Brittany Thiessen
The Manitoba NDP, The Left and Canadian Support for Israel
Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=143449812377870
Saturday, January 22 · 2:00pm – 4:00pm
University of Winnipeg, Lockhart Hall, Room 1L12
Premier Greg Selinger recently visited Israel to sign an accord with the racist Jewish National Fund. A few years ago NDP MP Pat Martin described Israel’s apartheid wall as “show[ing] a lot of restraint on Israel’s part.” During the brutal assault two years ago Justice Minister Dave Chomiak blamed Hamas for Israel’s destruction of Gaza. NDP cabinet minister Christine Melnick called for the banning of Israeli Apartheid Week at the University of Manitoba. Former MP and mayoral candidate Judy Wasylycia-Leis supported a parliamentary condemnation of the use of the word “apartheid” to describe Israel’s policies.
How does this fit into the history of Left Canadian support for Zionism and Stephen Harper’s pro-Israel extremism? What would the co-founder of the CCF, J.S. Woodsworth, think about this?
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A Panel Discussion with:
Yves Engler – author of “Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid” and “The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy
Brian Latour – student activist at the University of Manitoba
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Event sponsored by:
Students Against Israeli Apartheid (University of Manitoba)
Department of Politics (University of Winnipeg)
Canada-Palestine Support Network (Winnipeg)
SMASH ISRAEL APARTHEID! A Fundraiser for Israel Apartheid Week (2001) Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=186229361404812
Thursday, February 10 at 9:00pm – February 11 at 2:00am
Mondragon Bookstore & Coffeehouse
A Fundraiser for Israeli Apartheid Week (March 14-18, 2011)
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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2011 • 9PM
Mondragon Bookstore & Coffeehouse
91 Albert Street
Winnipeg, MB
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ADMISSION: $5.00 (at the door)
FEATURING:
• The “Special Guests”
• Technical Children
• Salinas
• Adam CZ!
SPONSORED BY:
• Canada-Palestine Support Network (Winnipeg)
• Independent Jewish Voices (Winnipeg)
• Mondragon Bookstore & Coffeehouse
• Students Against Israeli Apartheid
FOR MORE INFO: www.apartheidweek.org
Canada-Palestine Support Network (Winnipeg) Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=42756221925
The Canada Palestine Support Network (CanPalNet-Winnipeg) is a grassroots solidarity organization, not associated with any political party, nor any particular religious or cultural community.
It is comprised mainly of Winnipeggers, including (but not limited to) Palestinians and Jews, who, together, are committed to building a lasting and meaningful peace in Israel-Palestine.
We believe that this is only possible by ending Israel’s illegal military occupation of Palestine, dismantling Israel’s Apartheid regime, and engaging in a genuine de-colonization process.
We believe such a process is a prerequisite for true security, social justice and self-determination for all peoples in the region.
In addition to sending delegates to the Occupied Territories to participate in ISM (International Solidarity Movement) witnessing and human rights campaigns — this, together with organizing a wide range of awareness-raising events (rallies, demonstrations, teach-ins, panel discussions, workshops, etc.) — CanPalNet has twice curated the “Canada Palestine Film Festival” at Winnipeg’s prestigious Cinematheque theatre.
Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid: http://www.caiaweb.org/
The Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid was formed in January 2006 as part of a growing, global movement against Israeli apartheid.
We believe Israel is an apartheid state that resembles South African Apartheid. Palestinian citizens of Israel are denied from controlling and developing over 90% of land because they are Palestinian.
Palestinians expelled in 1948 and 1967 are denied the right to return to their homes and lands, despite the fact that anyone of Jewish background – from anywhere in the world – has the automatic right to become an Israeli citizen. In the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinians live under separate and discriminatory military law.
The Canadian government provides extensive political and economic support to the Israeli apartheid regime. Canadian corporations profit through investments and joint operations with Israeli companies. We work to end all Canadian complicity in this apartheid state.
We are a network of concerned individuals and organizations working to end this apartheid system.
We believe that justice will not be achieved without equal rights for everyone in the region, regardless of religion, ethnicity or nationality.
We understand Israeli apartheid as one element of a system of global apartheid. To this end, we stand in solidarity with all oppressed groups around the world, in particular, the indigenous people of North America.
We oppose all forms of racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.
Our demands are based upon a July 2005 call from over 170 Palestinian organizations in support of a global campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions.
Boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:
1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands, dismantling the Wall and freeing all Palestinian and Arab political prisoners;
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality;
and
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN General Assembly resolution 194.
Israeli Apartheid Week 2011: http://apartheidweek.org/
Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is an annual international series of events held in cities and campuses across the globe. The aim of IAW is to educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns as part of a growing global BDS movement.
Last year, Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) took place in more than 40 cities across the globe. IAW 2009 happened in the wake of Israel’s barbaric assault on the people of Gaza. Lectures, films, and actions made the point that these latest massacres further confirm the true nature of Israeli Apartheid.
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 theses successes along with the many injustices that continue to make BDS so crucial in the battle to end Israeli Apartheid. Speakers and full programme for each city will be available soon.
Join us in making 2010 a year of struggle against apartheid and for justice, equality, and peace.
IAW Winnipeg: http://winnipeg.apartheidweek.org/
Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide: http://israeliapartheidguide.com/
Canada-Palestine Support Network: http://www.canpalnet.ca/mambo/index.php
canpalnet gathers Canadians of all backgrounds who support the human, democratic, and national rights of the Palestinian people.
canpalnet aims to change the policies and actions of the Canadian government so that these come to support the rights of the Palestinian people.
canpalnet guides itself by United Nations resolutions affirming Palestinians’ right of return and calling for an end to the Israeli occupation. CANPALNET similarly guides itself by accumulated international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, which upholds the equal worth and dignity of persons regardless of their ethnic or religious identity, and which affirms democratic rights and opposes apartheid structures.
canpalnet works for the national co-ordination of solidarity work.
Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Coalition-Against-Israeli-Apartheid-CAIA/125346860828792?ref=ts
Israeli Apartheid Week March 7-11th: http://www.caiaweb.org/2010/12/07/israeli-apartheid-week-2011/
The Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) have announced the dates for the seventh annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) : March 7 to 11, 2011.
This year, Apartheid Week will take place concurrently in over 40 cities worldwide, including Toronto, Montreal, New York, Philadelphia, Bay Area, Chicago, Washington, London, Oxford, and cities in South Africa. Complete with lectures, multimedia presentations, cultural performances, art showings film screenings and demonstrations, our understanding of apartheid Israel is developed throughout the Week, with every event and speaker adding insight into our analysis.
The full schedule for IAW 2011 will be posted shortly. Stay tuned to http://www.apartheidweek.org for more information.
Students Against Israeli Apartheid: http://www.caiaweb.org/committees/saia/
Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) is a network of university students, faculty and staff working to raise awareness about Palestine and Israeli Apartheid as well as the need to sever economic ties between our campuses and the support for Israeli state policies. We are connected with the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement against Israeli Apartheid. SAIA also organizes the annual Israeli Apartheid Week.
Queers Against Israeli Apartheid: http://www.caiaweb.org/committees/qaia/
Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) formed to work in solidarity with queers in Palestine and Palestinian resistance movements around the world. Today, in response to increasing criticism of its occupation of Palestine, Israel is cultivating an image of itself as an oasis of gay tolerance in the Middle East. As queers, we recognize that homophobia exists in Israel, Palestine, and across all borders. But queer Palestinians face the additional challenge of living under occupation, subject to Israeli state violence and control. Israel’s apartheid system extends gay rights only to some, based on race.
There is no pride in apartheid, and QuAIA is dedicated to fighting it wherever it exists. We work in solidarity with anti-colonial struggles and with queers leading their own struggles of resistance.
QuAIA works to:
- mobilize in solidarity with groups and individuals to advance these political goals
- engage in a queer analysis of colonialism and anti-colonial struggles
- build a queer, anti-colonial, anti-racist, feminist movement against apartheid through mutual education and dialogue
- foster a culture of radical queer organizing
To visit the QuAIA website, please click here.
It is Apartheid: http://itisapartheid.org/get_informed.html
Stop the Wall: http://www.stopthewall.org/
Queers Against Israeli Apartheid: http://queersagainstapartheid.org/
Sometimes we’re asked the question: Why use the term ‘apartheid’? Doesn’t it just make people unnecessarily angry? Here’s why we choose to call it by that name.
WHAT IS APARTHEID?
Apartheid literally means separation. It has its roots in the separation of people based on race in South Africa. Since then, the application of the word has been made universal, with the adoption of the United Nations “International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid”.
THE CREATION OF ISRAEL
In order to understand the current situation in Israel/Palestine, it is necessary to examine the origins of the Israeli state in 1948. In that year, which is referred to in Palestine as the Nakba (“catastrophe”), thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their homeland to make way for the creation of Israel. These refugees remain today the longest standing refugee population in the world.
In 1954, Israeli education minister Ben-Zion Dinur proclaimed, “In our country there is room only for the Jews. We shall say to the Arabs: Get out! If they don’t agree, if they resist, we shall drive them out by force.”
The motivation for ethnically cleansing Palestine was to ensure that Israel would be a Jewish-majority state. If Israel’s population included Palestinian refugees, this would be endangered.
To this day, Palestinian refugees are denied the right to return to their homes. At the same time, citizenship is automatically conferred on any Jewish immigrants — individuals who had never inhabited the territory before.
BANTUSTANS
In the same year that Israel was created, the pro-apartheid National Party was elected to power in South Africa. In 1951, they began the forced expulsion of over 3 million black inhabitants of the land into reserves known as “Bantustans”, modelled on Canada’s reservation system for First Nations.
The South African government denied citizenship to its black citizens, instead expecting them to exercise their political rights in the Bantustans.
Supporters of South African apartheid justified their policies by pointing to Israel as an example. Hendrik Verwoerd, Prime Minister of South Africa, said in 1961: “Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.” The two countries had close diplomatic relations during this period; they shared strategies and the Israeli Defence Forces provided training to the apartheid South African government’s military.
More than a decade after apartheid was abolished in South Africa, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories today live in modern-day Bantustans. They are essentially open-air prisons, where all borders and the movement of people and goods are controlled by the Israeli military. Inhabitants are denied citizenship in Israel, despite having their daily lives regulated by the Israeli state.
Over the years, Palestinians have gradually seen the land allocated to them reduced and fragmented, with security measures heightened on their borders. Villages were cut off from each other, meaning that students attending classes and workers going to their jobs would need to pass through Israeli military checkpoints on a regular basis.
THE APARTHEID WALL
In 2003, the Israeli government announced the construction of a wall to separate Israel from the Occupied Territories, ostensibly for security reasons.
Instead of following the existing borders — which were already contentious enough — the wall extended beyond Israel and claimed more Palestinian territory. Shops, stalls, and homes of Palestinians were destroyed to make way for the wall. Olive trees, a major source of income for Palestinian farmers, were uprooted. In some cases, Palestinian villages were encircled by the wall, cutting them off from their neighbours.
The wall has been criticized as a land grab for Israel; a desperate attempt to prevent any possibility of Palestinian self-determination, and a unilateral expansion of Israeli territory.
In 2004, the United Nations General Assembly and the International Court of Justice both declared the apartheid wall to be in contravention of international law, and ordered the Israeli government to stop its construction and dismantle it.
The Israeli government refuses to honour these international orders and continues its construction of the apartheid wall.
WHO SAYS IT’S APARTHEID?
There is a growing majority opinion that Israel’s policies and treatment of Palestinians constitute apartheid. Prominent thinkers have made the comparison, including Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter. Within Israel, politicians, academics, journalists and activists frequently describe the state’s treatment of Palestinians as apartheid.
South Africans who lived through the apartheid era have also accused Israel of committing the same crimes, if not worse. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “If I were to change the names, a description of what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank could describe events in South Africa.”
The Congress of South African Trade Unions and the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa both declared that Israel is practising apartheid in the Occupied Territories.
In 2008, the president of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, accused the Israeli government of practising apartheid, and called for boycotts, divestments, and sanctions against the state — the tactics used against apartheid South Africa.
Queers Against Israeli Apartheid is joining a global movement to oppose Israel’s apartheid regime. Our demands are simple.
We call on the Israeli government to:
- end its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantle the Wall;
- recognize the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
- respect, protect and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties, as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
WHY DO YOU SAY ISRAELI “APARTHEID”?Israel is a country founded on the idea of different rights for different people, based on race. The first difference is that Jews, wherever they live, have the right to “return” to Israel, but the Palestinians who were expelled from their homes in 1948 do not have this right; in fact, they are explicitly denied Israeli citizenship, and denied the right to return to their homes. This is racist.
The second form of apartheid is the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, which denies Palestinians living on those territories full political rights, even while Israelis living there have full political rights in Israel. (The political rights of citizens of the Palestinian Authority, like the rights of apartheid South Africa’s bantustans, are empty and of no effect.) The apartheid wall, which cuts Palestinian communities off from each other and creates tiny Palestinian enclaves; the hundreds of checkpoints Palestinians have to cross to travel their own land; and the different access to highways, water, and land accorded to Jews and non-Jews are all forms of apartheid. Gaza is an open-air prison whose inhabitants live in constant misery because of the illegal Israeli siege.
The third form of apartheid is in the different treatment of Palestinians inside Israel proper. While Jews hold Jewish nationality, so-called “Israeli Arabs” have a separate category of citizenship – Israeli citizenship. Palestinian communities in Israel proper are consistently underserviced by government in relation to the rest of population, and because most Palestinians refuse to serve in the occupation army, they are denied many educational and employment opportunities.
In 1961, former South African prime minister and architect of South African apartheid, Hendrik Verwoerd, stated the obvious: “Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.” Not coincidentally, Israel and apartheid South Africa cooperated closely; Israel was apartheid South Africa’s last and best friend, right up to the end of apartheid.
HOW IS THIS A QUEER ISSUE?Queer and trans people living in the West Bank and Gaza face daily military violence just for being who they are: Palestinian.
There can’t be freedom of gender and sexuality without freedom from daily violence and the right to love who you choose, live where you choose, and attend groups, meetings and political activities without persecution. Road blocks, military checkpoints, house demolitions, curfews and the apartheid wall are all part of the daily reality for all Palestinians, regardless of their orientation.
Queer rights are not safe until all people’s rights are safe. There was a period of sexual liberation in early 20th century Europe that was destroyed by the rise of fascism. As queers we neglect other struggles and other equality rights at our peril. All our struggles are bound up together. QuAIA is an example of people of different backgrounds working together for the equality of all.
Queers Against Israeli Apartheid Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=80714900781
Winnipeg Activism 