Category: Archives

Boycotting Israeli Products has a long history in Vancouver

In the late 1980s, Canada Palestine Association launched their first targeted consumer boycott of Achva Halva bars. Previous calls to boycott Israel had been more general and this campaign was to be the first of many consumer boycott initiatives. The campaign met with some success as several small businesses in the popular Commercial Drive area agreed to no longer carry the Halva bars, produced in an illegal Israeli settlement “industrial zone”. Famous Foods on Kingsway, however, insisted on stocking the product, despite repeated attempts to engage with them.

At that time, the bars were made in the Barkan settlement. According to Who Profits, the factory was moved to the Ariel settlement in 2017, and the company is no longer open about where the products are manufactured. In the late 1980s, as you can see in the pictures from one of our members, Achva was not shy in showing that their bars were the result of war crimes “pillaging”.

Ahdut Factory for Tehina Halva and Sweets (Ahdut – Achva) – whoprofits

Achva Factory, Ariel (via Who Profits)

Sabra and Shatila massacre: a scar that won’t heal

There are certain profound events in a nation’s history that leave an indelible mark on all its people. The massacre in two Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Sabra and Shatila, on September 16, 1982 stands as one of those events.

Taking place during the course of the Lebanese civil war, Israeli forces shot flares into the night sky, lighting the way for far-right Lebanese militias to carryout the systematic killing of up to 3500 Palestinian and Lebanese men, women and children. The massacre lasted 48 hours.

Sabra and Shatila signalled the end of an era for the Palestinian resistance movement. An era that grew from the refugee camps in Lebanon and honored Palestinian refugees and their right of return; an era that did not question the value of armed struggle in national liberation; an era that nurtured some of the best of Palestinian cultural and political life; an era that restored Palestinian dignity after the harrowing years that followed the Nakba.

In 1982, the U.S. administration betrayed the written guarantees they had given to the PLO to protect Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps. An article by Palestinian academic Rashid Khalidi in 2017 titled “The United States was responsible for the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in Beirut” studied what guarantees were given by U.S. officials and what they knew at the time. Khalidi also noted in his conclusion that the “ill-considered and morally flawed decisions about the 1982 war that were made by American policy-makers” continue to this day, with the same dangerous repercussions.

Nonetheless, a decade later, the Palestinian leadership agreed to the Oslo Accords, which we now know did immense damage to the Palestinian struggle. Where would the Palestinians stand now if the Oslo Accords had never been ratified, if the First Intifada had continued, if the PLO still inspired unity and stood for all the concepts encompassed in its name?

In 2007, on the 25th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacres, I wrote a commentary that was presented on the Voice of Palestine radio show in Vancouver. Sadly, its words still ring true; we are still waiting for justice, not only for the victims and survivors of Sabra and Shatila but for all Palestinians.

“It was September 1982. The summer had been brutal, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon being the issue we lived with, woke up to, and went to bed with. There was no internet, and our days were consumed with obtaining even the smallest slivers of news about the Palestinian and Lebanese casualties of the war, that numbered in the tens of thousands. We organized rallies, raised money for humanitarian aid, but none of it could erase or even reduce the emotional turmoil we constantly faced.

And then, as we all debated how and why the PLO forces left Beirut with supposed U.S. guarantees for the safety of civilians, we began to receive the flickering images on our TV screens of piled up and disfigured bodies from Sabra and Shatila. At first, the full horror of it was not immediately realized, and again, it took some time before all the details emerged. At least 3000 civilians (bodies were dumped in mass graves so figures are at best conservative) butchered and mutilated by Lebanese fascist forces with the full support of the occupying Israeli army in manners almost too gruesome to think about. And all of this with American guarantees for civilian safety.

We were like people in shock, numbly going ahead with plans for large protests but knowing at some deeper level, that the tragedy here would take a long time to process.

Many events happened in the aftermath but none brought the smallest amount of justice to the Sabra and Shatila victims. Ariel Sharon was found complicit even by Israeli institutions, but then returned as prime minister some years later. The victims tried to receive some modicum of accountability with their lawsuit in Belgian courts, which was then squashed by pressure from U.S. and other governments. Once again, the massacre of Palestinians was an inconvenient reality, and the memory of it even more inconvenient.”

Perhaps the new normalization/weapons agreements that have just been signed at the White House, one day before the Sabra and Shatila anniversary, will be looked back on by future analysts as marking the end of another era. The era of U.S. hegemony, destruction, and disregard for the lives and livelihood of the Palestinian and Arab peoples. And only then will the scars of the Sabra and Shatila massacre truly begin to heal.

by Marion Kawas
Pubished Sept. 17, 2020 in Mondoweiss

Why We Oppose Zionism and Anti-Semitism

The progressive Palestinian movement has always maintained that Zionism…

The progressive Palestinian movement has always maintained that Zionism and anti-Semitism are two faces of the same coin and that they often feed off each other. Opposition to both is based on opposition to racism and on a principled and solid belief that human rights should be applied equally and universally to all human beings regardless of their nationality, color or religion. As part of that movement, we have a long record of challenging both, no matter the source, be it from Canadian federal politicians such as Jason Kenney and John Baird, provincial politicians such as Carole James or Canadian mayors such as Gregor Robertson, and even from Jews such as Gilad Atzmon.

From the early inception of Zionism, its founder Theodor Herzl recognized this connection and described anti-Semitism as a “propelling force” and declared: “Anti-Semitism has grown and continues to grow, and so do I”. He also stated: “The governments of all countries scourged by anti-Semitism will be keenly interested in assisting us to obtain the sovereignty we want.” And as early as the first Zionist Congress (1897), Zionists collaborated with anti-Semites to achieve their common goal: ejecting Jews from their respective countries and in-gathering them in the new Ghetto in Palestine.

We also consider those who promote anti-Semitism as our enemies, not just because they are Zionism’s “propelling force” but also because they promote hatred against a religious group.

Without anti-Semitism, there would have been no Israel; without anti-Semitism, Zionism would have never convinced its “cannon fodder” to adopt its settler colonialist ideology.

Since its founding 120 years ago, Zionism has always claimed that it represents all Jews and that Israel is the “Jewish homeland”. The recent Israeli “Nation-State” law is the clear manifestation of this ideology, which was hidden from the world for the past seventy years under the Israeli slogan “the only democracy in the M.E.”. This law is also meant to redefine anti-Semitism by claiming that since Israel represents the Jews, any criticism, repudiation or hatred of Israeli brutal, racist and genocidal policies is considered anti-Semitism.

The Dimitri Lascaris “tweet”
Earlier this month, the major Canadian political parties that rarely agree on any subject in favour of the Canadian people, came out in an unprecedented show of unity and solidarity with Israel and Zionism.

This was in response to this tweet by pro-Palestinian activist and lawyer Dimitri Lascaris:
“Apparently Liberal MPs Anthony Housefather and Michael Levitt are more devoted to apartheid Israel than to their own prime minister and colleagues in the Liberal caucus.”
The backstory here was that Lascaris had exposed the racist nature of several B’nai Brith Canada supporters who were inciting violence against Canadian politicians and called “for the Death Penalty for Justin Trudeau, Jagmeet Singh and Liberal Muslim MPs”. He had called for political leaders to condemn this outrage but the silence at that point was deafening.(For background info on the story see Yves Engler article, Dimitri Lascaris’s response to Justin Trudeau, Independent Jewish Voices position on libelling Lascaris and a follow-up Engler article.)

And as usual, the Zionists employed the 3 D’s of Israeli hasbara: diversions, distortions and defamations. Diverted the attention from the Zionist supporters’ racism and their call to violence and murder, distorted what Lascaris was saying and then defamed him as an anti-Semite.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) stated in a tweet that Larcaris’ statement fits the “literal definition of #antisemitism” and asked the organization, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East CJPME, (of which he is Chair of the Board) to “publicly retract & apologize for this antisemitic smear”.
And then those same Canadian politicians that had absolutely no comment earlier, took their cue from CIJA and parroted its accusations and slander.
Canadian Prime minster Justin Trudeau went so far as to say in a tweet that Lascaris’ statement was a “Vile anti-Semitic smear”.
The Leader of Canada’s Conservative Party(CPC), Andrew Scheer, in the name of the CPC caucus, tweeted: “It’s shameful to see two MPs subjected to such anti-Semitism”.
The NDP leader Jagmeet Singh also tweeted:
“Antisemitism has no place in Canada”. And the NDP foreign critic Hélène Laverdière tweeted: “I condemn the anti-Semitic comments directed against them”
Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party also jumped on the band wagon and tweeted addressing the two Zionist MP’s (the alleged “victims”): “So unacceptable. Your loyalty to Canada is unquestioned.”
Even the organization CJPME, although taking great pains to point out that Lascaris’ tweet was personal and had nothing to do with them, nonetheless felt compelled to legitimize this Zionist definition of anti-Semitism by saying in their email statement: “The Jewish community is sensitive to allegations of divided loyalties … CJPME agrees that it is unnecessary to invoke questions of loyalty to Canada.”

The above quotes show clearly how the Zionist lobby has succeeded in hijacking the truth and the agenda by imposing its narrative on the vast majority of Canadian politicians, media and even some civil society groups, be they Jewish or non-Jewish.
Shockingly, a recent revelation made by Adalah noted: “The Israeli government declared that ‘the Knesset [is permitted] to legislate laws everywhere in the world’ and that it is authorized ‘to violate the sovereignty of foreign countries via legislation that would be applied to events occurring in their territories,’ in legal materials it recently submitted to the Israeli Supreme Court.”

Once upon a time, there were leaders in Canada who cared about truth, fairness, equality and dignity of all peoples. In 1935, the national leader of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation CCF (the NDP’s predecessor) J. S. Woodsworth, predicted the dangers of the Zionist Movement. He stated, referring to Zionism, that “if nationalism was ‘over-emphasized’ it would call forth a counter-nationalism that [would] be very disadvantageous.” He also said “the promotion of the interest of a sectional group tends to provoke a certain reaction in other sections of the population, and thus defeat the very object in view.”
Also, in 1938, when Woodsworth was approached to get CCF support for the Zionist settler project, he was quoted as saying: “It was easy for Canadians, Americans and the British to agree to a Jewish colony, as long as it was somewhere else. Why ‘pick on the Arabs’ other than for ‘strategic’ and ‘imperialistic’ consideration…” (Canada and the birth of Israel, David J. Bercuson, page 18, page 19).
Mr. Jagmeet Singh and Ms. Hélène Laverdière, please take note.

Zionists’ loyalty has always been to Zionism and its settler colonialist project
The claim that Zionism represents THE Jews is false and in itself promotes anti-Semitism. Those who believe that Zionism represents the Jews, including Canadian politicians, are either Zionists, anti-Semites or are promoters of it.
As the True Torah Jews put it: “…there are, generally, two types of people who conflate Judaism with Zionism: Zionists who try to legitimize Zionism, or anti-Semites who try delegitimizing Judaism.”

In fact, Jews were the first to recognize these facts and were the first to oppose the settler colonialist ideology, ZIONISM.
* In 1897 on the occasion of the first Zionist Congress, the Executive Committee of the Association of Rabbis in Germany issued the anti-Zionist manifesto that stated: “Judaism obligates its adherents to serve with all devotion the Fatherland to which they belong, and to further its national interests with all their heart and strength.” (Unease in Zion, Ehud Ben Ezer, Page 22)
* The strongest opposition to the Balfour Declaration within the British Government came from its only Jewish member, Sir Edwin Montagu, who wrote: “Zionism has always seemed to me to be a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom…I assert that there is not a Jewish nation…When the Jews are told that Palestine is their national home, every country will immediately desire to get rid of its Jewish citizens…”
Also, more recently 40+ Jewish organizations from all over the world declared: “This conflation undermines both the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality and the global struggle against antisemitism. It also serves to shield Israel from being held accountable to universal standards of human rights and international law.”

Zionism and its adherents seem to care less about the well being of the Jews, and more about the survival of the Zionist settler colonialist project. In 1938, the Zionist leader and later the first prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, stated: “If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.”
This tradition continues today as Israel and the Zionist lobby openly collaborate with extreme anti-Semites and racists as long as they are pro-Israel.

Canadian Zionists showed their true “loyalty” to Canada when they broke the Canadian law and the U.N. embargo on war material and manpower to the region in 1948: ”The (Canadian) government was reluctant to draw attention to this matter (the Zionist volunteers) and refused to invoke the Foreign Enlistment Act (a law passed to discourage Canadians from fighting fascism during the Spanish Civil War) … More than 300 Canadians eventually joined the Israeli forces while tons of military equipment, from Harvard training aircraft to radio sets, were smuggled out of Canadian ports. The recruiting of volunteers and the smuggling of arms were done with the active knowledge and assistance of leaders of the United Zionist Council…” (Canada and the birth of Israel, David J. Bercuson, page191.)

Why this Alliance between Zionism and Colonialism and Imperialism?
The real reason behind the support western colonialist and imperial countries have been giving to Zionism is that it serves their interests in the Arab region. It is not because of any Western love for Jews or even Zionists for that matter. The Zionist movement realized all of this in the early stages and quickly exploited it.

Theodore Herzl wrote in his book “The Jewish State”: “There we shall be a sector of the wall of Europe against Asia, we shall serve as the outpost of civilization against barbarism.”
Another Zionist leader, Chaim Weizmann, who was a close friend of the South African Apartheid leader Jan Smuts, also stated: “We had long pointed out to the British, and I repeated it again in my interview with Lord Cecil, that a Jewish Palestine would be a safeguard to England, in particular in respect to the Suez Canal.”

The support of Western powers to the Zionist project makes them complicit in Israeli war crimes, and by their support they are enabling Israel to carry on with the crimes of genocide and Apartheid against the Palestinian people.
We also should realize that their support to Israel and Zionism will continue only as long as Western imperial interests are being served. We could speculate further that their pretense of being “controlled” by the Zionist lobby helps to set the necessary exit strategy when Israel becomes a liability to those interests, and we know all too well who will be the target of any future backlash. Imperialism and settler colonialism have no morality nor conscience.

Trudeau and Canadian politicians are objectively promoting racism!
Mr. Trudeau, what falls under the category of “Vile anti-Semitic smears” is your support for the Zionist claim that it represents the Jews; by tarnishing the Jews with the war crimes that the Zionist state is committing against the Palestinian people and against humanity, you are the one objectively promoting anti-Semitism, not Mr. Lascaris. What constitutes “Vile anti-Semitic smears” is your support for the supremacist ideology of Zionism that uprooted and stole the land of the Semitic indigenous people of Palestine.
If you ever wake up one day with a conscience, how about implementing what Sir Edwin Montagu suggested in 1917 to the British Government:
“I would willingly disfranchise every Zionist. I would be almost tempted to proscribe the Zionist organisation as illegal and against the national interest.”

Unfortunately, we live in an era where supremacist, colonialist and imperialist forces control the world from the barrel of a gun. For peace, justice and dignity to prevail, it is incumbent on all of us to fight against all forms of racism and the hegemonic designs of those imperial powers, wherever they manifest. Otherwise, humanity is doomed.

Hanna Kawas,
Chair, Canada Palestine Association

Past Correspondence with Amnesty International, Canada regarding David Matas

(Note: CPA’s work over the past 34 years has been largely undocumented…

(Note: CPA’s work over the past 34 years has been largely undocumented on our website, but we are trying to rectify this.)

AI-Canada Stated Zionist Legal Network Coordinator Didn’t Compromise their Commitment to Impartiality

The following letters were exchanged between CPA and Bonnie Harnden, Executive Assistant of Amnesty International Canada in Jan./Feb 2002.
We checked recently with AI-Canada about the status of David Matas and we received the following response on Feb. 24, 2014 from Denise Glasbeek, Information Services Coordinator, Amnesty International, Canadian Section (English-Speaking):
“I don’t have an exact date for when David Matas ceased to work with Amnesty International. It was sometime close to but before 2006, I believe. To clarify, he was not employed at Amnesty International Canada. He was a volunteer with our Legal Network.” We recognize that AI-Canada has increased its engagement with and promotion of Palestinian human rights in recent years, but to our knowledge, although he is no longer involved with them, they have never distanced themselves from David Matas.
Interestingly, Matas was fully informed about the 2002 exchange of letters and even wrote about them in his outrageous 2005 “Hasbara” book “Aftershock: Anti-Zionism & Anti-Semitism”

We started our engagement with AI, Canada in Jan. 2002, by inquiring about the status of David Matas and his involvement with them, and we received the following response from Bonnie Harnden.
________________________________

—– Original Message —–
From: bharnden@…
To: hkawas@…
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 7:25 AM
Subject: David Matas

Dear Hanna,
David Matas is a long-time volunteer member of Amnesty Canada. He is currently the Coordinator of our Legal Network.
David is also very active in a number of other organizations.
Bonnie Harnden
Executive Assistant
AI Canada
_________________________________-
The following letter was sent to Bonnie Harnden, Executive Assistant, AI Canada under the title “A Staunch Supporter of Israel CANNOT be Impartial”
Jan. 19, 2002
From: “hkawas” hkawas@…
To: bharnden@…
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2002 1:09 AM
Subject: A Staunch Supporter of Israel CANNOT be Impartial

Bonnie Harnden
Executive Assistant, AI Canada

Dear Bonnie

I was disturbed and saddened to learn that David Matas is still working with Amnesty International – Canada.
Mr. Matas is a staunch supporter and uncritical advocate of Israel and Zionism, and he is also is an apologist for Israeli injustices and atrocities against the Palestinian people.

As a “Senior Legal Counsel” to the B’nai Brith Canada, he recently wrote:

“There may be some who assert the right of return for Palestinians without any awareness of the impact it would have on the Jewish people. Others are aware but either do not care, or worse, support that impact. For those in support, ‘the right of return of the Palestinian people’ is today what the ‘final solution to the Jewish problem’ was in the days of Hitler, a mask of words disguising the end result: a denial of the Jewish people’s right to a national identity in its historic homeland.”
He also stated in the same position paper that:
“Israel has not stripped Palestinians of their nationality in violation of international law”.
And then further stated:
“The non-governmental organizations Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have both endorsed the claimed right of Palestinians to Israel… In doing so, they have abandoned their human rights mandates and called for a human rights violation.”
(Israel And The Palestinians: Myths and Realities http://www.bnaibrith.ca/institute/articles/dm010730.html)

This leads us to the following questions:

1- If Mr. Matas thinks that Amnesty International calls for “a human rights violation”, why is he still working with AI Canada?
2- Can a man with so much blind loyalty to Israel and the cause of Zionism be impartial?
3- After all these years of his involvement with your organization, why has AI Canada never questioned his impartiality?
4- Can we trust that the campaigns you are conducting are not politically motivated? i.e. Are the campaigns you are conducting against human rights abuses in certain Arab and Moslem countries motivated by human rights principles or by a political pro-Israeli agenda? And what guarantees can you give the public about this question when you have the likes of Mr. David Matas
working as the Coordinator for your Legal Network?

Amnesty International claims that it “is impartial. It does not take sides in political conflicts. It neither supports nor opposes any government or political system.”

If you are true to your principles, we do NOT think Mr. Matas should be involved in the work of Amnesty International in any capacity.
He not only supports a political system, but he supports a political system that denies the suffering of the Palestinian people, their inalienable rights and their HUMANITY.

Yours truly,

Hanna Kawas
Chairperson,
Canada Palestine Association
Vancouver, Canada
________________________________________
Bonnie Harnden’s response:

—– Original Message —–
From: bharnden@…
To: “hkawas” hkawas@…
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2002 8:31 AM
Subject: Re: A Staunch Supporter of Israel CANNOT be Impartial

Dear Hanna,

David Matas is a longstanding volunteer with Amnesty International. His work with the organization has been in keeping with AI’s commitment to impartiality and independence. Mr. Matas always makes it clear when he is speaking or acting on behalf of AI and when he is doing so on behalf of other organizations. Mr. Matas has no role in developing or presenting Amnesty’s policies or actions in relation to the Middle East.

Amnesty’s work on human rights concerns in the Middle East has always been scrupulously impartial, and not influenced by political considerations. In Israel, the Occupied Territories and the Palestinian Authority the organization has spoken out frequently and very publicly with respect to human rights abuses attributable to Israeli forces, the Palestinian Authority and armed groups. Those reports are available on our website.

Bonnie Harnden
Executive Assistant
AI Canada
________________________________________
Our final response to Bonnie Harnden, under the title “Amnesty International-Canada Violates the Principles of Human Rights” Feb. 15, 2002
From: hkawas
To: bharnden@…
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2002 11:25 PM
Subject: Amnesty International-Canada Violates the Principles of Human Rights

Bonnie Harnden
Amnesty International Canada

We in the Canada Palestine Association are outraged that David Matas, a self declared violator of Palestinian human rights, is allowed to work in Amnesty International – Canada. Human rights are universal, and a violator of human rights in one country can not be a defender of human rights anywhere else.
What is even more incomprehensible is that Matas has publicly criticized Amnesty for its support of the Palestinian right of return, accusing you of having “abandoned (your) human rights mandate”, and yet he continues to work with you and you continue to involve him in a position of trust. The principles of human rights do not lend themselves to such opportunism.

1- Mr. David Matas supports Zionism as an exclusive ideology that allows any Jew to automatically gain Israeli citizenship regardless of his/her birth place, while at the same time he vehemently denies a native of Palestine and her/his descendants the right of return to their homeland.

2- Mr. Matas DENIES the direct responsibility of the Zionist movement for the mass expulsion of the majority of the Palestinian people and the subsequent tragedy of the Palestinian dispossession. Many historians, including Israelis, have documented this direct Israeli responsibility.

“The Jewish military advantage was translated into an act of mass expulsion of more than half of the Palestinian population. The Israeli forces, apart from rare exceptions, expelled the Palestinians from every village and town they occupied. In some cases, this expulsion was accompanied by massacres as was the cases in Lydda, Ramleh, Dawimiyya, Sa’sa, Ein Zietun and other
places. Expulsion also was accompanied by rape, looting and confiscation.”
Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe in “The Link”, January-March, 1998.

3- Mr. Matas not only defends the apartheid nature of the state of Israel, he also justifies it and believes that Israel should be the state of the Jewish people only and not of ALL its citizens. He supports the exclusive “Jewish character of the State of Israel” and “the preservation of the cultural identity of the Jewish people” in Israel.

a- On that basis, he thereby supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the state of Israel which was created according to the UN Partition Plan of Nov. 29, 1947, with a population of 50 percent Jewish and 50 percent Arab
Palestinians on 56 per cent of historic Palestine.
b- Mr. Matas believes that any natural demographic change inside Israel should be stopped by all means similar to what happened in 1947/1948.
c. He also supports all the Israeli laws and regulations that make Israel an exclusionary state and not secular for all of its citizens. The basic law, the law of return and the Jewish National Fund regulations are but a few examples.

4- Mr. Matas says the Holocaust “was global, not just European. It had a Middle East dimension, because of the failure of the states of the Middle East to offer protection to Jewish refugees”. Accordingly, he concludes that Palestinians should share in the “obligation to remedy these wrongs (of the Nazis)”, presumably by giving away their country. This is the utmost in victimizing the victim. Canada and the U.S. were two of the worst countries in turning away Jewish refugees during that period, but Mr. Matas hasn’t called for the state of Israel to be established in New York or on Vancouver Island. We refer him to the book, “The Holocaust, Victims Accuse”, published 1977 by the Orthodox Jewish group Neturei Karta, to fill the gaps in his rather selective analysis.

These are just a few examples of what David Matas stands for, and we do not understand how AI-Canada can claim that it is committed to “impartiality and independence” if it allows such a person to coordinate its legal network, and especially when this coordinator thinks that AI called for “a human rights violation” when it supported the Palestinians’ inalienable human rights.

We urge AI-Canada to:
1- Stop working with people like David Matas who call and work for violations of other peoples’ human and national rights.
2- To start a campaign to call on the Canadian government to stop the tax-deductible status of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) that discriminates on the basis of religion. The JNF and its subsidiaries control around 93 per cent of the land in Israel. This land is set aside for the exclusive use of Jews only, and the 20 per cent Muslim and Christian Israeli minority cannot buy nor even lease this land.
As a Canadian human rights organization, you do not want Canada to be an accessory to such discrimination.

In the meantime, however, we feel obliged to condemn AI-Canada and expose your hypocritical practices to all peace and human rights activists.
We will urge all those who are concerned with the universality of human rights to protest AI-Canada’s practices.

Yours truly

Hanna Kawas
Chairperson,
Canada Palestine Association, Vancouver, B.C.