Activists across Canada join in the demand that Scotiabank divest immediately from Israeli arms company Elbit Systems. Scotiabank is the largest foreign investor in Elbit, to the tune of $500 million. Shame on Scotiabank!
Recently, Lululemon opened its first store in Israel and apparently has plans to open seven more. Zionists seem to be excited, and even the Israeli consulate general in Toronto posted about the opening. It would seem nothing dresses up apartheid like yoga leggings!
Vancouver was out on the streets on May 14 for a Nakba75 rally and march. After gathering at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the crowd marched through the downtown core to the U.S. consulate to highlight Western complicity in Israeli war crimes.
(Photos Michael YC Tseng)
Rally at the Art Gallery
Marching thru downtown Vancouver to the US Consulate for more speakers.
On April 28-30, the Liberation Conference was held in Ottawa, Canada to examine strategies for Palestine solidarity work going forward in North America. The conference was organized by Masar Badil, who has already held several conferences in Europe, Brazil and Lebanon and is working to harness the new energy amongst diaspora Palestinians.
The conference was attacked by Zionist lobby groups before the first speaker even stepped to the platform, based on a now familiar litany of fraudulent charges of “terrorism”. The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs CIJA, along with the National Post newspaper, went on an inflammatory rampage, warning of some “shadowy terror-connected network devoted to Israel’s destruction”.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network was, and is, one of the main targets of these smear campaigns, and their international coordinator Charlotte Kates commented this way:
“Time and again, we see Zionist lobby organizations demanding the silencing, criminalization and persecution of those demanding justice for Palestine and refusing to allow Palestine to be excluded from discussions of social justice. We view the attacks on Samidoun as attacks primarily on the Palestinian prisoners themselves, attempting to isolate and extend their imprisonment through silencing and intimidation.”
The pro-Israel lobby is frantic about the clear anti-colonial and anti-Zionist basis of recent Palestine solidarity organizing, especially amongst students and youth. A clarity that often got lost after the signing of the Oslo accords but is now being revived.
Historically, Palestinian activists in Canada have always challenged the Zionist narrative. In October 1975, the leading pro-Israel paper in Vancouver at the time bemoaned the anti-Zionist organizing on UBC campus, due to the upcoming visit of war criminal Moshe Dayan. That visit involved two local meetings, both of which were met with noisy protests; the banner that was done up for the events showed the clarity of the support movement at that time – “Support the Palestinian People’s Struggle against Imperialist-Zionist Aggression”.
Read the full article by Marion Kawas here.
PAJU also carried the article in both English and French on its website.
https://paju.org/palestine-solidarity-goes-back-to-its-roots
https://paju.org/fr/la-solidarite-avec-la-palestine-revient-a-ses-racines/
Until Return and Freedom!
Raise the Palestinian Flag!
VANCOUVER, ALL OUT FOR PALESTINE
May 14, 1 pm Vancouver Art Gallery
Nakba75 Vancouver | Facebook
Join us to mark 75 years of Palestinian dispossession and commemorate the continuing Palestinian resistance, as the Palestinian people refuse to submit to Zionist settler colonialism, aggression, and occupation.
Let’s hold the Palestinian flag high in Vancouver, and also tell the U.S. and Canadian governments that their complicity in Israeli war crimes must end!
From Turtle Island to Palestine, Colonization is a Crime!
#BoycottApartheidIsrael
Come out to send the message: Enough of 75 years of Israeli settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
For more info, please email pymvancouver@gmail.com
Organized by Canada Palestine Association, International League of Peoples’ Struggle Canada, Masar Badil, Palestinian Youth Movement, Samidoun, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights UBC and Students for Justice in Palestine SFU
This event is taking place on the unceded and occupied territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) peoples. The organizers stand in full solidarity and support of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination and with the ongoing movements to defend land, water and Indigenous peoples from plunder and settler colonialism.
