Over the last year, the Canada Palestine Association has been supporting activists targeted by institutional and police repression across BC. We have seen multiple cases of intimidation and harassment, especially by the Vancouver Police. CPA has already donated over $10,000 from funds previously collected to help people gain legal representation and fight back. Stand up for our rights, defend our voices and donate today. Please donate by e-transfer to cpavancouver@gmail.com (Note: donations are not tax-deductible.)
We know that all systems of oppression are inherently linked. The fight for Palestinian liberation is closely tied to imperialism and the role our government plays in the ongoing oppression, ethnic cleansing and displacement of the Palestinian people. As the Palestinian movement advocates within our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we are seeing our civil liberties tested by our own government. All levels of government are attempting to silence the movement with frivolous charges to deter our voices. We are seeking to combat these charges with a legal fund designed to defend our voices of expression and civil liberties, now and into the future.
Hanna Kawas, CPA Chair: “Due to the generosity of members and long-time supporters, CPA hasn’t needed to make a public appeal for operating funds. However, this is a special circumstance; we are facing the combined ferocity of the Zionist/Israel lobby and the US-led empire as they attempt to erase Palestinian identity and voices. We need your support now to ensure that we continue the fight until return and liberation!”
The Canada Palestine Association, stands in unwavering solidarity with the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s Movement (MMIWG) and all the steadfast Indigenous communities resisting the ongoing violence, genocide, and systemic erasure of their people. We see in your struggle the same forces of oppression, colonization, and dehumanization that have sought to destroy our own existence, culture, and land. Together, we face the silence of the media, the complicity of state institutions, and the violence of systems designed to erase us.
The genocide and ethnic cleansing faced by Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island (North America) mirror the atrocities endured by Palestinians under decades of occupation, displacement, and violence. Both of our peoples have suffered the theft of land, the destruction of homes, the desecration of sacred sites, and the deliberate targeting of our women, children, and future generations. The violence against Indigenous women and girls—rooted in colonialism, racism, and patriarchy—resonates deeply with the experiences of Palestinian women, who face similar systemic violence, unlawful detention and erasure under occupation and apartheid.
We also recognize the role of media silence in perpetuating these crimes. The lack of global attention to the genocide in Palestine and the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women is not an oversight but a deliberate act of erasure. This silence enables the continuation of ethnic cleansing, allowing the world to look away as our peoples are dispossessed, displaced, and killed. The media’s failure to amplify our struggles is a tool of oppression, denying us the justice and accountability we deserve.
Furthermore, we condemn the police violence that Indigenous communities face, a violence that mirrors the brutality of Israeli occupation forces against Palestinians. From the militarized policing of Indigenous lands to the extrajudicial killings of Indigenous people, these acts of state violence are not isolated incidents but part of a broader system of colonial control and domination. Just as Palestinian lives are devalued and criminalized under occupation, Indigenous lives are targeted and marginalized by settler-colonial states.
We are deeply grateful to be living on the unceded, ancestral, and traditional territories and homeland of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. We acknowledge the stewardship of these lands by Indigenous peoples since time immemorial and recognize the ongoing impacts of colonization on their communities. This acknowledgment is not merely symbolic but a call to action to honor Indigenous sovereignty, support their struggles for justice, and work toward decolonization in all its forms.
We recognize that the struggle for justice, dignity, and liberation is interconnected. Just as Indigenous women and communities resist the ongoing legacy of colonialism, Palestinians continue to resist the settler-colonial project that seeks to erase our identity and deny our right to exist on our ancestral land. Your fight for truth, accountability, and healing is our fight. Your demand for justice is our demand.
In the spirit of shared resistance, we commit to standing alongside you in the fight against all forms of oppression. We pledge to amplify your voices, honor your stories, and support your calls for justice. Together, we will continue to expose and dismantle the systems of power that perpetuate violence against our peoples and work toward a future where all Indigenous and colonized peoples can live in freedom, dignity, and peace.
From Palestine to Turtle Island, our struggles are united. Your pain is our pain. Your strength is our strength. Your liberation is our liberation.
“We, as prisoners, bow to the people of Gaza.” – Wael Samara, freed prisoner from Al-Am’ari refugee camp in Ramallah, to the people of the Gaza Strip after his release from the Israeli occupation’s dungeons.
The joy of the released Palestinian prisoners and their families is a testament to the strength of the Palestinian people and nation. It also represents everything “Israel” has tried so desperately to stamp out. Many of these prisoners were abused and tortured in Israeli jails and some of the long-term detainees never imagined they would ever see freedom again. Each has a personal story, love frozen in time, growing children they never got to know, parents and grandparents that passed away during their incarceration.
Palestinian prisoners have long played a unique role in the fabric of Palestinian society and its collective resistance. They cross all factional and social barriers, and in many cases, represent the best of several generations of leaders. When some in the Western world repeatedly ask “Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?”, we can confidently say that he or she has most likely been imprisoned (or assassinated) by the Israeli state.
Nearly every Palestinian family has a story of at least one member that has been imprisoned either by Israel or a neighbouring complicit regime in the region. As such, the issue of prisoners has historically been a unifying bond for the Palestinian people. Each prisoner is a microcosm of the Palestinian reality, be they arrested while under occupation, in a refugee camp in exile or under the thumb of the apartheid regime in the Galilee or Naqab.
Today, the political prisoners in Israeli jails comprise members of the legislature, children, and women; they also include over 430 administrative detainees. These are prisoners held without charge or trial for renewable periods of 6 months, who are often then re-arrested after being released. Not only is administrative detention void of due process, it is also profoundly cruel; these prisoners know that upon their eventual release, they can be (and often are) picked up at any moment in the future on the whim of Israeli security officials.
How can we not declare that Oct. 7 was indeed a victory for the Palestinian people and their resistance? When these long-term prisoners were set to rot forever or die in Israeli jails until this new round of releases, that was only achieved through the incredible Sumoud and bravery of the fighting organizations in Gaza? When prisoners like Mohammed Al Halabi from World Vision have now been released (a skeleton of his former self), even though a strong international campaign waged on his behalf achieved nothing?
The late Irish republican hero Bobby Sands wrote in his prison diary: Our revenge will be the laughter of our children. In the same vein, Palestinians can say that their revenge will be their joy in reuniting families and loved ones despite all efforts by the Zionist enemy to tear their society apart and render it dysfunctional.
