Total number of comments: 26 (since 2009-12-16 02:47:34)
DavidHeap
Peace and social justice advocate in London (Ontario), coordinator of Canadian delegation to the Gaza Freedom March (2009).
Website: http://sites.google.com/site/gazafreedommarchlondon/
"They decided to reject the UN partition plan and try their luck at war."
Palestinians did not "choose" to be the object of a vicious ethnic cleansing campaign by Zionist terrorist organizations, which began before the partition plan came it.
All the hi-tech in the world (and even granting eee's inflated claims, Israel has a very small portion of the world's hi-tech development) would get very thirsty without all the water Israel is stealing from WB aquifers and from the Jordan River. Looking more like an omelet all the time....
It has been wonderful having such quality journalist as Jihan here with us on the Tahrir as we defy this illegal, irrational and immoral blockade.
Please follow our progress on http://www.tahrir.ca
and, stay human!
David, from the Canadian Boat to Gaza steering cmtee (on board the Tahrir)
"Surely these tired old left-wing clichés are part of the reason for the Palestinian cause’s dismal failure." You mean, like the "cliché" that links the Palestinian cause to the other great international anti-racist cause of our time, the anti-apartheid struggle? Hardly a cause for failure... more like a cause for hope.
Having Majd on board was one of the best decisions we made on the Canadian Boat to Gaza steering committee. I hope to meet him (and others like him) again.
The sentiment is obviously genuine, as Pam's post points out most eloquently. If bad things happen to guests in my home or my city, my instinct is to apologize, even if I am not responsible. This is not an admission of guilt, it is a expression of sorry for what has happened. These sincere apologies are quite independent of the investigation of the perpetrators -- which still has far more questions than answers.
Thank you so much Pam: this helps a lot, personally. My sister also brings up the personal danger issue in this regard -- she supports our work for Palestine but doesn't think I, as a parent of two teenagers, should try to go to Gaza (with canadaboatgaza.org). I remind her that our dad traveled to Alabama in 1965 (he was a parent 6 children under 15 at the time) for the second Selma march, despite the fact that there was a certain degree of danger for white northerners (and the odd Canadian) who answered MLK's call. Then as now, it is simply the right thing to do, if we believe in solidarity. And now as then, the risks we face as "outsiders" pale in comparison to the dangers faced daily by "locals" (southern African-Americans in the 1960s, and Palestinians today). You are so right: we have to keep going, and kep going back, until Gaza and all of Palestine are free.
Per Vittorio:
link to youtube.com
E le genti che passeranno
Ti diranno «Che bel fior!»
«È questo il fiore del partigiano,
morto per la libertà!»
Gee, do you think it might perhaps have to do with all those "made in USA" teargas canisters people have had fired at them? Just possibly? Maybe after several changes of puppets, they might prefer to cut the puppeteer's strings, rather than have the Embassy choose their next "democratic" leader for them.
Actually, dona nobis pacem means "give us peace", but close enough. Brave indeed, and necessary, in any language.
So who can credibly be seen as able to "attempt to shut down criticism."? Surely not the BDS movement -- in Canada, as Atwood could find out easily if she bothered to try, the BDS movement and its allies face a struggle just to have our points of view presented and discussed rationally in many public spaces (the Toronto District School Board banned Israeli Apartheid Week activities from its schools -- when there were exactly none planned in any of its schools). There is on the other hand a national kangaroo court which is trying to criminalize all criticism of Israel or its policies as "anti-Semitic" (a pseudo parliamentary commission aptly dubbed "HUAC North" by blogger Dr. Dawg link to drdawgsblawg.blogspot.com
This just in Canada -- the vicious backlash against Israeli academics who dare to support shows who is really interested in shutting down debate (and able to act on those threats).
So where should our concern about shutting down criticism be directed? Perhaps at those that are actually doing it, i.e. the pro-Zionist lobby?
Your friend should note that the PACBI call targets Israeli institutions, not individual academics:
link to pacbi.org
a. There is no "hatred" evidenced on this blog (there is some hateful stuff from the Zionist apologists who comment, but the poverty of their rhetoric is hardly the blog's fault).
b. Nobody is demonizing individual Israelis, just the policies of the governments they elect.
c. No, McCarthyism used the authority of the state to repress dissent (rather like Israel does...). The international BDS movement has no state authority, and relies only on grass-roots people's organizations.
We didn't create the problems in Kyrgystan. We did create the problem for Palestinians, so we have a greater responsibility to try to remedy injustice there.
In what way is this even remotely relevant to Stéphane Hessel's article?
You can only "return" to where you left or were driven out from: for the vast majority of diaspora Palestinians (as well as a significant number of Israeli Palestinians who are "present absentees"), that means the lands they were driven out of in 1947-1949, that were susequently expropriated and sold. One state or two, this stolen land issue is not going to go away.
Why would anyone compensate Mizrahi Jews who did not leave Arab countries as refugees? As one of them, Ran Cohen stated: "I have this to say: I am not a refugee. I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee."
it seems like all the high-profile one-state advocates (except Meron Benvenisti) reside overseas.</
Omar Barghouti and Haidar Eid reside in West Bank and Gaza, respectively. Check out the One Democratic State Group link to odsg.org
before making such uninformed, dismissive claims.
Sorry, I was forgetting his more recent service, covering up Canadian military implication in the torture of prisoners in Afghanistan (lawyer-client privilege).
You are overlooking what are sure to be stellar contributions from the Canadian brigadier-general, with his stalwart experience in military cover-ups from Rwanda to Somalia.
But just to be sure, neither of the foreign observers gets a vote: what's the point, when Bibi has already announced what the result of the "inquiry" is to be?
Among the TheoCons who are trying to place Canada as the most Israeli-friendly country in the world, our Minister of Deportations and Censorship Jason ("an attack on Israel is an attack on Canada") Kenney stands out for his background as a Catholic Zionist:
link to wcr.ab.ca
(his current Conservative party handlers have presumably updated that impressively bad press photo from his old Alliance days, but the religious zealotry driving his worldview is harder to cover up, see link to rabble.ca
)
As Yves Engler point out in his important recent book (Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid, 2010 link to yvesengler.com
Christian Zionists in the U.K. and Canada were pushing for a Jewish state in Palestine for more than a century before Herzl invented Jewish Zionism, in part as an outpost of the British empire and in part for theological reasons. Canada's crucial and ignominious role in the devising the Partition "deal" corresponded to our postwar switch from the old empire to the new one. Note that Christian Zionism was always fully compatible with old-fashioned anti-Semitism: our war-time Prime Minister (Mackenzie "none is too many" King) supported a Jewish homeland in Palestine in part because he didn't want any more of "those people" here.
Most troubling for the Canadian left, support for Christian Zionism included until quite recently prominent "progressives" from among both social-democratic politicians and the labour movement.
On both sides of the border, we still need to work on dumping State of Israel bonds, for example link to dumpisraelbonds.com
@Menachem. Why not talk of Krygystan or Uzbekistan on here.
Simple: we in North America are not arming and enabling the killers in either of those countries. Our governments are arming and enabling, and covering for, the killers working for the Israeli state. We have a responsibility to deal with the problems we help create and perpetuate, if we are ever to have any credibility in address human rights issues anywhere else.
Nice resolution, thanks for sharing.
(I can dream, can't I?)
Yes, please do. We all need to.
Best of luck with CrackerBasher -- sounds nasty.
The GPS feed (from the Free Gaza campaign) here: link to gazafreedommarch.org
shows the RC has indeed passed Gibraltar (though she does seem to be a long way yet from joining the others).
A more credible assessment of Gaza's needs, before and since the blockade, from a cluster of internationally recognized NGOs: link to oxfam.org.uk
"In the period before the blockade,
an average of 70 truckloads of exports left Gaza a
day, and 583 truckloads of goods and humanitarian
supplies came in."
"In the first two years of the blockade, an average of just 112 truckloads per day – one-fifth of previous levels – were allowed into Gaza."
(p. 6)
And now, by Israel's own figures, that 112 avg is down to just 70 per day. Clearly a lavish diet that needs further restrictions...
Beautiful, moving video, thank you.
Send a message to Toronto City Council (ask them to let the LGBT community decide the direction of Pride) here: link to ricktelfer.ca
Jack Edwards, a 93-year-old veteran of the Connolly Column (Irish volunteers who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War as part of the International Brigades) recently commented to a colleague of mine that if he were in his twenties today he would be going to Palestine to struggle for liberation there. Yes, times have changed, but international solidarity is alive and well in the Gaza Freedom March (among other places).
Jack Edwards, a 93-year-old veteran of the Connolly Column (Irish volunteers who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War as part of the International Brigades) recently commented to a colleague of mine that if he were in his twenties today he would be going to Palestine to struggle for liberation there.