-Semitic and a matter of hate crimes. The most recent decision by the Provost is a ramping up of longstanding attempts to criminalize the views of students who oppose Zionist violations of the human and national rights of Palestinians. Such efforts overlook the importance of political engagement and discussion on university campuses, while making political issues a matter of policy and decisions taken behind closed doors by various offices of the university. This history provides an important context for understanding that the banning of terms diverts from the violation of the political and human rights of students attempting to defend a just
peace for Palestine.
These are not simple matters to be decided arbitrarily and in private. They are related to profound questions of rights and responsibilities on campus and in society at large. It is unjust to require that the students most affected should submit to this decision or simply engage in an unequal private dialogue with the administration.

A Matter for All to Decide

It is important to note that the administration has an obligation to society to respect the basic legal and moral rights of the university community. Despite all its efforts to claim that the university can act like a private corporation, McMaster is a public institution that plays a central role in the development of youth and intellectual thought. In turn, Human Rights & Equity Services is mandated to defend and elaborate issues of human rights on campus, and this function has ramifications for all of society. Similarly, the MSU plays an important role in supporting and intervening in society, as the organized front of students. In sum, the functioning of all these parts of the McMaster University and their recent decision are a matter that concerns all students, faculty, and the general Hamilton and Canadian society.

For this reason, U4SR is holding a public forum so that everyone's views can be heard. We are inviting the administration and MSU to be part of this discussion and no longer use their positions of power to impose their views on the conscience of students. We are also calling on all students, faculty, staff and members of the Hamilton community to join the discussion. Organisers will ensure that everyone's participation and comments are respected.

We, as Canadian students, are taking up our responsibility to society. We are working to end the marginalization of the McMaster community and Canadian polity at large from the decision-making processes that affect their lives and the political orientation of our society. This struggle at one university campus is a converging point for all those who believe that Canadian society should decide political matters in a public and transparent way. Join us!
United for Student Rights is an ad-hoc committee of McMaster University and Hamilton community members that was formed to facilitate public involvement in this issue.
For information please contact:
unitedforstudentrights@gmail.com

Norman Finkelstein vs. Shlomo Ben Ami Part I through IV

2008-02-18T11:07:00.004-05:00

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN VS. SHLOMO BEN AMI on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman.

PART I

PART II

PART III

PART IV

Finkelstein vs. Dershowitz Part I & II

2008-02-18T11:03:00.003-05:00

Fantastic Debate: Finkelstein vs. Dershowitz
on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman

PART I

PART II

Le Trio Jourbran

2008-02-08T15:04:00.000-05:00

Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights would like to invite you, your family and loved ones to a special night featuring

A Voice From Nazareth
Le Trio Joubran

This concert will be held at Centrepointe Theatre on Friday, February 29 2008. Doors open at 6:30PM.

Tickets can be purchased from Centrepointe Theatre's Box Office.
Students: $25
Adults: $35

Le Trio Joubran are the worthy inheritors of a rich family tradition. For the Joubrans, music is a family affair. The trio's parents, Hatem Mbadda Joubran, stringed-instrument maker emeritus known throughout the Arab world, and Ibtisam Hanna Joubran, a singer, both come from families where music is transmitted from generation to generation. Be it the next logical step, or the magic of destiny, Samir pulls Wissam and then Adnan along in his footsteps. The Joubran Trio stands on the mutual understanding of three brothers who share a common and limitless love for the ud'. The trio's repertory, made up of original creations and magnificent improvisations, takes root in their knowledge of the imposing culture of traditional maqâms and their subtle interpretations.

For more information about the artists and to listen to extracts of their compilations, please visit www.letriojoubran.com

This event will be followed by a dabkeh performance.

In Solidarity,

Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights at Carleton University
c/o Carleton University Students' Association
401 Unicentre
Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6
sphrcarleton@gmail.com
www.carleton.sphr.org

Israeli ambassador condemns students for 'celebration of ignorance'

2008-02-07T10:31:00.000-05:00

Photography by: Danah Abdulla for SPHR
Israeli ambassador condemns students for 'celebration of ignorance'

Katie DeRosa
The Ottawa Citizen

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

University of Ottawa students were expecting a lecture by Israeli Ambassador Alan Baker. What they didn't expect was to be lectured to, reports Katie DeRosa.

A speech at the University of Ottawa by the Israeli ambassador to Canada sparked a debate over the validity of a movement that accuses Israel of apartheid.

Alan Baker denounced Israel Apartheid Week as "crude propagandism, pure hypocrisy and cynical manipulation of the student body."

Israel Apartheid Week began yesterday, coinciding with Israel Week and the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel.

"I want to explain to you and through you, the student bodies in these campuses, what an absurdity is this whole expression," said Mr. Baker. "I think that it's a sort of celebration of ignorance, both of the meaning of apartheid and a complete and utter lack of awareness of the state of Israel and what it means."

Mr. Baker was speaking to a classroom of about 50 University of Ottawa students during a lecture titled, "Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East." He referred to a series of events and lectures organized at Carleton University and the University of Ottawa under the Israel Apartheid banner as "intellectually dishonest and the antithesis of what one would expect in a home of learning."

He called the title of the week a slur and something that should never be allowed on university campuses.

But, a professor at the university defended students' right to hear both sides of the issue.
"University is a place where people think," said Tyseer Aboulnasr, a professor of electrical engineering and a former dean of engineering at U of O. "So you provide to them the different point of views, the different perspectives and let them have an open and respectful debate and let the students think and make up their minds."

She said the fact that two opposing celebrations coincide on the same week is a great idea. "It just gives people the chance to hear both sides."

Ms. Aboulnasr said she was also disappointed the ambassador spent much of his speech pointing out the human rights abuses of other Arab countries instead of providing proof of Israel's practices.

But, Mr. Baker referenced the apartheid in South Africa, which saw extreme racial degradation and segregation and defended Israel as a Liberal democracy with laws incompatible with such actions.

"It's an abuse of Canadian values because it's a vulgar attempt to undermine and slang a democratic country through dishonest ways," he said. "It's a picture of a forceful group of outspoken extremists trying to impose their narrow political views on a group of students to the exclusion of genuine issues."

February 2008 Newsletter

2008-02-03T21:41:00.000-05:00

SPHR University of Ottawa has released its first edition of Campus RESISTANCE Campus, SPHR UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA'S official newsletter. Inside, you will find articles, news and our events for the month of February and what to expect in March!

The compatibility is for Adobe 5.0, if you would like a better version please email us!

Download the PDF version (compatible with Adobe 5.0 and up) at the link below:

http://www.zshare.net/download/71737372720456/

Palestine Day: International Week - Thursday, February 14

2008-02-01T17:43:00.001-05:00

Palestine Day
Thursday, February 14
9AM to 4PM
Jock Turcot University Centre - University of Ottawa

Come enjoy some Palestinian food, music and more!

Show: 12pm to 12:30pm and 2:00pm to 2:30pm (Agora in the Uni Centre)
To volunteer, please Email Us

CJPME 2008 Speaker Series: "The Israel Lobby"

2008-02-01T15:17:00.000-05:00

CJPME 2008 Speaker series: "The Israel Lobby"

Prof. John J. Mearsheimer, co-author of The Israel Lobby will be CJPME's honoured guest in:
www.cjpme.ca
cjpme@sympatico.ca

Ottawa, Friday, February 22, 7:00 p.m.
Marion Hall
140 Louis Pasteur, Room 130
University of Ottawa
Tickets on Internet, or at 1-888-222-6608
More info about Ottawa

Montreal, Saturday, February 23, 7:00 p.m.
Auditorium Jean Lesage
Salle B-2285
3200 Jean Brillant
Université de Montréal
Tickets on Internet, or at 1-888-222-6608
More info about Montreal

Toronto, Sunday, February 24, 7:00 p.m.
OISE Auditorium (Room G162), Ground Floor
252 Bloor St. W (at Bedford Ave.)
University of Toronto
Tickets on Internet, or at 1-888-222-6608. (Tickets for Toronto event also available at the Toronto Women's Bookstore, 73 Harbord St., Toronto, 416-922-8744)
More info about Toronto

Please join us as Mr. Mearsheimer discusses how the West's unwavering support of Israel has been disastrous for its own foreign policy interests. Prof. Mearsheimer's address will be followed by a time of Q&A.

Prof. Mearsheimer is the co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982. He has written several books about security issues and international politics as well as many articles that have appeared in academic journals like International Security, and popular magazines like The London Review of Books. His op-ed pieces have appeared in the New York Times dealing with topics like Bosnia, nuclear proliferation, the failure of Arab-Israeli peace efforts, and the folly of invading Iraq.

Israel Apartheid Week

2008-02-01T08:56:00.001-05:00

www.apartheidweek.org

Candle Light Vigil Saturday, January 26 5pm to 7pm

2008-01-24T08:07:00.001-05:00

As most of us know, 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza are going through a devastating time with the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip. Israel has blocked the shipment of fuel to Gaza, cutting off the only source of electricity in Gaza. This inhumane siege is causing shortages of food, medication and other fundamental necessities, in turn causing much suffering and deaths. This siege must be put to an end. We need everyone's input and participation in order to make a difference and have an impact on our government's role in pressuring Israel to lift the siege.

Capca, SPHR and other organizations have organized a candle light vigil to support the people in Gaza and to condemn Israel's actions. This vigil will take place on Saturday, January 26th from 5pm to 7pm at the Human Rights Monument on Elgin street. We will have candles to distribute but we also encourage people to bring their own candles.

Please forward this email to everyone you know, and pass on the message to your friends and family.

Also, if anyone would like to help out by making posters for the vigil, please don't hesitate to email us or contact us at 613-291-1970

4th Annual Israeli Apartheid Week schedule

2008-01-23T15:50:00.001-05:00

4th ANNUAL ISRAELI APARTHEID WEEK

FEBRUARY 3RD TO 9TH, 2008

Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) Ottawa and Carleton and Not In Our Name (NION) Ottawa are proud to announce the schedule for the 4th annual Israeli Apartheid Week being held under the banner 60 Years of Nakba: End Israeli Apartheid. This international week, which began in Toronto in 2005, has now spread to Palestine, South Africa, Norway, UK and many cities across the US and Canada.

OTTAWA ISRAELI APARTHEID WEEK SCHEDULE
______________________________

Friday Feb 1, 7:30 PM (Ottawa is starting the week earlier than other cities)

Film Screening: THE IRON WALL
Hosted by: Not In Our Name – Jewish Voices Against Israel's Wars
MacDonald Hall Auditorium (MCD 146),
150 Louis Pasteur Street
University of Ottawa
http://www.theironwall.ps/
__________________________

Saturday Feb 2, 1:00 PM

Demonstration: PICKET IN FRONT OF CHAPTERS/INDIGO - NO MORE SUPPORT OF ISRAELI MILITARISM!
Organized by: Not In Our Name - Jewish Voices Against Israel's Wars, CanPalNet Ottawa
Chapters/Indigo at Rideau and Sussex
For more information on the Chapters Boycott please scroll to bottom of email
www.nion.ca
http://www.canpalnet-ottawa.org/

____________________

Tuesday Feb 5, 7:00 PM

Lecture: A FAREWELL TO ISRAEL: THE COMING BREAK-UP OF NORTH AMERICAN ZIONISM
Norman Finkelstein
Organized by GSAÉD as part of their Interdisciplinary Conference: http://www.gsaed.ca/conference2008/
This is a free event, but space is limited so people should reserve tickets in advance (613-562-5935 or gsaed@uottawa.ca)

Tabaret Hall, room 112
550 Cumberland Street
University of Ottawa
Limited space, reserve your (free) tickets: 613-562-5935 or gsaed@uottawa.ca
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/
___________________________

Wednesday, February 6, 7:30 PM

Lecture: STILL TOO MANY ENEMIES: THE NAHR EL BARED REFUGEE CAMP AND PALESTINIANS IN LEBANON
Marcy Newman
Fauteux 147 A
57 Louis Pasteur
University of Ottawa
Entry $3
www.bodyontheline.wordpress.com
____________________________

Friday, February 8,

Lecture and Discussion: RESISTING ISRAELI APARTHEID: BUILDING A GLOBAL MOVEMENT

Salma Wakim – Ittijah: the network for Palestinian non-governmental organizations in Israel
Issam Alyaman - Palestine House, Mississauga
Adam Hanieh - Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, Toronto

MacDonald Hall Auditorium (MCD 146), 7:30pm
150 Louis Pasteur Street
University of Ottawa
http://www.palestinehouse.com/
http://caiaweb.org/
http://www.ittijah.org/

Join SPHR and NION in standing up against Israeli Apartheid!

For further information and schedules for different cities please visit the official
Apartheid Week 2008 website at: www.apartheidweek.org

Or contact the organizers at
sphr.uofo@gmail.com

sphrcarleton@gmail.com

nion.ottawa@gmail.com

______________________

STOP ISRAEL'S WARS
BOYCOTT CHAPTERS / INDIGO

1PM, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2008
At the Chapters at Rideau and Sussex

As the Israeli Occupation passes its 40th year with continuing brutality and the unflinching support of the Canadian government, it's integral for all Canadians who believe in justice and peace in the Middle East to take a stand. The boycott campaign against Chapters has picked up steam across Canada and has become a regular event in many cities. NION (Not in Our Name - Jews Opposed to Israel's Wars) hopes to make this a regular event in Ottawa as well – holding a two-hour boycott every other Saturday outside the Chapters/Indigo on Rideau.

On October 20, NION Ottawa and Canpalnet began pickets of Chapters every other week. The next action is planned for February 2, 2008. We call on all individuals and groups who oppose Israeli occupation to join us to picket outside Chapters/Indigo at Rideau. We will meet at Chapters on Rideau from 1 to 3PM.

NOT IN OUR NAME

On July 9, 2005, a call endorsed by 170 Palestinian civil society organizations was announced. It appealed to the people of the world to impose boycotts, divestments and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it recognizes the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law. We came together to form NION during the summer of 2006, in solidarity with the people of Lebanon and Palestine, and against Israel's wars. We stand in opposition to the complicity of the Canadian government with Israel's criminal actions.

WHY BOYCOTT CHAPTERS / INDIGO?

Starting in the summer of 2006, NION and the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid in Toronto began a boycott campaign against Chapters-Indigo. The key reason for this boycott is that Heather Reisman and Gerry Schwartz, the majority shareholders of Chapters/Indigo, started and contribute over $3 million/year to the Heseg Foundation, a charity which supports 'lone soldiers' who come from others countries to fight Israel's wars. On the Heseg board are army and air force chiefs of staff, the former head of Israeli intelligence (Mossad), and Maj. General Doren Almog who has been accused of war crimes by Britain for his role in bombing civilians.

This concern for young mercenaries from around the world is in marked contrast to the lack of support that Heseg gives to the hundreds of Palestinian child prisoners languishing in Israeli military prisons.

For more information about the boycott campaign see:
1)"Why Do We Ask the Indigo CEO to Support Peace, Not War?" at http://www.nion.ca/downloads.htm

2) http://caiaweb.org/indigoboycott

OPPOSE ISRAEL'S WARS

As a group of Jews who are vehemently opposed to the atrocities being carried out in our name, we urge you to join us in standing in solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters. We urge you to join NION Ottawa in opposing Chapters' support of the occupation through the Heseg Foundation.

To help us organize, please reply stating if you will be able to participate in this picket. Hope to see you all there!

Organized by Not In Our Name – Jewish Voices Against Israel's Wars
email: nion.ottawa@gmail.com web: www.nion.ca

Supported by Canada Palestine Support Network - Ottawa ( www.canpalnet-ottawa.org)

Norman Finkelstein "A Farewell to Israel: The coming break-up of North American Zionism"

2008-01-21T21:49:00.000-05:00

Dr. Norman G. Finkelstein

"A Farewell to Israel: The coming break-up of North American Zionism"

February 5th, 2008 at 7pm (followed by a reception)
Tabaret Hall, room 112
Limited space, reserve your (free) tickets: 613-562-5935 or gsaed@uottawa.ca

Norman Finkelstein is an outspoken American academic and author. He received his doctorate in 1988 from Princeton University for a thesis on the theory of Zionism.

He has authored several books including Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the exploitation of Jewish suffering, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict among others.

Finkelstein has taught at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University and DePaul University.

In a highly controversial decision DePaul University denied him tenure in June 2007 after having taught there for six years. This case among others has raised the issue of academic freedom to the forefront of our discussions about the role of universities in society.

In a time where public debate about the Israel-Palestine conflict is muffled by fear of controversy, a bold and dynamic speaker such as Dr. Finkelstein provides a much needed voice that challenges the level of awareness of a vastly misinformed public.

For more information: http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/

2008-01-21T14:47:00.000-05:00

Please sign on behalf of your organization and return to susanha103@yahoo.ca so we can forward a joint statement to the media.

Sign it. Save it as a file to your computer. Then attach it again. And email it back to susanha103@yahoo.ca

NEWS RELEASE:
Palestinian Canadians & Others Demand that the Siege on Gaza be Broken.
January 21, 2008

Gaza City was plunged into darkness Sunday after Israel blocked the shipment of fuel that powers its only electrical plant. 1.5 million Palestinians civilians who live in Gaza are already besieged and are suffering from severe food, medicine and life essentials shortages imposed on them by the inhumane Israeli aggression. Israel who occupies the Palestinian lands are committing a 21st century Holocaust against the Palestinians by starving and killing them hoping to force them into submission and into accepting the illegal occupation of Palestinian land and to forgo the right of return.

We the Palestinian Canadian community and our Canadian friends, signatories below, demand that the Canadian government, our politicians, our MPs:

1. Condemn the latest Israeli aggression against the Palestinians in Gaza,
2. Demand an immediate halt to all Israeli brutal use of military force against the Palestinians which is taking a serious humanitarian toll on civilians,
3. Lift the blockade on the Palestinian people and allow all living essentials, food, medicine and energy to enter the territories without any delay.
4. Allow an independent international tribunal to enter the Palestinian territories to investigate the Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip and
5. Call upon the international community and Canada in particular to act immediately to stop these crimes;
6. And call upon the international community and Canada in particular to renew the call to the High Contracting Parties of the Fourth Geneva Convention to fulfill their responsibility under Article 1 of the Convention, to ensure that it is respected under all circumstances, and their responsibility under Article 146 to pursue persons suspected of perpetrating serious violations of the convention. We affirm that Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) violations are considered war crimes under Article 147 of the Convention and under its first protocol.
We ask that our Mayor, our MPs, MPPs and MNAs join the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and international human rights groups who have warned that the blockade will cause a health catastrophe, will drastically affect hospitals, sewage treatment and water facilities and to condemn Israel and force it to lift these inhumane measures which defy basic humanitarian standards.

BACKGROUND:
Israel is responsible for creating an impossible balance of human suffering on both sides of the border. Basic foods such as rice, flour and cooking oil are in acute shortage; bakeries stopped operating because they had neither power nor flour. People are dying in hospitals and homes because dialysis machines are not working and medicine supplies are gone.

Although Israel supposedly pulled out of Gaza in 2005, Israel still controls most land, sea and air access to the territory. Israel must lift the blockade because of the humanitarian crisis developing in Gaza.

Gaza is a prison where 79 percent of households live in poverty, and children scavenge through dumpsters. It is also an Israeli target range, where schools, bridges and electric plants have been destroyed.
In the West Bank, Israel continues to expand its settlements and build its wall deep inside Palestinian territory, destroying dozens of Christian and Muslim Palestinian communities. Meanwhile, Palestinians are the first ever occupied population to be placed under international sanctions.

The international community including Canada must ensure that the Israelis meet their legal obligations, without discrimination against the Palestinians and to respect and recognize their right to live in freedom and dignity.

The Israeli military and economic siege of Gaza has led to a collapse in Palestinian living conditions and many people only survive by looking for scraps of food in rubbish dumps. The siege created mass despair, anger and a sense of hopelessness and abandonment.

Israel closed the entry and exit points into the Gaza Strip, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, this last week and has conducted frequent raids and bombings that have killed well over 35 people and wounded hundreds for the past week. The crisis in Palestine has been largely ignored by Canada. People are eating only one meal a day, bread with tomatoes or cheap vegetables, the crisis has worsened; some 80 per cent of people in Gaza could not meet their family's food needs. People are raiding garbage dumps.

Not only do Palestinians in Gaza get little to eat but what food they have is eaten cold because of the lack of electricity and money to pay for fuel. In one month alone 6 per cent of Gaza's agricultural land was destroyed by Israeli bulldozers. The total closure imposed by Israel, supplemented by deadly raids, has led to the collapse of the Palestinian economy. The 35,000 fishermen cannot fish because Israeli gunboats will fire on them if they go more than a few hundred yards from the shore.

The people of Gaza are paying a heavy price for being Palestinian; for merely inhabiting the land which every nation in the world has confirmed belongs to the Palestinian people. We believe that this Zionist escalation is the result of Bush's visit and a natural result of the cover supplied by Bush to the Israeli occupation authorities to go forward in their aggression against the Palestinian people, particularly in the Gaza Strip. 115 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF since the end of the Bush's Annapolis Peace Conference.

A Palestinian boy sits at his house, which was destroyed during an Israeli army raid on the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. This is the area where the Israeli army previously destroyed over 250 homes.

Marcy Newman: Wednesday, February 6

2008-01-21T14:33:00.000-05:00

Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights presents:
Marcy Newman
"Still Too Many Enemies: The Nahr el Bared Refugee Camp and Palestinians in Lebanon" lecture / Conférence au sujet des réfugiés de Nahr al-Bared et les Palestinians vivant au Liban
Wednesday, February 6th 2008 / Mercredi le 6 février 2008
7:30pm / 19h30pm
Fauteux 147 A
57 Louis Pasteur
Entry $3 / Admission 3$
www.bodyontheline.wordpress.com

APAC Social Fundraising Dinner: January 19th, 2008 at 7pm

2008-01-12T16:06:00.001-05:00

Dear friends,

We are sending you this invitation in hope that you can help us promote it within your respective organizations and circle of family and friends. Hope to see you all there.

What: An Eastern Breeze from Palestine: An APAC Fundraising Dinner Event

Where: St. Elias Reception Hall
750 Ridgewood Avenue

When: Saturday, the 19th of January, 2008 at 7:00pm

Dear friends and community leaders,

On behalf of the Association of Palestinian Arab Canadians (APAC) board and organizing committee, it is my pleasure to inform you that APAC will be holding their first "Social Fundraising Dinner" this upcoming January.

The fundraiser will take place at the St. Elias Reception Hall. The program will include an exciting variety of segments, featuring traditional and folkloric Palestinian music by Rula Shraydeh , Middle Eastern "Tarab" by Orient Productions band, folkloric performances by Baladna Dabkeh group and more.

The evening will also include a talk by Father Robert Assaly about the current situation in Gaza. There will also be a live auction, raffle tickets prizes, and an Art exhibit.

This will be a great opportunity to celebrate our Palestinian culture and heritage, enjoy great food, entertainment, and provide social and professional opportunities to network with community members and leaders from the various ethnic community groups in Ottawa.

Proceeds from the fundraiser will be going towards the "In memory of Palestine-lest the world forgets" cultural festival in the summer of 2008 commemorating the 60 ^th anniversary of Nakba (the dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were made homeless as Israel was born in 1948). Part of the proceeds will also be going towards the National Council of Canadian Arab Relations (NCCAR) "Break the Siege campaign", and the Childrens Hospital of Eastern Ontario foundation.

Tickets sell for $100 VIP, $75 general admission and $60 for students. Charity receipts will be issued for part of the ticket price.

Let's kick start the new year for APAC full of exciting activities and events! On behalf of the APAC board and the organizing committee, we look forward to see you there.

In Solidarity,

APAC Board and Organizing Committee

Contact Information: www.apacottawa.com or

Dr. Habib Khoury: (613) 862-5435/ apaccanada@gmail.com

Fifth Estate video on Canada Park & petition against Bob Rae's appointment

2008-01-12T16:00:00.000-05:00

The un-elected Bob Rae has recently been appointed as the Liberal Party Foreign Affairs Critic. Both he and his wife are pro-Israel Zionists. He is a member of the board of the racist Jewish National Fund which will only lease the lands stolen from Palestinians to non-Arabs; his wife is a member of the board of the racist lobby group Canadian Jewish Congress; and while he was NDP Premier of Ontario Bob Rae was involved in the creation of "Canada Park" - a "park" built on the remains of 3 Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank for Jewish Israeli beach goers (Palestinian Arabs are not even allowed to use the roads leading into the park).

To sign a Petition against Rae's appointment please visit:

http://www.petitiononline.com/sfpr/petition.html

Video is also available at: http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-2500957394773313398

The Battle of Algiers

2008-01-10T12:20:00.000-05:00

It's finally happening! The launch of the Carleton community's own weekly student-run political film screenings is upon us! The first one will take place right here on campus this Tuesday with a film chosen by SPHR. Independent films will be shown on a weekly basis, followed by witty and stimulating discussion.
Everyone welcome! Ideas for future docs appreciated..

RESISTENCIA ALTERNATIVE FILMS:
The Battle of Algiers
TUESDAY JANUARY 15, 7pm
118 LEEDS

Banned in France for five years...

A film about the Algerian resistance to the French occupation, this film was screened by Pentagon planners as an aid to understanding the Iraqi insurgency.

"How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film."

International Socialists at Carleton
www.carleton.ca/socialists
iscarleton@yahoo.ca

George Rishmawi at Carleton University - Wednesday, January 16

2008-01-06T11:09:00.001-05:00

Covering Occupation from the Grassroots
"An evening with George Rishmawi, founder of the International Middle East Media Centre (Bethlehem, Palestine)"
Wednesday, January 16, 2008 at 7:00PM
Azrieli Theatre room 301
1125 Colonel By Drive, Carleton University

www.imemc.org
www.sphr.carleton.org

Aider les Palestiniens

2007-12-24T12:47:00.000-05:00

Edito du Monde (www.lemonde.fr)

Il est des violences presque invisibles. L'étranglement économique des territoires palestiniens par l'armée israélienne est de celles-là. Les check-points qui ont essaimé en Cisjordanie et le blocus imposé à la bande de Gaza au nom de la sécurité ont entraîné, depuis sept ans, une récession à nulle autre pareille. Le cantonnement des entreprises palestiniennes dans de petites enclaves, ajouté à la fermeture brutale du marché de l'emploi en Israël aux travailleurs palestiniens, a propulsé l'Autorité palestinienne en première ligne, l'obligeant à multiplier le nombre des fonctionnaires pour éviter un dangereux contre-choc social. Parant au plus pressé, la communauté internationale a fait le choix de soutenir de plus en plus massivement les finances publiques palestiniennes ; elle verse des salaires, directement sur les comptes des fonctionnaires de l'Autorité, méthode la plus immédiate de redistribution.

Ces choix dictés par les circonstances constituent autant de contre-sens économiques. Ils ne peuvent être que des réponses de très court terme, en attendant qu'un processus politique contribue à modifier en profondeur la situation sur le terrain pour que les Palestiniens, qui sont sans doute parmi les mieux formés de la région, puissent enfin vivre et se déplacer comme partout ailleurs dans le monde. L'intitulé volontariste de la conférence des donateurs pour l'Etat palestinien réunie à Paris le 17 décembre suggère que depuis la réunion d'Annapolis, le 27 novembre, un dialogue israélo-palestinien a été renoué et que l'Etat palestinien est désormais à portée de main. La réalité oblige malheureusement à la circonspection. Un processus politique va peut-être s'enclencher mais la situation des Palestiniens risque de rester pour longtemps encore dictée par l'urgence. La plus grande partie des dons récoltés à Paris sera donc utilisée à boucler les fins de mois d'une Autorité palestinienne constamment menacée de banqueroute. Concrètement, près d'un fonctionnaire palestinien sur deux sera payé par la communauté internationale, qui prend évidemment le risque de financer ainsi l'occupation israélienne.

Les dons rassemblés à Paris vont conforter un triste record : les Palestiniens sont, par habitant, le peuple le plus aidé de la terre, alors que leur niveau de vie, du fait des contraintes qui sont les leurs, ne cesse de baisser. La Banque mondiale répète depuis des années, telle une litanie, que l'aide internationale sans la liberté de mouvement reste impuissante à relever l'économie palestinienne. Il conviendrait que les donateurs prennent conscience que les quêtes, même les plus prolifiques, ne font pas une politique. Et qu'Israël, qui a créé une des économies les plus dynamiques de la région, comprenne que sa sécurité ne sera pas assurée tant que la désespérance et la misère camperont à sa porte.

Article paru dans l'édition du 18.12.07.

For Israel's Arab Citizens, Isolation and Exclusion

2007-12-20T12:16:00.000-05:00

By Scott Wilson

Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 20, 2007; A01

KARMIEL, Israel -- Fatina and Ahmad Zubeidat, young Arab citizens of Israel, met on the first day of class at the prestigious Bezalel arts and architecture academy in Jerusalem. Married last year, the couple rents an airy house here in the Galilee filled with stylish furniture and other modern grace notes.

But this is not where they wanted to live. They had hoped to be in Rakefet, a nearby town where 150 Jewish families live on state land close to the mall project Ahmad is building. After months of interviews and testing, the town's admission committee rejected the Arab couple on the grounds of "social incompatibility."

They petitioned Israel's high court to end such screening, claiming discrimination, a charge town officials are challenging.

"We can't just be good citizens," said Fatina, 27, who is expecting the couple's first child. "If they won't develop our villages, then we will choose where we want to live. The problem lies not with us, but with Jewish society that does not accept the other."

The Zubeidats are players in a wider ethnic clash unfolding in the Galilee, a northern region where Arabs, those who remained in Israel after its creation in 1948 and their descendants, outnumber Jews. Israel's policies have deepened the gulf between Arab and Jewish citizens in recent years, through concrete walls, laws that favor Jews, and political proposals that place the Arab minority outside national life.

This process of separation within Israel's original boundaries mirrors in many ways the broader one taking place between Israelis and Palestinians in the occupied territories.

With most of Israel's land controlled by a government agency, Israeli Arabs have long had more trouble acquiring property than Jews, who outnumber them five to one in a population of about 6.5 million people. In response, Arab lawmakers joined a Jewish parliamentary majority this year in endorsing the construction of a new Arab city in the Galilee, where demographic rivalry and ethnic separation are most pronounced. Arabs say it will be the first city built on their behalf since the state's founding.

But some Jewish political leaders have suggested that Israel's Arabs, who commonly refer to themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel, should eventually live in a future Palestinian state, the subject of peace negotiations inaugurated last month in Annapolis, Md. Israel's foreign minister and lead negotiator, Tzipi Livni, said before the meeting that such a state would "be the national answer to the Palestinians" in the territories and those "who live in different refugee camps or in Israel."

Arabs and Jews study in separate schools in Israel -- the Arab system receives fewer resources -- and learn Israeli history in different ways. Israel's Jewish education minister, Yuli Tamir, ordered this year that Arab third-grade textbooks note that Arab citizens call Israel's 1948 War of Independence "the catastrophe." Many Jewish lawmakers reacted with scorn.

Except for a relatively small Druze population, Arabs are excluded also from military service mandatory for all but ultra-Orthodox Jews, an essential shared experience of Israeli life and a traditional training ground for future political leaders. Arab lawmakers have lined up now against a new proposal for Arabs to perform "national service" in lieu of time in the army, an institution they hold responsible for enforcing the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

"We have lost the Arab citizens of Israel," said Amir Sheleg, 63, who is head of security for the Jewish community of Nir Zevi on Israel's coastal plain. "They no longer want to be a part of the state, and I am sorry for it."

Sheleg, burly and bald, patrolled in a black pickup truck along a concrete wall that rises along the town's edge. The 15-foot-high barrier, funded by the government, divides the leafy streets of Nir Zevi from the adjacent Arab community of Lod. Rising crime, he said, prompted his town to begin building the wall four years ago.

"It only adds hatred," said Rifat Iliatim, 39, an Arab resident of Lod who sells horses for a living. "All our lives we lived together and there was respect on both sides. Do they want this part of Israel to be like Jerusalem or Gaza where Jews and Arabs are separate?"

ACRE

Acre is a city of 52,000 Arab and Jewish citizens, many living in mixed neighborhoods along a sweep of Mediterranean coast.

Arabs dominate the seaside Old City, a U.N. World Heritage Site of crenellated stone walls possessed over the centuries by Greeks, Egyptians and Crusader kings. A single crowded high school just outside the ancient walls serves the entire Arab population, 27 percent of Acre's total. The city's five mosques, including el-Jazzar, the second largest in Israel and the territories after al-Aqsa in Jerusalem, are also concentrated in the area.

Jews live in the newer, outlying neighborhoods that ring the Old City. For more than two decades, Jews rising into the middle class left the older neighborhoods and Arabs filled in behind them.

"This is a mixed city and that's a fact," said Ohad Segev, Acre's Jewish director general, who believes the two groups should mix as little as possible. "Just as I wouldn't allow a yeshiva to open in the Old City, I wouldn't allow a mosque to open in the new one."

In the past year, conflict between Arabs and Jews -- over business hours, the right to open mosques, and an increasing Jewish presence in Arab-majority areas -- has flashed through neighborhoods running between the two largely ethnically distinct parts of the city.

Yeshiva Hesder-Acco is dwarfed by decrepit apartment buildings with laundry hanging from balconies. Once populated by new Jewish immigrants, the apartments are filled now by Arabs. Young girls walk the streets in head scarves. Arab boys play soccer on the asphalt court next to the yeshiva.

"It's just background noise, part of the scenery," said Mordechai Behar, a 22-year-old yeshiva student, referring to his Arab neighbors. "We try not to interact with them."

Yossi Stern, a 35-year-old rabbi, runs the yeshiva with a bustling energy. He arrived in 2001 from the West Bank settlement of Elon Moreh, one of the earliest and most radical in the territories, where he was a teacher.

His move reflected a shift in his focus from settling the West Bank to promoting a larger and more politically aware Jewish majority within Israel's original boundaries. He has grown the yeshiva from 20 to 120 students since then.

"Inside the Green Line, people have not awakened to their role of the last 100 years," Stern said, referring to the 1949 armistice line that marked Israel's boundary until it seized the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights in the 1967 Middle East war. "If we fall asleep here, we will wake up to an Arab majority."

His students volunteer in public schools and direct tours of the Old City, where a state-run development company is buying Arab property and selling it to Jewish businessmen.

Stern works with the city government, led by a Jewish mayor, on projects designed to attract Jews to Acre, including a recently approved housing development designated for Jewish military families. Built on state land, the development will include a new, 350-student yeshiva that Stern advertises as "the center for Jewish identity in the Galilee."

"We're not trying to build a settlement in this city," he said. "Here we're mature enough to see this as a long process."

But Ahmad Odeh, an Arab member of the city council, calls Stern precisely that -- "a settler" trying to make Arab neighborhoods more Jewish. Odeh's family fled from the Galilee village of Shaab during the 1948 war, eventually settling in a neighborhood not far from Stern's yeshiva. Odeh has sued the Jewish-majority council successfully six times for violating Arab rights to education and property.

Odeh, a slight, wiry man with spiky hair, has been lobbying the council to reopen a mosque outside the Old City that the government closed decades ago. It sits among some of the city's more than 50 synagogues.

Because the single Arab high school is overcrowded, Odeh's eldest daughter commutes to one in a village 45 minutes from town, reversing the rural-to-urban migration patterns of recent decades.

"This is all part of the project to Judaize the Galilee," said Odeh, 48. "We want to be partners in our city."

KARMIEL

This hilltop community with streets lined by date palms and split by lush grassy medians emerged in the 1960s as a Zionist response to the large Arab population in the Galilee. The Zubeidats are among a tiny fraction of Arabs who live here.

The couple considered building a home in Sakhnin, a nearby Arab town. But as with many Arab towns and villages, its public services pale next to those of Jewish ones. The prospects appeared better in Rakefet, and they applied to live there after marrying.

The Israel Land Administration controls 93 percent of the land in Israel, including the hilltop where Rakefet sits. The government agency has a say in who is allowed to live in such communities with a representative on the local "absorption committees" that weigh the applications.

For the Zubeidats, who speak Hebrew and Arabic fluently, the months-long process began in the summer of 2006. It included a series of interviews and tests, some taken with the dozen or so Jewish applicants also seeking to move in.

"All the questions had to do with how we would integrate into the community," Fatina said. "We have many, many Jewish friends. We spend our holidays with them, and they do the same. We're not from outer space, we're from here."

The rejection letter followed a conversation the Zubeidats had with an official from the Misgav Regional Council, which oversees Rakefet and dozens of other nearby towns. He told them, Fatina recalled, that although they were "very nice people," he would have to begin marketing Rakefet as a "mixed community" to possible buyers in Tel Aviv if they moved in. The designation would hurt sales.

"Obviously, this whole process was designed to push us back to Sakhnin," Ahmad said. "And the way these Arab towns are now, it's like a ghetto."

Maya Tsaban, a spokeswoman for the regional council that oversees Rakefet, said, "This decision was based on rules we didn't make," referring to regulations established by national government agencies. She declined to comment further.

The Israel Land Administration, which set the selection criteria, rejected the Zubeidats' appeal this year. An agency spokeswoman, Ortal Tzabar, said, "One aspect taken into consideration in deciding whether to accept someone is the homogeneity of the community."

The houses of Rakefet are set along steep, curving streets lined with pines and cedar. Nadav Garmi, a 35-year-old engineer, is building a home there. He makes a short drive each day from his neighboring community -- also populated only by Jews -- that falls under the same regional council.

"I'm very left-wing, but I think Arabs should live in one place, ultra-Orthodox Jews in one place, secular Jews in one place and so on," Garmi said. "If you want a good neighbor, you have to have a place for everybody. It's best not to mix too much."

Scapegoats in an Unwelcoming Land

2007-12-16T10:03:00.000-05:00

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Last Wednesday, a car-bomb blast on a crowded Beirut street killed Brig. Gen. Francois Hajj, one of Lebanon's top generals. The capital began buzzing with speculation that Hajj had been assassinated in retaliation for his role as the operational commander of the army's bloody three-month battle with an armed Islamic group last summer. In May, Fatah al-Islam -- a foreign jihadist group inspired by al-Qaeda, led by veterans of the struggle in Iraq and made up mostly of Saudis, Syrians and even some Lebanese -- ensconced itself on the outskirts of Nahr al-Bared, a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon, and massacred Lebanese troops at an army checkpoint. Hajj's forces responded by indiscriminately bombarding the camp in the name of the war on terror, and the Lebanese public rallied 'round.

Palestinians had once again become Lebanon's scapegoats, victims of a land in which they have long faced slaughter and discrimination. Attacking them may be personally risky, but it's also often good politics; the assassinated general's boss, army commander Gen. Michel Suleiman, is poised to become Lebanon's next president. Suleiman isn't the first army commander to punish the Palestinians, and he won't be the first president to do so, either. Between 1958 and 1964, President Fuad Shehab created an elaborate, ruthless secret-service network to monitor the Palestinian camps. During his 1970-76 reign, President Suleiman Franjieh clashed militarily with Palestinian factions, even using the air force to bomb a neighborhood thought to be pro-Palestinian. I've heard followers of assassinated president-elect Bashir Gemayel, whose Maronite Christian militia massacred Palestinians in 1976, brag that he was stopped at a checkpoint in the early years of the country's 1975-90 civil war with a trunk full of the skulls of dead Palestinians. Even today, the Lebanese opposition's preferred candidate for president is Michel Aoun, a Christian retired general who also participated in the 1976 killings.

The rights of the Palestinian refugees have been ignored for six decades by a world that has wished them away. But the Middle East will never know peace or stability until they are granted justice. In 1948-49, around the conflict that Israelis refer to as their War of Independence and that Palestinians call the Catastrophe, some 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed to make way for the creation of the Jewish state. In 1967, during the Six-Day War, 400,000 Palestinians were expelled by the Israeli military, according to Amnesty International.

A series of subsequent peace processes has ignored the refugees, offered no compensation for their suffering and lost property, or refused to recognize their right to return to their homes in their homeland. It's not just the Israelis who have brutalized them; Palestinian refugees have been massacred in Jordan and Lebanon. Small numbers have become so radicalized that they have gone on to fight the U.S. occupation of Iraq. In Lebanon -- a small, weak state with a delicate sectarian balance and turbulent political system where, according to Refugees International, about 382,000 Palestinians have registered with a U.N. refugee-relief agency -- the refugee problem has never really left center stage.

Last summer, I witnessed yet another chapter in the book of the refugees' misery. By late June, most of the Palestinians from Nahr al-Bared had fled to Badawi, another refugee camp nearby. In a schoolyard there, I was stopped by a man named Abu Hadi, born in Haifa in 1946. "I am a person without an address," he told me. "I wish I was a donkey or a horse so I would have doctors and lawyers for my rights." He showed me a plastic bag with a sponge and a towel. "My bathroom is in my hand," he said.

The term "refugee camp" summons up images of tents and squalor, but Nahr al-Bared, like many of its counterparts elsewhere in Lebanon, had been a thoroughly urban camp, with low-slung apartment buildings. It even had soothing views of the Mediterranean. The 40,000 Palestinians of Nahr al-Bared wound up housed in schools in the Badawi refugee camp and Tripoli, watching from afar as their homes were obliterated. According to aid workers and Palestinian nongovernmental organizations, at least 42 Palestinian civilians had been killed by Sept. 2, when the Lebanese army and media declared that Gen. Suleiman's forces had won a great victory.

Only in October did the army finally begin to allow a trickle of Palestinians back to their homes, and then only in the so-called new camp, a small area on the outskirts of the original camp that had housed 2,000 families and been safely under Lebanese army control throughout the clash.

When about 1,000 families finally passed through the checkpoints, to the jeers of soldiers and demonstrators, they found only destruction. Every single home, building, apartment and shop that I saw had been destroyed. Most buildings had been burned from the inside; the signs of the flammable liquids that the soldiers had used were scorched on the walls, and empty fuel canisters were strewn on the floors. Ceilings and walls were riddled with bullets, shot from inside, seemingly for sport. Most homes that I saw had been emptied of furniture, appliances, sinks, toilets, televisions and refrigerators. Most shockingly, soldiers had defecated in kitchens and bedrooms, on plates, bowls, pots and mattresses; they had urinated into olive-oil jars.

The media were not permitted in, and most Lebanese outlets ignored or denied the outrages. When I managed to slip inside, I was shocked by the scope of the damage. The buildings were crumpled, windows broken, electrical wiring yanked out, water pumps destroyed, generators stolen or shot up. All the gold jewelry had been stolen, as had been the cash that so many Palestinians had stored in their bedrooms. Insulting graffiti were scrawled on the charred walls, as were threats, signed by various Lebanese army units. Every car in the camp that I saw had been burned, shot or crushed by tanks or bulldozers. The ruination had been strikingly personal; I saw photo albums that had been torn to shreds. Palestinians told me that they had seen their belongings on sale in the main outdoor market in Tripoli.

Like all institutions in Lebanon, the army is sectarian, a fact that helps explain the devastation. Most of the soldiers fighting in Nahr al-Bared had been Sunnis from northern Lebanon; the Sunnis had once seen Palestinian militias as friendly, but now they blamed the Palestinians for the outsiders of Fatah al-Islam and unleashed their fury on the camp. By contrast, refugees told me, Shiite soldiers from the south had been far kinder and more supportive after the fighting.

The camp had once been woven into the area's economy and culture. Now the Palestinians were again unwanted and rejected. "It is our destiny," one man said emotionlessly in his blackened home in Nahr al-Bared, standing near feces that Lebanese soldiers had left on his kitchen floor.

I saw Palestinian children's art from this period that depicted the Lebanese soldiers and tanks that destroyed the camp as Israelis, equating their suffering at the hands of the Lebanese with the suffering of their brethren at the hands of the Israelis. I saw videos filmed by Lebanese soldiers on the Internet, showing army medical staff abusing corpses and beating prisoners. Hundreds of Palestinians had been abused or tortured in Lebanese detention, according to human rights groups, and refugees told me that some had died from medical neglect of treatable wounds.

The refugees still faced harassment and the occasional beating by Lebanese soldiers. Nobody is helping them, but rather than giving up, hundreds of Palestinians were at work emptying their homes of debris and trying to get on with their lives. One woman stood on her balcony, throwing rubble from inside her home out onto the broken street. She was lucky; most of the Palestinians still couldn't get to their homes and could only wonder what awaited them. On the roof of one of the taller buildings in the new camp, I found Farhan Said Mansur, a sanitation worker, standing with his wife. They were gazing silently across to their distant home, whose broken roof they could just make out, as if they were looking over the border toward Palestine, where he was born. "It is a calamity to all Palestinians," he said.

nirrosen@yahoo.com

Nir Rosen is a fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of "In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq."

You can access the article by following this link:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/14/AR2007121401329_pf.html

APAC Social Fundraising Dinner: January 19th, 2008 at 7pm

2007-12-11T20:37:00.000-05:00

Dear friends,

We are sending you this invitation in hope that you can help us promote it within your respective organizations and circle of family and friends. Hope to see you all there.

What: An Eastern Breeze from Palestine: An APAC Fundraising Dinner Event

Where: St. Elias Reception Hall
750 Ridgewood Avenue

When: Saturday, the 19th of January, 2008 at 7:00pm

Dear friends and community leaders,

The evening will also include a talk by Father Robert Assaly about the current situation in Gaza. There will also be a live auction, raffle tickets prizes, and an Art exhibit.

Tickets sell for $100 VIP, $75 general admission and $60 for students. Charity receipts will be issued for part of the ticket price.

Let's kick start the new year for APAC full of exciting activities and events! On behalf of the APAC board and the organizing committee, we look forward to see you there.

In Solidarity,

APAC Board and Organizing Committee

Contact Information: www.apacottawa.com or

Dr. Habib Khoury: (613) 862-5435/ apaccanada@gmail.com

Fundraiser at Carleton

2007-11-22T21:36:00.001-05:00

Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights at Carleton University Presents:
Fundraising Social Night Come out to relax and socialize at this semester's fundraiser!

Listen to music, dance and network with other people in Ottawa!

Tickets are $5 (Includes: Music and Food).

Proceeds go to SPHR Carleton's upcoming events, including but not limited to: George Rishmawi in January, Occupation Exhibition in February, The Situation Show in March and Protest and Vigil in May.

Tickets will be sold at SPHR's table on Monday in University Centre, through e-mail, and at the door.

For more information, please visit: www.sphrcarleton.org or call 613-276-2351.
What: Fundraising Social Night
When: Friday, November 30 at 7PM
Where: Rooster's Coffeehouse, University Centre in Carleton University

Norman Finkelstein in Toronto

2007-11-16T14:32:00.001-05:00

The Canadian-Palestinian Educational Exchange (CEPAL) invites you to attend its eleventh annual commemoration of the United Nations International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

Keynote speaker, Dr. Norman Finkelstein will discuss roots of conflict and prospects for peace in Israel and Palestine. Dr. Finkelstein received his doctorate in
1988 from the Department of Politics, Princeton University, for a thesis on the theory of Zionism. He is the author of five books: Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of anti-Semitism and the abuse of history (2005); The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the exploitation of Jewish suffering (2000, 2003); Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (1995, 2003); A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen thesis and historical truth (1998); The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A personal account of the intifada years (1996).

Moreover, CEPAL is honored to host Ms. Olfat Mahmoud, Director of the Women’s Humanitarian Organisation (WHO), a CEPAL partner in Bourj el-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp near Beirut. Ms. Mahmoud will discuss the role and
impact of CEPAL in the refugee camps, specifically its contribution to education and solidarity. She will also address the current situation for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

For more information, please visit www.cepal.ca

November 29, 2007
6:30 PM (doors open 5:30)
OISE Auditorium, G162
252 Bloor St. West
Toronto, Ontario

Tickets (at the door):
Students: $5
General: $10

November 2007 newsletter

2007-11-11T16:54:00.000-05:00

Click on this link to download our November 2007 newsletter (billingual format). The file is approximately 4MB.

If you would like to receive our newsletter via email, send us an email at sphr.uofo@gmail.com

http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/598114_ozxhi/ewsletter_SDHPbulletin_nov07.pdf

a letter to the paper...

2007-11-11T16:52:00.001-05:00

After attending a lecture hosted by the Jewish Students Association (JSA) in which Dr. Ephraim Zuroff spoke about “hunting” down Nazi war criminals, I found one aspect of the event, among others, particularly disturbing. At the event on November 8th, the JSA had hung the flag of the World Zionist Organization, who not only sponsored the event, but they were also promoting an annual retreat to Miami called the “Young Zionist Leadership Conference.” At this conference, not only will you be in the presence of “renowned Zionist Leaders,” but you will be “celebrating Israel’s 60th [anniversary of its creation]” and you will be able to “strengthen your personal connection to Zionism.”

The problem with promoting Zionism on campus is simple and crucial to understand; the principle behind Zionism is the creation of a religiously homogenous Jewish State on the land of Palestine. Theodore Herzl, who founded the World Zionist organization in 1897 and who is accredited with planting the seeds of Zionism, envisioned a Jewish State starting in the late 1800’s on the land of Palestine, which Jews believe to be their biblical homeland. The problem with Zionism is that in practice, in order to achieve its goals, the native Palestinian population was expelled and to this day has not been allowed to return to their homes for which many of them still hold the legal deeds. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine was a direct result of the concept of creating an exclusive State, and the practices of “cleansing” the lands of Arabs, including Arab citizens of Israel, is still underway to this day. See Ilan Pappe’s “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” to understand what I mean.

Zionism is a political ideology that led to the expulsion of around 750 000, representing three quarters, of the native Palestinian population from 1947-1949 and to the exacerbation of the ongoing conflict in Palestine and Israel. Why should a club on our campus have to right to be sponsored by an organization that, in theory and in practice, promotes ethnic cleansing? I found it disturbingly ironic that a talk about the Nazi Holocaust was sponsored by an organization that supports ethnic cleansing and the ongoing oppression of an entire people. I openly condemn the actions of the JSA for promoting this organization, and I hope they will publicly begin to make the distinction between being Jewish and being a Zionist.

Sincerely,

Jessica Carpinone, media relations for Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, University of Ottawa.

John Pilger: first time in Ottawa

2007-10-24T09:23:00.001-05:00

World Renowned Author, Journalist & Documentary Filmmaker John Pilger visits Ottawa for the first time

Breaking the Silence: Truth & Lies in the War on Terror his new documentary

Freedom Next Time

Movie screening & Book Signing

When: Thursday, November 15 at 7pm

Where: SITE B138 800 King Edward Avenue University of Ottawa Campus

Seats are limited, reserve your tickets:

613-291-1970 0r 613-263-7677

Students: $10

Others: $12

www.johnpilger.com

Welcome to "Palestine"

2007-09-29T11:58:00.000-05:00

by Robert Fisk
Published: 16 June 2007 in The Independent, UK

How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are.

First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today "Palestine" - and let's keep those quotation marks in place - has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.

Who can we negotiate with? To whom do we talk? Well of course, we should have talked to Hamas months ago. But we didn't like the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. They were supposed to have voted for Fatah and its corrupt leadership. But they voted for Hamas, which declines to recognise Israel or abide by the totally discredited Oslo agreement.
No one asked - on our side - which particular Israel Hamas was supposed to recognise. The Israel of 1948? The Israel of the post-1967 borders? The Israel which builds - and goes on building - vast settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, gobbling up even more of the 22 per cent of "Palestine" still left to negotiate over ?

And so today, we are supposed to talk to our faithful policeman, Mr Abbas, the "moderate" (as the BBC, CNN and Fox News refer to him) Palestinian leader, a man who wrote a 600-page book about Oslo without once mentioning the word "occupation", who always referred to Israeli "redeployment" rather than "withdrawal", a "leader" we can trust because he wears a tie and goes to the White House and says all the right things. The Palestinians didn't vote for Hamas because they wanted an Islamic republic - which is how Hamas's bloody victory will be represented - but because they were tired of the corruption of Mr Abbas's Fatah and the rotten nature of the "Palestinian Authority".

I recall years ago being summoned to the home of a PA official whose walls had just been punctured by an Israeli tank shell. All true. But what struck me were the gold-plated taps in his bathroom. Those taps - or variations of them - were what cost Fatah its election. Palestinians wanted an end to corruption - the cancer of the Arab world - and so they voted for Hamas and thus we, the all-wise, all-good West, decided to sanction them and starve them and bully them for exercising their free vote. Maybe we should offer "Palestine" EU membership if it would be gracious enough to vote for the right people?

All over the Middle East, it is the same. We support Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, even though he keeps warlords and drug barons in his government (and, by the way, we really are sorry about all those innocent Afghan civilians we are killing in our "war on terror" in the wastelands of Helmand province).

We love Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, whose torturers have not yet finished with the Muslim Brotherhood politicians recently arrested outside Cairo, whose presidency received the warm support of Mrs - yes Mrs - George W Bush - and whose succession will almost certainly pass to his son, Gamal.

We adore Muammar Gaddafi, the crazed dictator of Libya whose werewolves have murdered his opponents abroad, whose plot to murder King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia preceded Tony Blair's recent visit to Tripoli - Colonel Gaddafi, it should be remembered, was called a "statesman" by Jack Straw for abandoning his non-existent nuclear ambitions - and whose "democracy" is perfectly acceptable to us because he is on our side in the "war on terror".

Yes, and we love King Abdullah's unconstitutional monarchy in Jordan, and all the princes and emirs of the Gulf, especially those who are paid such vast bribes by our arms companies that even Scotland Yard has to close down its investigations on the orders of our prime minister - and yes, I can indeed see why he doesn't like The Independent's coverage of what he quaintly calls "the Middle East". If only the Arabs - and the Iranians - would support our kings and shahs and princes whose sons and daughters are educated at Oxford and Harvard, how much easier the "Middle East" would be to control.

For that is what it is about - control - and that is why we hold out, and withdraw, favours from their leaders. Now Gaza belongs to Hamas, what will our own elected leaders do? Will our pontificators in the EU, the UN, Washington and Moscow now have to talk to these wretched, ungrateful people (fear not, for they will not be able to shake hands) or will they have to acknowledge the West Bank version of Palestine (Abbas, the safe pair of hands) while ignoring the elected, militarily successful Hamas in Gaza?

It's easy, of course, to call down a curse on both their houses. But that's what we say about the whole Middle East. If only Bashar al-Assad wasn't President of Syria (heaven knows what the alternative would be) or if the cracked President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad wasn't in control of Iran (even if he doesn't actually know one end of a nuclear missile from the other).

If only Lebanon was a home-grown democracy like our own little back-lawn countries - Belgium, for example, or Luxembourg. But no, those pesky Middle Easterners vote for the wrong people, support the wrong people, love the wrong people, don't behave like us civilised Westerners.

So what will we do? Support the reoccupation of Gaza perhaps? Certainly we will not criticise Israel. And we shall go on giving our affection to the kings and princes and unlovely presidents of the Middle East until the whole place blows up in our faces and then we shall say - as we are already saying of the Iraqis - that they don't deserve our sacrifice and our love.

How do we deal with a coup d'état by an elected government?

La Rotonde - September 10, 2007

2007-09-22T22:06:00.000-05:00

Under the "Arts et Culture" section, an article by Caroline Lester regarding SPHR's Naji Al-Ali Handala exhibit which took place on September 4, 2007 at Saw Gallery

Remembering the horrors that took place at Sabra and Shatilla

2007-09-21T14:08:00.000-05:00

This week marks the 25th anniversary of one of the grimmest moments in the
history of the Palestinian diaspora.  On September 16th, 1982, militants
from the radical Phalange faction entered the Palestinian refugee camps of
Sabra and Shatilla - under the watchful eye of their powerful ally, Ariel
Sharon and his Israeli forces, who had surrounded the camps with tanks and
soldiers, allowing none in or out without their knowing.  Earlier that week,
the notorious Phalange leader Bashir Gemayel was assassinated; the
approximately 150-strong Phalange militia force believed the perpetrators of
the attack to be in the refugee camps.

September 15th, the day after the death of Gemayel, the Israeli Defense
Forces executed military operations allowing for the safe entry of the
militants.  The following morning, Israeli snipers fired into the camp as
rockets bombarded the inhabitants.  By about 5pm, the militants entered the
camp to "mop up" the Palestinian camps.  The 40 hours saw the Phalange armed
force injure, rape, murder and brutalize what was mainly unarmed civilians -
including a large number of women and children.  Further refugees were later
rounded up with the assistance of the Israeli army and were later
"disappeared."  The total number of dead is estimated between 800 (the
insensitively conservative Israeli estimate) and 3000.

We are now 25 years after the commission of such horrible crimes against
humanity.  Immediately after the massacres a parliamentary commission found
the Sharon to be "personally responsible" for the massacres and, due to
mounting pressure, he resigned from his position as Minister of Defense.  No
further legal action has interrupted Sharon's otherwise illustrious
political and military career, nor the careers of other responsible
parties.

Despite the grimness of the revelations concerning the massacres, there has
been little media outcry in the Western media.  On the 25th anniversary,
there was major newspaper story dedicated to the victims; no is being asked
"where were you when you found out?"  However, such a cold-blooded failure
of humanity must never be forgotten.  And this week we pay tribute to those
innocents who lost their lives in such a barbaric fashion.

--
In Solidarity,
Thomas Shields
SPHR-Carleton
sphrcarleton@gmail.com
http://www.carleton.sphr.org

Film Festival September 24-25-26

2007-09-19T22:17:00.000-05:00

WHAT? Film Festival
MONDAY: Occupation 101
TUESDAY: Private
WEDNESDAY: Paradise Now
WHEN? Monday, September 24, Tuesday, September 25 and Wednesday, September 26 at 7:30pm
WHERE? Alumni Auditorium, 85 University Private, Jock Turcot Uni Centre
ADMISSION IS FREE

Ali Abunimah: One Country

2007-09-11T22:56:00.000-05:00

ALI ABUNIMAH
ONE COUNTRY: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse A lecture tour and book-signing in Canadian Universities with Author Ali Abunimah
Book sold at the event $15

Wednesday, September 19 at 8:00PM
Alumni Auditorium - Jock Turcot Uni Centre - 85 University Private
$7 entry at the door

Ali Abunimah makes the radical argument that what is needed is one state shared by Palestinians and Israelis in his new book, ONE COUNTRY: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Jordan Times, Lebanon's Daily Star and Ha'aretz, among others. He was born in the United States and grew up in Europe. Both of his parents are originally from Palestine and he currently lives in Chicago.

www.electronicintifada.net

Naji Al-Ali exhibit pictures

2007-09-10T21:37:00.000-05:00

Click the thumbnails to view actual size

Photography by: Sonja Mitrovic

Naji Al-Ali: Understanding Conflict through Art exhibit

2007-08-08T18:46:00.001-05:00

Join SPHR on Tuesday, September 4 at 7pm at Saw Gallery on 67 Nicholas Street in downtown Ottawa. 20 years after his death Naji Al-Ali's cartoons "Handala" still impacts the world.
Entrance is free. For more information email sphr.uofo@gmail.com

La Rotonde - February 19, 2007

2007-08-08T18:44:00.000-05:00

Under the "Actualités" section of LaRotonde, SPHR's lecture with Jamal Zahalka was featured in the February 19, 2007 edition.

La Rotonde - March 12, 2007

2007-08-07T21:32:00.001-05:00

Regarding the play "Finding Gilad" in Social Theatre

The Logo

2007-07-16T17:14:00.000-05:00

In order to represent and symbolize SPHR's mission and objectives, the organizers were looking to come up with a concept for a logo which could easily be associated with the Palestinian struggle both by the Palestinian community itself and the general public.

Amongst the suggestions for logo ideas, a few stood out and provoked an important series of debates; Handala (a cartoon figure created by Najil Ali to symbolize the Palestinian bitterness towards the Occupation), an olive tree and a Palestinian flag. There were arguments presented for and against all options.

In the case of Handala, while it is known that the general Middle Eastern societies would identify with this image as being a symbol of the Palestinian struggle, people in the Western world would have no idea who Handala is. On the other hand, it was decided that the olive tree on its own was not sufficient to represent the Palestinian struggle, as it is a symbol used by most Mediterranean cultures.

The option of the Palestinian flag was equally rejected because, just as any other flag, it holds a nationalist aim diverting attention away from a true struggle for human rights.

In the end, the final decision fell on the dome of the rock, an olive branch and barbwire. Organizers agreed to use the dome of the rock as it suggests a connection between the Palestinian struggle for human rights and the right to their native land, drawing attention, amongst other things to occupied Jerusalem. It was also decided to include the barbwire representing the struggle for human rights and dignity as inspired by the Amnesty International logo. As for the olive branch, it has been known throughout history as a symbol of peace and hope.

Ethnic Cleansing and Zionism

2007-07-16T16:51:00.001-05:00

Ethnic Cleansing:
The forced expulsion of an "undesirable" population from a given territory due to religious or ethnic discrimination, political, strategic or ideological considerations, or a combination of these.

Zionism:
A movement that developed in the late 19th and early 20th century that called for the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine, based on the location of the ancient Kingdom of Israel. Since 1948, Zionism has been a movement to support the development and improve the image of the State of Israel, and to encourage Jews to settle there.

from www.sphr.org

Palestinian Right of Return

2007-07-16T16:49:00.000-05:00

Before, during and immediately after the establishment of the state of Israel, over 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homes and lands. These refugees and their descendants are the largest and most persistent refugee population in the world. Until now, there has been no relief to their suffering. Under international law, the Right of return is an individual right that cannot be compromised or dropped by a third party.

The expulsion and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their towns and villages in 1948 was the first stage in the ?redemption? of the land to fulfill the original Zionist dream of a Jewish state in historical Palestine. It is the Palestinians subjected to ethnic cleansing between 1947-1949 who have the ?honor? of being the largest population of refugees still unsettled. They suffered the longest displacement in modern history (57 years so far). Two competing stories existed until recently. The first version, advocated by Israeli leaders holds that the native Palestinians left of their own free will, they were encouraged to leave by their leaders, and even that Israeli leaders begged them to stay. The second version, told by the Palestinian refugees themselves and lately confirmed by several Israeli historians with access to Israeli military archives, is that the native Palestinians were ethnically cleansed before, during, and after Israel?s war of independence. In Palestinian lexicon, the expulsion was Al-Nakbeh (the catastrophe), the most traumatic event in Palestinian history.

from www.sphr.org

Palestinian Citizens of Israel

2007-07-16T16:46:00.001-05:00

The Palestinians in Israel, usually referred to as Arab-Israelis, are descendants of the people that managed to remain within Palestine during the years of the establishment of the state of Israel. Palestinian citizens of Israel comprise approximately 1.3 million persons, about 20% of Israel's total population. They numbered in 1948 approximately 150,000, of which about 25% became internal refugees (Internally Displaced Persons). Geographically the Palestinian Israelis live in Arab villages and cities in Galilee, in the so-called "Arab Triangle", in the Negev Desert and in mixed Arab-Jewish cities such as Haifa, Akka, Lydda, Ramla and Jaffa.

The cultural and political identity of Palestinian citizens is put under major pressure by the Israeli state, and expressions of collective identity are regarded as subversive.

From 1948 until 1966 the Palestinians in Israel lived under military occupation. Palestinians faced restrictions on the freedom of movement, restrictions on the freedom of press and opinion and legal confiscation of land and property. Under military law Palestinians faced the possibility of deportations, illegal detentions without trial, curfews, house arrests etc. The end of military rule in 1966 did not end this legal and institutional discrimination.

Currently, the inequality under the Basic law is felt in almost all aspects of social, political and economic life:

A discriminatory educational system where curriculum is routinely biased in favour of Jewish customs and norms at the expense of Arab culture.
A fraction of the funds allocated for social services, maintenance and building of infrastructure in the Israeli budgets (less than 5%) go to developing Palestinian towns in Israel.
Palestinian citizens face strict building and land ownership restrictions compared to Jewish citizens of the state. Since most of the land in the state (86%) is owned and leased by the Israeli Land Authority (ILA) to Israeli citizens, several clear restrictions are made on Arab leasing of the land.
Palestinian citizens of Israel can only lease land in certain areas of the state while their Jewish counterparts have no such restrictions placed upon them
The maximum lease period for Palestinian citizens is 3 years. The minimum lease period for Jewish citizens is 50 years. This means that Palestinian citizens feel continuous insecurity about their future since any long term investment on leased land can be easily halted by the ILA
The Palestinian (non-Israeli citizens) spouses of Israeli citizens cannot obtain Israeli citizenship in a racist policy meant to restrict people from Palestinian origin to obtain Israeli citizenship.

The active policy of under-development also becomes clear in the case of the "unrecognized” villages. About 100,000 people live in these villages, mostly in the Negev and in the North, which the Israeli authorities refuse to recognize. This means that even the most basic services are not made available to their inhabitants, such as running water, health services, sanitation, electricity, safe roads, adequate education facilities or postal and other communication services. Over the past two years, the Israeli authorities have engaged in a campaign to abolish some of these villages by spraying their crops with poisonous chemicals from the sky and by forcefully demolishing their houses.

from www.sphr.org

What is Occupation?

2007-07-16T16:45:00.000-05:00

Occupation is a term used to refer to a situation in which a foreign army ceases territory not falling under its jurisdiction and then places its authority upon that territory. Within International Law, there are rules that govern how an occupation is to be undertaken regardless of whether the occupation itself was justifiable to begin with. These laws are meant to ensure the safety of civilians first and foremost. All member states of the United Nations must abide by those rules including Israel which has been a signatory member since 1949.

In 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem imposing its military rule on the Palestinian residents of these territories. By doing so, Israel took control of the remaining 22% of historical Palestine. (map illustration)

This military occupation is currently the most persistent military occupation in the world having so far lasted more than 38 years.

Terms that come up frequently when describing the Occupation

Apartheid
Restriction on movement
Denial of religious rights
Curfew
Closures
Checkpoints
Control of resources
Land confiscation
House demolitions
Settlements
Daily humiliation
Collective punishment
Population transfer
Torture in prisons and in detention
Restricted access to education
Assassinations
Denying medical services
Targeting First Aid volunteers for harassment and assassination
No freedom of expression
No freedom of assembly or political association
I.D. confiscation
Judeazation of Jerusalem
Unemployment
Poverty
Malnutrition

from www.sphr.org

The New York Times: A Life of Unrest

2007-07-16T11:59:00.000-05:00

By: STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: July 15, 2007

Palestinians never used to do these things to one another. Putting bullets in the back of the heads of men on their knees. Shooting up hospitals. Killing patients. Knee-capping doctors. Executing clerics. Throwing handcuffed prisoners to their deaths from Gaza’s highest (and most expensive) apartment buildings. There is a madness in Gaza now. Hamas — a religious political-military organization that dominated the last Palestinian elections — claimed it was fighting infidels, with a holy sanction to kill. Fatah — the largest group in the Palestine Liberation Organization — was nearly as brutal as Hamas and claimed it was fighting the Nazis. Poor young men from the squalid, stinking refugee camps of Gaza, their heads filled with religious slogans and revolutionary cant, took off their knitted black masks to pose in front of the gilded bathrooms of the once-powerful and rich men of Fatah. Then they stole the sinks, toilets, tiles and pipes, leaving the wiring and the metal scraps for the ordinary, unarmed poor.

Arafat's Legacy, Revised
Hilal invokes not the establishment Arafat but the pre-Oslo, revolutionary Arafat.
Gaza today is so far from the hopes of people like James Wolfensohn — the former World Bank president who tried to coordinate economic redevelopment in the 140-square-mile territory between Israel and Egypt after the Israelis withdrew nearly two years ago — as to seem like the other side of the earth. Rather than a model for a future Palestinian state, Gaza looks like Somalia: broken and ravenous. The civil war that Palestinians insisted could never happen just has, a civil war abetted by Israel and the United States in the name of antiterrorism and stability — another policy that has failed, at least here, where a burning smell still fills the nostrils and where a masked Hamas gunman with an AK-47 recently sat at the abandoned desk of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, lifted up the phone and said: “Hello, Condoleezza Rice? You have me to deal with now.” But the military victory of Hamas may also bring a welcome measure of quiet and security to the 1.5 million people of Gaza, nearly 70 percent of them refugees, who have been living a nightmare of criminal gangs, street-corner vendettas, clan warfare, absent police, corrupt officials, religious incitement and unremitting poverty.
Khaled Abu Hilal, a thin, grizzled chain-smoker who sucks in tobacco smoke the way an emphysema patient sucks in oxygen, is at the center of the revolution. He is a hated figure among many in the secular, nationalist Fatah; they think he is a heretic who helped set off the Gaza implosion. But his journey is Gaza’s journey, from Fatah fighter and Israeli prisoner to disgusted ex-Fatah man, now associated with Hamas. His anger with Mahmoud Abbas — Yasir Arafat’s successor as chairman of the P.L.O. and now president of the Palestinian Authority — and with what he considers the endless, futile and demeaning effort of a corrupt Fatah to please the Israelis, is shared among an increasing number of Palestinians.
Standing early last month amid the Israeli-bombed ruins of the buildings of the Executive Force, which he helped Hamas build as a parallel police and protection force, Hilal, now 39, was quietly triumphant. He had been serving as a close aide to, and spokesman for, the tough Hamas interior minister, Said Siam, who left office in opposition to the national-unity government with Fatah. Both he and Siam were central to the campaign by the Executive Force and by Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, that pulled Fatah down in six days in early June. “I feel proud, no question,” he said as aides urgently shoved cellphones into his hand. “I feel I did my national duty, and that makes me very comfortable, psychologically speaking.” Two weeks later, at a packed and sweaty rally in Gaza City, Hilal announced that he would lead a new Fatah movement and military force in Gaza, allied with Hamas, called Fatah al-Yasir/Higher Military Command, named after Yasir Arafat.
“This is pure Fatah, Fatah before Oslo,” Hilal shouted hoarsely, referring to the 1993 peace accords with Israel that created the Palestinian Authority. Hilal sees Oslo as a betrayal of the Palestinian struggle for real statehood, and he called his new movement “a true Palestinian national liberation movement.” Surrounded by large, bearded gunmen in black uniforms, Hilal wore a loose, untucked shirt and looked as tiny as Arafat. “The good and honorable people of the Fatah movement have rejected the collaborators!” he shouted. At the end, he was mobbed by hundreds of young men, both acolytes and job seekers.
Whether or not he succeeds with the new movement, Hilal (if he lives) presents the first major internal challenge to the Fatah establishment, represented by Abbas, calling Fatah back to its roots as a resistance movement of revolutionary fighters. Establishment Fatah has excommunicated Hilal, and some would surely like to see him dead. But if Palestine is now divided between the West Bank and Gaza, Fatah in Gaza is divided, too.
In a conversation after the Hamas victory, Hilal, speaking through an interpreter, said he felt “bitterness about the spilling of Palestinian blood,” but the spilling of blood for the cause of Palestinian independence and dignity, as he sees it, is an inevitable, even necessary sacrifice. At least 160 Palestinians, most of them Fatah, died in that week of war last month, including 45 civilians, and some 800 were wounded, according to the Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza. Another 50 were killed in an earlier round of fighting, in May. No matter what happens now, Hilal said, “it will not be worse than the previous period of chaos, nothing worse can come. And maybe now we have the chance to move very seriously to encourage the local economy, small business, agriculture. The most important thing is that we have got rid of the mafia that exists in the security apparatuses and that paralyzed our daily life.”
By “mafia” he means Fatah — or at least the leadership of Fatah that he believes betrayed its duty to its own people. For Hilal, the recent battle was for the purity of Fatah, which he maintains he represents against what he calls “the polluted stream” of Fatah, “the diverted ones,” who betrayed Palestinian aspirations for independence at Oslo and became entranced by Israeli and American approval and gold. The major mistake of Arafat and Fatah was to accept the Oslo accords, Hilal says, and those who opposed the accords then — Hamas and Islamic Jihad — were correct. “I am pro-peace and anti-Oslo,” Hilal told me. “Oslo is a project for treason, not for peace.”
The Palestinian Authority, an outgrowth of the accords, was not a government, in Hilal’s view, but a welfare agency that has served Israeli interests. By keeping Palestinians focused on getting their monthly checks, it has enslaved them and prolonged the Israeli occupation of Palestine, instead of enabling Palestinians to build a real economy and nation. “Negotiations have become a good in themselves after Oslo, and that’s a complete failure,” he said. “The Palestinians only talk, and the Israelis are happy. They can negotiate forever and seduce these collaborators with money, V.I.P. treatment, exit visas, cars, businesses and monopolies.
“It’s a form of control, of colonialism,” Hilal went on. “When the Palestinian Authority employs 180,000 people, you drive them away from the real issue, you hold them by their neck and you make them dependent on the system. If you agree with Oslo, you get benefits and jobs. For those who resist, nothing; the price is sometimes to be killed.” There is no real economy in the Palestinian territories, he said, noting that the authority has to rely on foreign aid even to pay its swollen wage bill for employees who do little work. “Instead of decent jobs, we have these colonial handouts, and the corrupted ones take their cut of everything,” he said. He paused a moment, then added, “You can control an animal by feeding it, but a human being will start to think.”
Born in southern Gaza a year after the 1967 war, Hilal came of age in the refugee camps of Khan Yunis. His family fled from Bashit, a village in what is now central Israel, during the 1948 war. The village was destroyed, he notes coldly, replaced by what he calls “the Jewish settlements” of Benaya and Aseret.
He grew up under Israeli occupation in the twisting, fetid alleys of Khan Yunis, only a few yards from the home of Muhammad Dahlan. Dahlan, seven years older than Hilal, would become Fatah’s security chief in Gaza. Hilal once worked for him, then came to despise him.
Hilal was radicalized early. “I was no observer,” he says now. “I was arrested two days before I turned 16, because I threw a hand-made bomb toward an Israeli military jeep in Khan Yunis.” He spent the next 11 years, from 1984 to 1995, in six different Israeli prisons, from the most secure, in Ashkelon, to the most difficult, in the Negev tent prison of Ketziot, which was shut down for a time after international protests. “I paid the price,” Hilal says flatly. “Many like me paid the price. Though our economic situation then was better than in any Arab country, we cared more about fighting the occupation than about bread or school. The occupation arrested us to put an end to all these emotions in us. But it backfired. ”
Like Maxim Gorky, he said that “prison was my university,” and then he laughed. A year in Israeli prison, he says, “is like 10 years outside in terms of educational consciousness and commitment to your country, transferring it to a faith inside yourself. That’s the most powerful incentive, to sacrifice for your country with consciousness. It’s not about passion.” Every Palestinian entering prison chose a faction; he chose Fatah, he says, because of Arafat. Most prisoners belonged to Fatah, and they met three times a day, for 90 minutes a session, to learn about the history of Palestine, the Arab world and the Fatah program. They also studied what Hilal calls “political science and military science.” They studied languages; he chose to learn Hebrew, which he speaks and reads easily.
After the Oslo accords, which brought Arafat and the P.L.O. back from exile in Tunis, thousands of Palestinian prisoners were released, but not Hilal. “I opposed Oslo from the beginning,” he says. “I was the representative of all the factions in Ketziot then, and the Israelis knew I opposed Oslo. Not because I oppose peace, but because I didn’t trust the Israelis and military occupation.”
Fatah split bitterly over Oslo, with Farouk Kaddoumi, Arafat’s No. 2 in the faction, remaining in exile. When Hilal was finally released in 1995, Arafat persuaded him to “give Oslo a try” and work in the Palestinian Authority. He served in the presidential-security detail from 1996 until 2002, the second year of the second intifada. He then became a leader of Fatah’s Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades — set up by Arafat to compete with Hamas’s military wing, and using many of the same tactics, including killing Israeli civilians — and was a close aide to Samir al-Masharawi, who was Muhammad Dahlan’s right-hand man.
Then, following Hamas’s victory in January 2006, Hilal left Fatah, soon becoming spokesman for the minister of the interior in the new Hamas government. Why? “I discovered there were traitors in conspiracy against our Palestinian cause,” Hilal told me. “Even Arafat understood by 2002 that Israel and America were looking for collaborators, not partners for peace.” For Hilal, the symbol of the rot in Fatah was the dapper Dahlan, the boy who grew up near him in Khan Yunis and who became a favorite of the Israelis and the Americans. “Dahlan is an American employee,” Hilal said. “I heard Arafat say that myself.”
Ahmed Hillis, a critic of Dahlan who nonetheless remained in Gaza as a leader of Fatah after last month’s fighting, dismisses Hilal’s claim to hold true to the ideals of the organization. “He’s Hamas now,” Hillis says. “He was kicked out of Fatah a long time ago.”
Ziad Abu Ein, a Fatah leader in Ramallah, knew Hilal in Ashkelon prison and respected him. He says he believes that Hilal left Fatah over a difference about money and sponsorship. “For the sake of dollars he left the official channels and went to Hamas seeking funding,” Ein said. “He doesn’t represent Fatah anymore; he was fired when he joined the Hamas government. Fatah doesn’t need mercenaries. He sold himself to Hamas, even though he claims he is Fatah.”
Hilal scoffs at the charge. And in fact he seems sincere in his anger with Fatah and in his belief that those who supported Oslo and negotiations with Israel, led by Abbas, have lost their way and lost touch with the real life of Gaza’s people.
Hamas won the January 2006 elections for many reasons, but prime among them was a general disgust that had built among Palestinians, and among many members of Fatah like Hilal, at the corruption of Fatah’s men at the top. They may have begun as revolutionaries, but they ended up as padded bureaucrats, benefiting from the privileges that their supposed adversary, Israel, was eager to provide them. One Israeli negotiator in the days of Camp David, Gidi Grinstein, recently described how Fatah’s leaders would travel only first class, with junior staff traveling in business. Only Israeli cabinet ministers could travel business class, Grinstein noted. “We used to joke that they were the ‘full-belly revolutionaries,’ ” he said. “Dahlan was a kid from a refugee camp who lived in a palace.”
Dahlan, who has always denied corruption charges, used to control monopolies on oil supplies into Gaza and on exit permits. Fatah took a big cut of the import and export business at the Karni crossing on the Israeli border. But there was also Ahmed Qurei, the former prime minister known as Abu Ala, who was famous for his factory in Abu Dis, which was widely reported to supply cement for the building of some Israeli settlements and even for the separation wall.
Fatah lost touch not only with the grass roots but also with its soul, and when it largely traded armed resistance against Israel for negotiations that failed to produce either peace or a better life for Palestinians, it seemed to lose a certain amount of self-respect. When Arafat died, it lost its defining symbol, the one charismatic man who combined the idea of war and politics in his tiny, uniformed self, his kaffiyeh carefully tied in the shape of British Mandate Palestine, and who could gather together the many strands of Palestinian politics.
Even the gunmen of Fatah’s Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades began to lose faith in their leaders, especially in Abbas. He had trouble paying them, but more important, his sincere, open and brave commitment to nonviolence seemed to them a surrender to Israeli occupation.
Hamas, working to Islamicize Palestinians and recruit them, combined religious fervor, well-financed charitable and social work and an effective strategy of military confrontation and terrorism. It is classified as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, and both try to disrupt its financing through charitable contributions and bank transfers. Its choice to enter electoral politics was much discussed inside the movement and presented a profound change. It also meant that Fatah had a competitor for the first time, and one as well-financed as itself.
Hamas has a religious foundation, but it is also an intensely nationalist movement, with Palestine as its focus. Hamas continues to refuse to recognize the existence of Israel. But it has none of the grand ambitions of Osama Bin Laden or Al Qaeda to drive the “U.S. crusaders” out of the Middle East, nor does it aim at Americans; instead, Hamas sees Washington as a reality and wants the Americans to push Israel to leave lands it occupied after the 1967 war, although Hamas refuses to endorse a permanent two-state solution. Hamas is secretive and severe but also, in its way, pragmatic. (For example, it stopped carrying out suicide bombings inside pre-1967 Israel as of September 2004, judging them to be counterproductive.)
It was Muhammad Dahlan who organized the Gaza crackdown on Hamas in 1996, when on Arafat’s orders, Hamas men were arrested and their beards shaved. Many were taken to the headquarters of the Preventive Security, which Dahlan headed, where, it was reported at the time, they were tortured. Sometimes, according to Hamas officials, men were made to sit on bottles and thus sodomize themselves. Ten years later, during one postelection round of fighting between Hamas and Fatah, men of the Preventive Security marched through the streets, chanting a slogan referencing that time, with particular messages for Ismail Haniya, the Hamas prime minister, and Mahmoud Zahar, then the Hamas foreign minister. “Zahar!” they chanted. “Tell Haniya! The time of the bottle is returning!”
When Hamas took over Gaza, its fighters wept as they raised their green flag over the Preventive Security building, then turned to Mecca and prayed. Then they looted the building and Dahlan’s luxurious villa. Dahlan, who was in Cairo, did not return to Gaza but fled to the West Bank.
The fight between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza has been brutal ever since last year’s elections brought Hamas to power. Fatah refused Hamas’s invitation to join in a coalition government. And, together with the security forces it had controlled since the Palestinian Authority was established after the 1993 Oslo accords, Fatah simply refused to recognize the legitimacy of Hamas, elected or not.
Even more, there were organized campaigns of crime and disruption from Fatah-run security forces, intended to make Hamas’s government untenable. Many Palestinians spoke of recognizing Fatah men as they hijacked cars or forced their way to the head of lines in hospitals and ministries. One family I met spoke of Fatah officers, called to stop a riot in Khan Yunis over a new delivery of cooking gas, forcing their way to the front of the line and taking the remaining gas canisters for themselves. Then there were the criminal gangs that, as Hilal put it, “hid under the umbrella of resistance and invented a slogan and bought the T-shirt and pretended to belong to the Brigades of Whatever.”
Hilal, like the leaders of Hamas, says that Fatah security forces deliberately set out to undermine the new Hamas government. But in any case, the Fatah-dominated police were doing little to enforce the law or to confront armed gangs, some of whom also contained policemen. Nor were the courts in Gaza providing any form of justice, meaning Gazans who wanted retribution or protection found their own armed men, usually from their own clan, or hamulla.
To defend Hamas and to try to provide security on the streets, in April 2006, the Palestinian Authority’s new interior minister, Hamas’s Said Siam, created the Executive Force, the parallel police force of volunteers, which President Abbas soon banned. No one in Gaza paid any attention to the ban. Hilal went to work for Siam and Hamas, agreeing with their attempt to bring security to Gazans, as Hamas had promised during its campaign. Hilal brought with him, he told me, 1,000 members of the Fatah-affiliated Aksa and Abu Rish Brigades, as well as representatives from other factional militias who were committed to fighting Israel, like the Popular Resistance Committees, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. (The Israeli security agency, Shin Bet, confirmed this information to me.)
“We can do more to provide security with 3,500 volunteers than the Palestinian security forces with their 70,000,” Hilal said at the time, in one of a series of conversations we’ve had since Hamas took over. “We hold the gun out of faith and commitment to the national project, not for a salary. The main reason for the chaos is not the society, but the paralysis, weakness and corruption of the Palestinian Authority and its security forces, who just incite and do not do their jobs.”
Hilal, who lives modestly with his wife and five children in the center of Gaza, is revered by many in the Executive Force, who regard him as clean, committed and logical. Akhaim al-Khalidi is one of them, a 23-year-old Fatah member from a Fatah family. He joined the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades in 2001 to fight the Israeli occupation, he told me recently. “But instead, many of them became corrupted, trying to find money,” he said, especially as Arafat was being squeezed by Washington and Israel to stop paying so many gunmen. “Abu Hilal is an honorable man, and he is doing important work.” Another Gazan fighter who supports Hilal, Muhammad Saqqa, is also Fatah but told me he admires Hamas. “Though we in Fatah were the fathers, I feel jealous of Hamas and their inspiration,” he said. “They respect the young and the old, they’re very secretive and disciplined, unlike Fatah. Don’t consider them a stupid terrorist group. They’re educated, organized, and they were elected. They distinguish between military and political and social work, and they are very honest with themselves.”
Saqqa said that his father and one brother worked for Abbas’s Presidential Guard; another brother worked for Fatah General Intelligence. But another brother joined Hamas’s military, the Qassam Brigades, while Saqqa himself joined the Executive Force. “My family criticizes me for dealing with Hamas, but Hamas are our brothers,” he said, adding later, “Abu Hilal knows Fatah very well and understands its shortcomings.”
By the time the fighting in Gaza began last month, the Executive Force had grown to nearly 6,000 well-trained men and had been made a part of the Palestinian Authority’s security forces, and they were being paid. The Shin Bet says the force shared a military headquarters with the Qassam Brigades, and while retaliating for rocket fire into Israel, Israeli forces aimed at and destroyed nearly every facility of the Executive Force. Shin Bet officials refused to discuss Hilal, despite his prominence and his years in Israeli prisons, but Israel clearly regards him as a danger. On May 17, an Israeli missile was fired at the bodyguards around Hilal’s house. One of them, Talat Abed Haniya, 30, was killed, and four others were wounded.
Israel is now confronted with an excruciating if not quite existential dilemma. There is a hostile entity on its southern border, run by an armed group that is committed to fighting Israel and is opposed to its existence. Gaza has become comparable to southern Lebanon, which is run by Hezbollah. Israel let Hezbollah grow, feeling restrained by an international border and its own nightmares about its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon. Many in Israel consider that policy of restraint to have been a considerable mistake. Should Israel now let a Gazan Hamastan grow, or try to take it out, hoping that Fatah can restore some semblance of authority there? Even before last month’s rout of Fatah, there was already pressure from the Israeli Southern Command for a major incursion into Gaza to try to whack back growing Hamas power — “to cut the grass,” as the Israeli military chief of staff, Dan Halutz, told me when he was still in office.
The problem of Gaza will be the first to confront Ehud Barak, the new Israeli defense minister. Barak, who as prime minister tried and failed, with Bill Clinton, to cut the clotted mess with the Palestinians in one go, is also the most decorated soldier in Israel’s history. A former army commando, Barak is likely to favor operations neater than massed-armor invasions of crowded refugee camps. But ambitious to be prime minister again, he is also unlikely to sit on his hands.
Hamas is likely to try to ensure that it gives Israel no provocation for such an incursion, needing the time to try to consolidate daily life in Gaza, which means working functionally with Israel on imports of fuel oil, electricity, milk, drugs and most everything else. Fighting Israel now will do nothing for Hamas or for Gazans who want Hamas to deliver on its promise of “change and reform,” the slogan under which it won power.
Hilal says that he still believes, like Abbas and unlike Hamas, in a negotiated two-state solution. “But more and more,” he explained, “Palestinians understand that a real peace is built on struggle, and it is made between enemies, not friends. The government that is an enemy to Israel but chosen by the people is the one able to make peace.”
As you move around Gaza, along with the poverty and shoddy construction of everything except public buildings, a few lavish apartment houses and the mosques, what strikes you hardest is the increasing religious conservatism. Most of the people in the streets are men, and the women you see are almost invariably covered — not just with a head scarf that surrounds the face and hides the hair, but with long, heavy dresses, usually black, that fall to the ankles. You notice the radical fervor of the martyr posters and the fierceness of the gunmen, but perhaps the biggest shock is how young everyone is. According to official figures from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 49 percent of the population of Gaza is 14 or younger; 60 percent are 19 or younger. Nearly 76 percent are under 30. So there is a lot of testosterone, not much sexual mingling and very few jobs.
For Hilal, this pressure cooker of youth, anger and lack of opportunity is necessary for the revolution in consciousness he maintains is happening. According to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 58 percent of those under 30 expect a more violent struggle with Israel over the next 5 to 10 years, and only 22 percent say that there will be a peaceful negotiated solution between Israel and the Palestinians. Forty-eight percent say they believe such an agreement is impossible; 20 percent more say that it will come only “in a few generations.”
Nasreen al-Howh is a 26-year-old psychiatric social worker in Gaza, and she says that the constituency for peace is shrinking, especially among the young. “I’m very worried about this generation,” she said recently, pulling at her white head covering. “They are very pessimistic and very vulnerable to appeals for mastery, for meaning.” What they want, she says, is a sense that they can control their lives, and that their lives will have meaning. So they are susceptible to appeals from religious groups and armed groups that claim to be fighting Israel. She conceded that she, too, cannot imagine a final peace with Israel or a two-state solution. “The resistance camp is crowding out the peace camp,” she told me. “So long as there’s no peace, there’s resistance.”
Under pressure and without work, many young men “will try to avoid all that responsibility and go to the tanzim,” she went on to say, referring to the militias. “The tanzim also gives them self-confidence; it alleviates the fear inside of them.” Mkhaimer Abusada, who teaches at Al Azhar University, told me: “They can get $100 working for the tanzim. They’ve lost perspective. They’ve lost the belief in peace. And they’ve lost faith in education — in their future here.”
It’s not hard to find young people at loose ends, jobless and bored, admiring of the gunmen, ready to be inspired or recruited or manipulated or brainwashed into fighting for — or against — something larger than their own lives. Some want a job, but many believe that their only honorable future is in “struggle” or “resistance” against an Israel that they, like Hilal, believe does not keep its promises and is insincere about its willingness to leave Palestinian lands in return for peace.
Fadel Bsiso, a skinny and jobless teenager, sat with two friends in the smoky A-Shiraa coffee shop in Gaza City not long ago, nursing a single coffee and sharing a water-pipe. (Each pipe costs $1.20 to rent with one bowl of tobacco.) His father “confronted the Israelis many times in the first intifada,” he said proudly.
And Bsiso himself? “I’ve just got into one military faction,” he said. Why join? “I feel I’m looking for protection,” he said. “This is how I find it.” Protection from whom? He looked stunned. “From Israel,” he said. “It’s a war, an endless war with them, mentioned even in the Koran. Our religion does not allow us to live with them.”
But his father is Fatah, which recognizes a two-state solution, right? Bsiso shrugged: “The Jews are imposed on us. They have no roots here. They came and took our land and built a state, but we don’t accept it.”
One of the friends, Sakher Hillis, who is 19, broke in. “They chose a weak country, but they were surprised to find out we’re strong,” he said.
Bsiso said his father wants him to be a teacher. “But then he jokes and says, ‘Even if you go as a martyr, I have seven others.’ ”
Hillis’s own father is in Hamas. “I’m very pessimistic,” he said. “But I feel I can give my life to the cause. I’m very bored with this life, honestly. This life has no meaning for me. If I can find a goal and achieve it, I can be optimistic. But this depression is inside of us.”
Is religion part of the answer? “Religion plays a role because it encourages struggle,” Hillis said. “It says fight in the name of God. I’m not extreme, I promise you — this is normal.”
The Palestinian poet Ahmed Dahbour is troubled by the turn to Hamas and religious and political extremism and has tried to understand it as an expression of frustration, especially generational frustration. Dahbour was 2 when his family fled Haifa into exile in 1948. “I’m the generation of the nakba,” he told me recently — the “catastrophe,” as Palestinians refer to the establishment of Israel and their own flight or expulsion. “We fled with nothing, and my mother used to create for me an imaginary city, a paradise called ‘Haifa.’ The enemy was an idea. But this generation is different. This generation saw the Israeli soldier, and it is full of bitterness and envy.”
He emphasized the patriarchal nature of Palestinian society, and the deep humiliation suffered by a father who cannot protect his family from invasion, incursion, poverty, unemployment and fear. “The fathers feel shame, but so do the sons,” Dahbour said. “The sons become martyrs, not the fathers.”
Then he added, “The revolution of the sons is to protect the dignity of the fathers.”
“This suffering and these deaths are the tax imposed on us by the occupation,” Hilal told me. “We suffer and burn, but what causes revolution? Poverty, injustice and anger — this is what leads to revolution, even in free countries. This is what gives us fuel to resist the occupation and create a revolution in our thinking.”
Two phenomena are merging, he went on to say: “personal revenge and the national project.” Israeli policies in Gaza and the West Bank, he’s convinced, are stoking a third intifada, “more bloody and violent.” Hilal is stoking it too, in his own way. The young generation now, with all its anger and hopelessness, is a necessary part of the victory Hilal is sure will come — when Israel, he believes, will come to terms with Palestinian nationalism and negotiate a future with an enemy it has been forced to respect.
“I think this generation will be the liberation generation,” he said. “If in the past, 1 percent of the people went into resistance, from this generation, 20 percent or more will do it. This generation will be the one most ready to resist. This generation will be our liberation army.”

Steven Erlanger is the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times. Taghreed El-Khodary contributed additional reporting from Gaza.

ACTION REQUIRED - Liberal party denying pro-Palestinian candidate the right to run

2007-07-16T11:50:00.000-05:00

Ed Corrigan an outspoken advocate for justice for Palestine and long time
Liberal has been rejected by the Liberal "Green Light Committee" as a
candidate for the riding of London Fanshaw. You will find below some
interesting background information on past efforts to expel or marginalize
people with pro-Palestinian views from the Liberal party. Ed was only given a vague explanation of the reason for not allowing him to run as a candidate, e.g, has made statements and holds views not in line with the policies of the Liberal Party.

If you feel comfortable with the information provided in this e-mail, please
take a few minutes to write an quick letter to Dion and the Liberal party.

Example:

Dear Mr. Dion:
It has come to my attention that the Liberal Party has denied Mr.Ed Corrigan the right to run for candidacy in the riding of London-Fanshaw. It is alleged that the reason for the denial of his candidacy is that he is an outspoken proponent for Palestinian rights and a just solution to the middle east conflict based on International Law. If the Liberal Party's position is contrary to this, then you will not be receiving my vote at the next election.

Dion.S@parl.gc.ca
Telephone: (613) 996-5789
Fax: (613) 996-6562
If e-mailing, please also copy:

marissen@burrardcommunications.com

ngirard@liberal.ca

mpoulin@liberal.ca

judi.longfield@lpco.ca

A PATTERN OF DENIAL?

I have distributed strong letters of support that I have received from
the Canadian Islamic Congress and the Canadian Arab Federation. I have
also recently received letters of support from the President of the
Canadian Arab Society, the President of the Canadian Palestinian
Association of London and letters of support from both Arab papers in
London. There are now about 30 letters of support have gone to Stephan
Dion and to the other senior members of the Liberal Party. Several M.P's
and former M.P's have made inquiries on my behalf. Thanks to those who
have written already . Many more letters of support are needed. Please
take a few moments and write a short letter to help ensure that the
Liberal Party remains open to those who support the Palestinians and who
dare to criticize Israel. Original letters are needed not form letters.
Please send me a copy to me and also copy the local London Liberal
Candidates so they are aware of your concern. There address are found below.

Thank you for assistance. We need a lot or emails and letters . Numbers count. The recent campaign to stop the amnesty being granted to the illegal immigrants in
the USA is an example where numbers and a strong activist campaign was successful. In the end it is up to you but there are important issues at
stake that are much bigger than Ed Corrigan and that are critical to
Canadian Palestinian, Arab and Muslim community and undoubtedly will
have an important impact on Canadian foreign policy and Liberal Party
policy on the Middle East.

No doubt all the Canadian political parties are watching how the
Canadian Arab and Muslim community and their friends respond to the
repeated attempt to keep pro-Palestinian activists out of the Federal
Liberal nomination process. There are a number of recent examples of
this campaign against pro-Palestinian activists. In 2005 Carolyn Parrish
the M.P. for Mississauga Erindale was targeted for defeat but after a
brutal contest narrowly won the nomination by only 47 votes. Parrish
then went on and won the riding by a wide margin. Elias Hazineh, then
President of Palestine House and one of the key architect's of Parrish's
victory, was later rejected as a Liberal Candidate after Carolyn Parrish
was kicked out of the Liberal caucus and then decided to run for a
position on Mississauga City Council and not run as an independent.
Carolyn was easily elected to Mississauga City Council.

Omar Alghabra, now the Liberal M.P. in Mississauga-Erindale, was
strongly opposed by the Liberal Party establishment and was not expected
to win the nomination race to replace Carilyn Parrish. He was at least
allowed to run. They had previously barred Elias Hazineh so the Party
could not appear to be blatantly anti-Arab and anti-Muslim and deny
Omar the right to run. They did their best to discourage him. Thanks to
the support he received from the Arab and Muslim community he won the
nomination contest and then easily won the riding. He was attacked by
Zionists and anti-Muslim elements during the general election. It is
perhaps the fact that Parrish and Omar Al-Ghabra won their nominations
that the supporters of Israel in the Liberal Party are now trying to
block pro-Palestinian and pro-Arab and Muslim supporters from even
running for nominations. The fact that there are 2,000 Arabs and Muslims
currently signed up in London-Fanshawe means that they are afraid that I
will win the nomination. If I had little or no chance to win they would
let me run and instead of blocking me they would just try to defeat me
in the nomination. It is clear that they are afraid of me and that I
would win.

Other candidates who have expressed pro-Palestinian views have been
discouraged from running as Liberal candidates in this election cycle.
Dr Farid Ayyad was strongly discouraged from running in the Mississauga
riding held by Muslim Wajid Khan who was elected as a Liberal but then
crossed the floor to join the Conservatives. Dr. Ayyad eventually
withdrew from the race. It was clear that he was not welcome in the
Liberal Party. He is a Dentist with a long history of community activism
and currently is the President of Palestine House in Mississauga. A
conservative candidate (first name I believe is Alan ) who was a lawyer
and non-Arab and non-Muslim but who had strong ties to the Arab and
Muslim community in Ottawa and who was sympathetic to the Palestinians
was rejected as a candidate by the Conservative Party before the 2006
election. The NDP at least has been open to letting Muslim and
Palestinians candidates run in seats where they are not likely to get
elected. Jim Kafieh a Christian Palestinian and past President of the
Canadian Arab Federation has ran twice for the provincial NDP. Monia
Mazigh, the wife of abductee Maher Arar, ran for the NDP in Ottawa in
2006 on a pro-human rights anti-security certificate platform.

I am most interested in hearing about similar attempts to block or
discourage Arab and Muslim candidates and those sympathetic to the
Palestinians and Arab and Muslim causes. Please send me information on
this subject and any articles published on this issue.Thanks for your
help on this special research project. The information for sending
emails is below.

Ed Corrigan

Please take a moment and write a letter supporting my candidacy or
supporting the view that the Liberal Party 'Green Light" me ASAP. If you
are associated with an organization and the organization agrees to
support me (as many have indicated that they will support me) please
write in the organizations name or list your title. If you cannot
officially use your title you can say organization listed only for
identification purposes. Please send a letter by mail or fax and also by
email to the Hon. Stéphane Dion Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.
with copies to the national Co-Chairs Mark Marissen and Nancy Girard and
to the President of the Liberal Party of Canada party Senator Marie
Poulin. A copy should also be sent to Judi Longfield the Executive
Director of the Liberal Party of Canada (Ontario). All the emails are
listed below. It is very important that we show that I have a strong
support base and that we do this very quickly. Please send a copy of
your letter to me by email or fax or by posted letter. The following
also should be copies on any emails. I thank you in advance for your
support. It is important that we act quickly and with large numbers.

Ed Corrigan
Declared Federal Liberal Candidate for London Fanshawe

National Campaign Co-Chair Mark Marissen marissen@burrardcommunications.com
National Campaign Co-Chair Nancy Girard at ngirard@liberal.ca
Senator Marie Poulin President of the Liberal Party of Canada at
mpoulin@liberal.ca
Judi Longfield the Executive Director of the Liberal Party of Canada
(Ontario) at judi.longfield@lpco.ca

The email address for the local London Liberal Candidates are:

Susan Barnes London West
Barnes.S@parl.gc.ca

Glen Pearson London-North-Centre
Pearson.G@parl.gc.ca

Susan van Bommell (Elgin-Middlesex-London)
s.vanbommel@greenfieldethanol.com

Hon. Stéphane Dion
Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6

Telephone: (613) 996-5789
Fax: (613) 996-6562
EMail:Dion.S@parl.gc.ca

Web Site:www.stephanedion.parl.gc.ca

SPHR U of O Monthly Calendar

2007-07-04T16:52:00.001-05:00

Navigate through the months, click on the date and view event information.

Def Poetry - Mark Gonzales - As With Most Men

2007-06-28T23:16:00.001-05:00

Performance lecturer Mark Gonzales speaks about global issues. By blending spoken word and hip-hop, he provides a voice to those who are silenced by the media. For more information about Mark Gonzales, check out his website: www.myspace.com/hwproject

Al-Aqsa Under Fire

2007-06-28T09:01:00.000-05:00

ALL PHOTOS WERE TAKEN FROM www.mankoosh.com

This is how the Mihrab (Prayer Niche) of Al Aqsa mosque looked like after the fire

Al Aqsa mosque is under fire 21/August/1969

Resistance

2007-06-28T07:21:00.001-05:00

ALL IMAGES WERE TAKEN FROM www.mankoosh.com

Israel reintroduces draconian measures against Palestinians

2007-06-28T07:06:00.000-05:00

18/07/2005
Article can be found on www.palestine-info.info

The Israeli occupation army has reintroduced some of thedraconian measures against Palestinian civilians that prevailed during the height ofthe intifada.These include, inter alia, cutting off Palestinian towns from each other withroadblocks and huge concrete slabs ,denying Palestinian patients access to hospitalsand students to their colleges.In some instances Israeli soldiers manning these "machsoms" (Hebrew for roadblocks)even prevent people from returning to their homes, which may be located a shortdistance from the roadblock, forcing them to circumvent several kilometers to returnhome.The re-institution of the draconian collective punishment is not confined to aspecific area or region but covers the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip, from Jeninto Rafah.This week (the third week of July) the Israeli army "reactivated" the so-called"Container Roadblock" outside the town of Abu Dis, effectively paralyzing travelmovement between the Hebron-Bethlehem region and the rest of the West Bank.This roadblock is –well-known among Palestinian travelers and drivers for itsnotoriety and harshness as Palestinian motorists are deliberately kept waiting for along period in the sizzling heat.Interestingly, this happens in an area where Israel tells the world that thePalestinian Authority (PA) is in control when in fact the Israeli army controlsevery aspect of Palestinian life.Go home Occasionally, depending on the mood of the officers in charge at a given roadblock,the Israeli army allows extremely ill patients, especially those carried inambulances, to proceed to hospital.However, this correspondent witnessed on Sunday (17 July) an Israeli female soldierturn back a Palestinian couple from Abu Dis, 7 kilometers east of Jerusalem, whowanted to take their 10-day-old baby to the Karitas pediatrics hospital inBethlehem.The woman begged the soldier to allow her to proceed, citing the serious conditionof her jaundiced baby, but to no avail."What do you mean we can't pass, I have a sick baby with me, his life is in dangerand I must take him to hospital," said the woman, producing a doctor's referral.However, the soldier didn't relent. She told the grieving woman that "You must dowhat I say, get out of the taxi or else I will use force against you."And when this correspondent tried to explain to the soldier that this was ahumanitarian case and that she should allow the couple to take their baby tohospital, the soldier said "I am the one who gives orders here."" I am a soldier, and I have the authority to decide who goes from here and whodoesn't," said the young soldier.Eventually, the female soldier, backed by a male soldier who was training hisGalilee submachine gun at the passengers inside the taxi ejected the couple, Ibrahimand Sumayya Uweisat, telling them in harsh words to return home.But the couple, anxious about the deteriorating health of their first-born, justcouldn't go home, with his body becoming increasingly yellowish.In fact, after thinking for a while what to do, the couple ventured down the hill onthe eastern side of "Wadi al Nar" (meaning literally the valley of fire) towardother yellow caps awaiting passengers on the other side of the roadblock, a fewhundred meters away.The soldiers, watching passively if not gleefully, the couple navigating their waythrough the difficult terrain, didn't try to stop them, suggesting that the realgoal of the soldiers manning the roadblocks really had nothing to do with "security"as the Israeli foreign ministry officials would tell the foreign media but wasactually to punish and torment ordinary Palestinians.Eventually, Ibrahim and Sumayya Uweisat, thanks to their determination to challengethe Israeli repression, reached the hospital in Bethlehem where their baby receivedthe necessary treatment.This correspondent thought of filming the entire episode but decided against doingso, given the unpredictability of Israeli soldiers' behavior.The Israeli army refused to say why such draconian and largely unjustified measureswere being reintroduced in the West Bank, despite the relative calm in the area.The Israeli army spokesman didn’t return calls, despite several attempts, enquiringabout the latest harsh measure.Earlier, this week, Palestinian officials accused the Israeli government of "doingevery thing to undermine the authority and stature of PA President Mahmoud Abbas.One official, Ghassan Khatib, accused Israeli prime Minister Ariel Sharon of"deliberately weakening Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas's nom de geurre) by demonstratingto the Palestinians that he (Abbas) can't get Israel to alleviate Palestiniansuffering."This prognosis seems to be correct to a large extent.On 16 July, the Beit Sahur-based Palestinian Center for Public Opinion Studies(PCPO) released the results of an opinion survey conducted in the West Bank and GazaStrip in mid July.They showed that over half the Palestinians in the two regions thought Abbas wasfailing its job.According to the study, up to 49 % of respondents said they didn't think the PA wasqualified to improve their quality of lifeIn March, up to 65% of Palestinians gave Abbas the benefit of the doubt. Now, inthis latest suvey, only 34% said they still had confidence in his ability to makethings better.

Doha Debates on the Right of Return for Palestinians

2007-06-27T15:34:00.000-05:00

An interesting debate on an important topic

International Campaing of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel

2007-06-21T07:45:00.000-05:00

As part of the International Campaing of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, CanpalNet invites everyone to join them while they distribute leaflets in front of Chapters on Rideau this Saturday June 23rd at 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
For more information, contact Canpalnet-Ottawa at admin@canpalnet-ottawa.org

The Fulcrum March 2007

2007-06-21T07:42:00.001-05:00

The Fulcrum

Natives, not immigrants

2007-06-20T13:45:00.000-05:00

Natives, not immigrants - by Nimer Sultany (doctoral candidate at Harvard Law School) May 20, 2007

click on the link to view the article

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/nimer_sultany/2007/05/natives_not_immigrants.html

You've stolen something from me, Leonard Asper

2007-06-20T07:01:00.000-05:00

Adbusters has created a really cool campaign, here's the caption from their site:
When will we reach the breaking point? Our minds have become a virtual dumping ground of pollutants — manipulative ads, distorted news, untold violence, spin and hype. We can cope with the media onslaught to a degree. But all signs suggest that the cumulative effects of this toxic culture — on our stress levels, our moods, our relationships, our worldviews, even our mental health — could become one the most pressing issues of our generation.
This online activist network — 25,000-strong — is working to rethink our broken media system. We invite you to join by signing the Media Carta manifesto.
Media activism is still in its infancy and is currently fragmented into dozens of different agendas. Over the coming months and years, we'll be exploring ways to pull together these disparate threads. We consider Media Democracy, Media Justice and especially Mental Environmentalism to be groundbreaking narratives that could gel our activism into a full-fledged movement -- a movement on par with feminism, civil rights and environmentalism.
We hope you'll join us in changing the way information flows and how meaning is produced in our Information Age.

Visit www.mediacarta.org for more information

Upfront

2007-06-20T06:58:00.001-05:00

An interesting parody featured in Ottawa's independent news, music, art and culture magazine.
June 2007 - issue #10 of Upfront

Posters

2007-06-17T16:57:00.001-05:00

Here are a few posters from events we previously had:

The Narcicyst November 2006

Promises Movie Night October 2006

The Angry Arab January 2007

Michael Neumann October 2006

Frequently Asked Questions

2007-06-13T12:50:00.001-05:00

Coming Soon

Event Photos

2007-06-13T12:49:00.001-05:00

Coming Soon

La Rotonde September 2006

2007-06-13T12:34:00.000-05:00

La Rotonde
SPHR was featured in La Rotonde (the French newspaper at the University of Ottawa) for their participation in clubs week.
25 September 2006

Executive Positions

2007-06-13T12:06:00.001-05:00

All members can be contacted via sphr.uofo@gmail.com

President & Treasurer
Danah Abdulla
Vice-President
Lama Mourad
Advertising
Haya Zaidan & Asmaa Barakat
Public Relations
Jessica Carpinone
Events Coordinator & Secretary
Zeina Sleiman
Research & Development
Mahmoud Hmouz & Faris Lehn