From Venezuela to Palestine, from Cuba to Iran, from Beirut to Sanaa, the people of the global south can and will defeat US imperial aggression and Zionism!
Hands off Iran and Palestine!
Author: cpaadmin
Canadian complicity and duplicity on Palestine: Challenge it with boycott!
Save the Date for this important event on March 26, which will begin with a light dinner followed by the meeting.
March 26, 5:30 pm, 1803 E. 1st Ave., Vancouver
RSVP to cpavancouver@gmail.com
Suggested donation: $10 regular, $5 CPA members (no one turned away for lack of funds)
Etransfer to cpavancouver@gmail.com (preferred) or pay at the door.
Special guest speaker zooming in will be Yves Engler, joining local community and BDS activists. Come out to Mark Palestinian Land Day and to learn more about the hypocrisy of successive Canadian governments and the recent victory in the Scotiabank/Elbit campaign!
Boycott Genocidal “Israel” and its Enablers! – Canada Palestine Association
Organized by BDS Vancouver-Coast Salish and Canada Palestine Association
Endorsed by Al Awda Vancouver
Scotiabank divests from Elbit…for now!
ScotiaBank’s 1832 Asset Management Fund, in its latest SEC filing for the last quarter of 2025, did not list any shares in Israeli arms dealer Elbit Systems.
Shout out and kudos to all those activists that kept up the fight to Shame ScotiaBank and to #ShutElbitDown
However, as noted earlier, with ScotiaBank “…its been a roller-coast ride of two steps forward, one step back. At the end of 2022, Scotiabank’s 1832 Asset Management Fund owned 5% of Elbit Systems worth almost $500 million US.” After period of incremental partial divestment, “as soon as Scotiabank felt they were no longer under constant scrutiny, they reversed course and started to quietly reinvest in Elbit.”
Background articles: Scotiabank Reinvests in Genocide! – Canada Palestine Association
Activists vow to #ShutElbitDown | Al Mayadeen English
Boycott Genocidal “Israel” and its Enablers!
Over the last year, a new campaign has been gathering momentum in British Columbia, Canada that aims to ban the sale of Israeli wine in publicly owned liquor stores. Activists in BC have a long history of calling to deshelve Israeli wines, starting in 2008; that campaign was modelled on a previous local one against South African wines, called “Don’t Drink with Apartheid”.
This new initiative carries the slogan Don’t Drink with Genocide, and their public campaign letter stated: “It’s time to call on the BC government to ban Israeli wine in order to pressure the Israeli government and defend the rights of Palestinians.”
All the Israeli wines in BC liquor stores are linked to either vineyards or operations in West Bank or Golan Heights settlements. But even if they weren’t, we would and should still be boycotting them. No longer can we call to boycott just “settlement products”; this false dichotomy is untruthful and promotes a dangerous narrative.
The whole economy and infrastructure of the Israeli state is linked with the “settlement enterprise”, and the genocide in Gaza has fully exposed the rotten foundation that all of that rests on. In a Mondoweiss article over 4 years ago, I noted: “Gone are the days when many activists felt they must temper their comments and ‘soft sell’ the demand to boycott all of Israel, its entire state apparatus and any complicit companies.” Surely, after the genocide and carnage in Gaza, this must be the only position going forward.
A decade ago, you could argue that campaigns against illegal settlement products had a place in the Boycott Israel movement, but only as a first step or entry point towards something more.
As I concluded in 2021: “The danger lies in letting settlement boycotts become the dominant feature of BDS work and allowing their limited parameters to set and restrict the agenda for most Boycott Israel work.
A further danger of focusing mainly, or only, on settlement boycotts is that it reinforces the faulty concept that the two-state solution is still viable and a worthwhile goal for Palestine advocacy. It traps activists in this circular spin that falsely gives the impression to supporters that the illegal settlements are the most important obstacle to any genuine peace with justice for Palestinians.”
Boycott beyond the settlements: The sequel
We are past telling consumers that its somehow more egregious and more worthy of boycott when a product has links to the settlements. No, after two years plus of live-streamed horrors from Gaza, of beheaded kids and murdered medical staff, we demand that all and any Israeli products be banned and boycotted.
There is a move now to re-ignite boycott campaigns and we must be vigilant to not allow this energy to be co-opted by those who, for reasons of ideology or convenience, want to retreat back to the focus only on “settlement products”.
Yes, its an “easier sell” in the imperial core to highlight more obvious violations, like Israeli settlements in what are “internationally recognized” occupied territories. But if we learnt anything from the last decade of boycott work, its that governments including here in Canada, are more than happy to turn a blind eye to not only international law, but even their own stated policies when needed.
For example, a huge effort was mounted some years ago to focus attention on the labelling of these wines in Canada, which then and now carry the “Product of Israel” wording. Although such labels clearly violated even the Canadian government’s position on the illegality of settlements, still the government appealed an initial decision that the labels were “false, misleading and deceptive”. The final court ruling was classic double-speak and ultimately referred the issue back to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
The Zionist lobby interpreted this to mean that the “Product of Israel” label could remain on the bottles so long as they added “clarifying information”. And so it stands – activists documented a few months ago that Teperberg Winery’s Malbec was labelled as “Product of Israel” at a BC liquor store and on the official website.
The Palestinian people are now at a critical juncture and need our principled support more than ever. We are boycotting their oppressor, the Israeli state, and all those who give it sustenance who also have blood on their hands. We are boycotting this modern-day monstrosity called Zionism and we owe it to ourselves and the Palestinians to be meticulously clear on our objectives.
By Marion Kawas
(Cover photo is a recent picket in Nanaimo, BC)
Mark Carney’s Hypocrisy at Davos
After seeing the full text of Canadian PM Mark Carney’s hypocritical speech at Davos, one might despair at the lack of understanding in many responses. Carney performed as if he was the next great challenger to US imperialism. If there weren’t so many lives and futures at stake, it would have been laughable.
But first, lets unpack Carney’ s statements.
His much-touted Davos speech was only newsworthy in one aspect, and that was his admission that not only was the international “rules-based order” a complete fraud but also that Western powers consciously supported this fraud.
“We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that international law applied with varied rigour, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.”
Although he refers repeatedly to the communal “we”, he did not acknowledge that his own government was one of the most complicit in that, nor did he accept any responsibility for Canada’s role in the genocide in Gaza. So we take his new-found and convenient commitment to challenge the US-led imperial hegemony with a grain of salt.
“We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.
This bargain no longer works.”
Well, PM Carney, this bargain never worked for most of the global south; it always only worked for those Western powers eager to prop up US imperialist designs. Which is why your pledge towards “acting consistently, applying the same standards to allies and rivals” rings so hollow.
Carney went on to say: “When middle powers criticize economic intimidation from one direction but stay silent when it comes from another, we are keeping the sign in the window.”
Oh really! We are waiting for your revised statements then on Venezuela, Haiti, Iran, Gaza and others. Acknowledgement without accountability, especially when that acknowledgement is motivated by self-interest, is the height of liberal double-talk and hypocrisy.
But then you’ve done this before. A look at how your alleged “recognition of the state of Palestine” quickly degenerated into a de-militarized (if you will) “Zionist Palestinian state” was instructive.
As Canada Palestine Association noted in August 2025, this would be “the trajectory of how this is supposed to unfold. An entity (we can’t call it a state) that must be demilitarized and is forbidden to decide who can run in its own elections. And, as has been detailed before, all of this is expected to occur with ‘mutual’ recognition of Israel by those Arab states who have not yet done so and the eventual dismantling of UNRWA.”
And now lets move to the social media-induced amnesia and superficiality. Even progressives in Western countries often jump from one issue to the next without questioning their own knowledge, or lack thereof, and the effects of supporting struggles with no commitment to long-term solidarity. The thirst for social media stardom means that many activists are too busy chasing the next “hot topic” to ever have time to delve properly into a fuller understanding of the struggles they claim to be supporting.
Gaza and Venezuela are two examples, but this is not a new phenomenon. However, it has been magnified in recent years by the nature and functioning of the digital and social media environment.
And don’t even get me started on celebrity activism – that will need a whole book to properly analyse. Not that the support of celebrities or others isn’t appreciated, it is. The problem arises when their positions are embraced as the ultimate guide to what’s necessary for principled solidarity. Despite all the chatter about centring Palestinian voices, it rarely happens in any meaningful way.
US imperialism has killed millions of innocent people around the world and destroyed the futures of millions more. From Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq to Palestine to Lebanon, to Cuba and Venezuela, the people of the world know who their enemy is and also know who has been aiding and abetting US hegemonic schemes. Mark Carney and the Canadian government are like rats fleeing a sinking ship; they have blood on their hands that will not easily be forgiven nor forgotten.
By Marion Kawas, also published on AlMayadeen English: Mark Carney’s hypocrisy at Davos | Al Mayadeen English