Category: Featured

Palestine Solidarity Goes Back to its Roots

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/

Nakba75 Vancouver

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.

Boycott Israeli Wines/Commemorate Palestine Land Day

Photo Michael YC Tseng
Photo Michael YC Tseng

Samidoun report: Vancouver demonstration demands boycott of “Israeli” wines, freedom for Palestinian prisoners
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BC Liquor Store 1108 Pacific Blvd. (Yaletown) Vancouver
Saturday, April 1, 2 pm
FB event page: Boycott Israeli Wines/Commemorate Palestinian Land Day
(Cover photo by Michael YC Tseng)

Join us to mark Palestinian Land Day and call out the BC Government and corporations complicit in war crimes profiteering off Israeli apartheid wines.
Major international and Israeli human right groups, including Amnesty International, have determined that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid. Yet the BC government insists to carry Israeli wines in publicly owned BC liquor stores, even though most are linked to the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise.
The wines in question are either from the Golan Heights Winery and its joint venture the Galil Winery; or from the Israeli Teperberg Winery, which proudly displays a map on its website showing vineyards in occupied Palestinian territory.
More info: https://cpavancouver.org/boycottisraeliwines-campaign/

Event by Canada Palestine Association, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network Vancouver and BDS Vancouver – Coast Salish Territories

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. 

International Cellars Inc: Wine Merchants or War Crimes Profiteers

New Action Alert Letter Campaign:
Tell International Cellars to Stop Profiting off Israeli War Crimes – Action Network

The import and sale of Israeli wines in provincial liquor stores across Canada is a microcosm of how apartheid maintains “business as usual”, despite changing political conditions. The war crimes profiteering from the sale of Israeli products has been tracked for many years in BC by #BoycottIsraeliWine campaigners.

Much of the focus has been on the illegal Israeli settlements, be they in the occupied West Bank or annexed Golan, and on the successive provincial and federal governments complicit in legitimizing this plunder of stolen Palestinian natural resources. However, there is also corporate complicity involving the wine distributors that bring the fruits of colonization to local liquor store shelves.

Most Israeli wine distributed to all of Canada’s four western provinces comes through one Vancouver-based company, International Cellars Inc. They promote wines from the Golan Heights Winery and its joint venture, Galil Mountain Winery, as well as the Teperberg 1870 Winery (which openly shows its vineyards in occupied Palestinian territory on its website). In 2007, they launched several Israeli wines in BC government liquor stores under the condition that there would be a separate “Israeli” section; principal director, Norman Gladstone, stated at the time that the BC Liquor Distribution Board (BCLDB) approached him about the project and were very “supportive”. “Normally, it is up to a company like International Cellars to go into each and every liquor store to get them to sell their wines, but, because the BCLDB is so supportive of this venture, ‘the liquor board is doing an initial introduction to 23 stores and our [International Cellars’] sales staff are going out to get it into more stores as well,’ said Gladstone.”

A look at International Cellars wines from other countries brought forth this gem: one of their partner Chilean wineries is owned by the founder of the Golan Heights Winery, Shimshon Welner. Welner Wines website in its “our story” section, proudly shows photos of Welner with former Israeli leaders including Ariel Sharon, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin.

(Shimshon Welner with Ariel Sharon)

After seeing the hypocrisy of the BC NDP government last year in rushing to pull Russian liquor products off store shelves in just 2 days, while refusing for 14 years to deal with Israeli apartheid wines, it is clear the BC government always was, and is, a full partner in this travesty. A travesty that spans multiple provincial governments, from the Liberals in 2007 to the Horgan NDP government to the current one under Premier David Eby, all promoting the same policy of enabling Israeli war crimes. And anyone who thought that the NDP would take a different stance once in power was sorely disappointed, even though their official party policy is now committed to end “all trade and economic cooperation with illegal settlements in Israel-Palestine”.

Palestinian activists will continue to highlight and hold accountable all those involved in this infamous chain of war crimes profiteering, who play a part in the dispossession and usurpation of Palestine, its natural resources, and its people. Palestinian blood is on all their hands.

(This statement was also published in Mondoweiss)

Banner Drops 4 Palestine

Feb. 12, 2023: Banner Drops on Two Vancouver Bridges as part of Days of Rage and Resistance

And here are photos from January’s banner drop and postering action!