Canada Palestine Association

Events to Commemorate Al-Nakba in Vancouver, Canada

On the 64th anniversary of the occupation of Palestine, and as the Palestinian… Read more

On the 64th anniversary of the occupation of Palestine, and as the Palestinian people enter the 64th year of dispossession and exile, the Vancouver Coalition to Commemorate Al-Nakba is organizing 2 events to commemorate the Nakba, stand against the continuing Nakba, and call for the right of return for Palestinian refugees and freedom for Palestine. 64 years after the Nakba – the war of 1948 in which over 800,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and land and the state of Israel created on that land – Palestinians continue to struggle for their right to return, for freedom from occupation, for justice, and against the Nakba that continues today.

Community Supper: Sharing Stories, Creating Resistance
Tuesday, May 15, 2012, 6 PM – 10 PM
Unitarian Church, 949 W. 49th St (49th and Oak), Vancouver
This community supper will bring together the community to share stories, creative work, and discussions about indigenous resistance, continuing Nakba, and struggles for freedom.
Facebook page

MARCH OF RETURN: MARCH FOR PALESTINE
Saturday, May 19, 2 PM
Gather at Clark Park (14th and Commercial) at 2 PM, March to Grandview Park
Rally at Grandview Park
March and rally commemorating the Nakba, standing against the continuing Nakba, calling for justice, freedom and return for Palestine! We will also stand against Canada’s complicity and its own genocide of indigenous people. Creative actions welcome! This is a family friendly march.
Facebook page

The Vancouver Coalition to Commemorate Al-Nakba includes the Alliance for People’s Health, Arab Students Association – UBC, Boycott Israeli Apartheid Campaign, Canada Palestine Association, CPSHR – Canada-Philippines Solidarity for Human Rights, Canadian Boat to Gaza, CanPalNet, Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Independent Jewish Voices, No One Is Illegal – Vancouver Unceded Coast Salish Territories, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Seriously Free Speech Committee, Simon Fraser Public Interest Research Group (SFPIRG), Solidarity For Palestinian Human Rights-UBC (SPHR-UBC), SANSAD – South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy, Stopwar.ca.
To join the coalition or for more information please contact nakbavancouver@gmail.com.

Report on Vancouver Media Co-op: Hundreds in Vancouver mark 64 years of Palestinian resistance to ethnic cleansing

Report on Vancouver Media Co-op:

Watch the rebroadcast: End the Nakba — sharing stories, creating resistance on Rabble.ca

See Picture of Vancouver March to Commemorate al-Nakba on Facebook
And watch the rally at the end of the MARCH OF RETURN: MARCH FOR PALESTINE on YouTube

Watch the rebroadcast: End the Nakba — sharing stories, creating resistance on Rabble.ca

See Picture of Vancouver March to Commemorate al-Nakba on Facebook
And watch the rally at the end of the MARCH OF RETURN: MARCH FOR PALESTINE on YouTube

Ilan Pappé; The False Paradigm of Peace: Revisiting the Palestine Question

Ilan Pappé
The False Paradigm of Peace: Revisiting the Palestine Question… Read more

Ilan Pappé
The False Paradigm of Peace: Revisiting the Palestine Question
Vancouver, British Columbia, Saturday, May 05, 2012, 07:00 PM
ADDRESS
Alice Mackay Room
Library Square Conference Centre
350 West Georgia Street
Vancouver, BC V6B 6B1
TICKET INFO
$15 non-students
$10 students (with ID)

Tickets can be purchased at the door while supplies last (cash only.) You may also reserve a front-section seat by buying a ticket on-line in advance. To purchase tickets on-line, click here.

Local partners include Building Bridges Vancouver.

About Dr. Ilan Pappé and this lecture

In his lecture – The False Paradigm of Peace: Revisiting the Palestine Question – Dr. Pappé will talk about the reasons behind the decades of failed negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, and discuss what the future has in hold for the Palestinians as a people.

Dr. Pappé is a professor at the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK, as well as director of the university’s European Center for Palestine Studies and co-director of the Exeter Center for Ethno-Political Studies. He obtained his PhD in history from the University of Oxford.

Most notably, he is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine , as well as over a dozen other books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

While living in Israel, Dr. Pappé was a senior lecturer at the University of Haifa, and ran as a candidate for the Hadash party in the 1996-1999 Knesset elections.

Hear the full speech of Dr. Ilan Pappé on Voice of Palestine website
Watch the event at rabble.ca

April 17: Rally and Speak-Out for Palestinian Political Prisoners

April 17: Rally and Speak-Out for Freedom for Palestinian Political Prisoners!… Read more

April 17: Rally and Speak-Out for Freedom for Palestinian Political Prisoners! – Vancouver

Tuesday, April 17, 2012
5:00 PM – 7:00 PM
CBC Building, 700 Hamilton St (Hamilton and Georgia), Vancouver

Facebook Event

Nearly 5,000 Palestinian political prisoners are held in jails in Israel, including 170 children and 6 women. 310 prisoners are held – without charge or trial – under administrative detention. Palestinian prisoners include over 20 lawmakers and national leaders, like Ahmad Sa’adat, Marwan Barghouthi and Aziz Dweik.

On April 17, 2012, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, people around the world will respond to the call to take action for Palestinian political prisoners. The courage of hunger striking prisoners Khader Adnan and Hana Shalabi drew the attention of the world as they protested their confinement in administrative detention – imprisonment without charge or trial – by the Israeli occupation.

In Vancouver, Join us on April 17 to support Palestinian prisoners, demand their freedom, and call for justice. Rally and Speak-Out for Palestinian Prisoners; Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 5 PM – 7 PM, CBC Building, 700 Hamilton St (Hamilton and Georgia), Vancouver.

We demand the immediate release of all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Their imprisonment reflects Israel’s inherent system of injustice and racism. In addition, Israel must immediately halt its practices of:

Administrative detention.
Torture and ill-treatment of detainees.
Solitary confinement and isolation.
The use of military courts in the occupied Palestinian territory that illegally try civilians.
Undermining a fair trial by using secret evidence against the accused.
Arresting and targeting vulnerable groups including children, people with disabilities, elderly people and ill people.

Here in Canada, the Canadian government is deeply complicit and directly implicated in the ongoing occupation of Palestine and the crimes of the Israeli state – as well as responsible for political imprisonment and repression in indigenous communities, against migrants, refugees and other targeted communities.

The voices of Palestinian political prisoners remain silenced and unheard. Indeed, Jason Kenney’s Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration defunded Palestine House’s immigrant settlement programs in part because it held an event celebrating the release of Palestinian prisoners, in a clearly politically-motivated action. When the voices of Palestinian prisoners manage to break through on Radio-Canada (French-language CBC), they face immediate attack from Zionist groups and even rebukes from within the station while Palestinian prisoners’ struggles rarely make it at all to the English-language CBC airwaves.

Palestinian prisoners are on the front lines of the Palestinian struggle for liberation on a daily basis. In the jails of occupation, Palestinian prisoners confront the oppressor and the occupier, and put their bodies and lives on the line to continue their people’s struggle to achieve justice and freedom for the land and people of Palestine. The Israeli occupation has criminalized all forms of Palestinian existence and Palestinian resistance – from peaceful mass demonstrations to armed struggle to simply refusing to be silent and invisible as a Palestinian. Palestinian prisoners are men and women – and children – from every part of Palestine, from every family. Their absence is keenly felt in the homes, communities, villages, towns, labour, women’s and student organizations from which they were taken by the occupation. They suffer torture, isolation, coercive interrogation, denial of family and lawyers’ visits, on a daily basis. And it is their hunger strikes, their calls to the world, their unity and solidarity, and their continued leadership in the Palestinian movement that must inspire us daily and remind us of our responsibility to take action.

Join us on April 17, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, to be part of the global movement for justice and freedom for Palestinian prisoners.

Called by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Alliance for People’s Health, Boycott Israeli Apartheid Campaign, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights – UBC, International League of People’s Struggle – Canada, Canada Palestine Association

Join the Palestine Contingent at the Community March Against Racism

Join the Palestine Contingent at the Community March Against Racism

Since… Read more

Join the Palestine Contingent at the Community March Against Racism

Since March 9, 25 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israeli bombs and weaponry – and Israel threatens more to come. This attack on Gaza is backed up by US arms and money, and full-fledged Canadian diplomatic and political support. While Ehud Barak pledges that “this round in the Strip is still far from over,” the Canadian government has nothing to say, except for Jason Kenney’s condemnation of Palestinian and solidarity activists lifting the cover from Israeli racism through Israeli Apartheid Week events and John Baird’s pledge of friendship with Israel.

TAKE ACTION!

PROTEST the attacks on Gaza and Israeli apartheid and racism: Join the Palestine Contingent at the Community March Against Racism, Sunday, March 18. Gather at Clark Park in Vancouver (14th and Commercial) at 1:45 PM and join the Palestine contingent with Palestinian flags and banners!

The attack on Gaza is only the most latest manifestation of Israel’s war on the Palestinian people – from the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, to the ongoing denial of millions of Palestinian refugees’ right to return home, to the institutionalized racism and discrimination practiced against Palestinians in Israel, to the military occupation of the West Bank and its checkpoints, Apartheid Wall, land confiscation and home demolitions, to the mass imprisonment of thousands of Palestinians, to the ongoing siege of Gaza. Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is one international tool called for by the Palestinian movement to isolate Israel until it ends its ongoing racism, apartheid and war crimes.

As part of the struggle to confront Israeli apartheid and racism and support Palestinian rights, we also confront Canada’s own settler colonial reality, including racism, oppression, violence against indigenous people, exclusion and targeting of refugees and immigrants, criminalization and incarceration.

The Community March Against Racism in Vancouver commemorates the International Day for the Elimination of Racism, which marks the anniversary of the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa when police opened fire on hundreds of South Africans protesting against Apartheid’s passbook laws. It is an occasion to march against racism in Canada, against Israeli apartheid, and for liberation and justice for Palestine and our communities.

The Arab, Palestinian and Muslim communities in Canada continue to be targets for racism, both here and in Palestine. As Gaza is under attack, as Palestine is under attack, and as communities here are under attack, it is urgent that we join together in solidarity and resistance with No One Is Illegal – Vancouver and numerous communities to stand together to confront and challenge apartheid, racism and oppression.

Join us!

Palestine Contingent called by the Boycott Israeli Apartheid Campaign (Vancouver), the Canada Palestine Association, and Samidoun. To endorse, join the contingent, or for more information, please contact us at boycottapartheid@gmail.com.
Multilingual posters and flyers here

Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon

For many years now, Gilad Atzmon, a musician born in Israel and currently living in the United Kingdom, has taken on the self-appointed task of defining for the Palestinian movement the nature of our struggle, and the philosophy underpinning it. He has done so through his various blogs and Internet outlets, in speeches, and in articles. He is currently on tour in the United States promoting his most recent book, entitled, ‘The Wandering Who.’

With this letter, we call for the disavowal of Atzmon by fellow Palestinian organizers, as well as Palestine solidarity activists, and allies of the Palestinian people, and note the dangers of supporting Atzmon’s political work and writings and providing any platforms for their dissemination. We do so as Palestinian organizers and activists, working across continents, campaigns, and ideological positions.

Atzmon’s politics rest on one main overriding assertion that serves as springboard for vicious attacks on anyone who disagrees with his obsession with “Jewishness”. He claims that all Jewish politics is “tribal,” and essentially, Zionist. Zionism, to Atzmon, is not a settler-colonial project, but a trans-historical “Jewish” one, part and parcel of defining one’s self as a Jew. Therefore, he claims, one cannot self-describe as a Jew and also do work in solidarity with Palestine, because to identify as a Jew is to be a Zionist. We could not disagree more. Indeed, we believe Atzmon’s argument is itself Zionist because it agrees with the ideology of Zionism and Israel that the only way to be a Jew is to be a Zionist.

Palestinians have faced two centuries of orientalist, colonialist and imperialist domination of our native lands. And so as Palestinians, we see such language as immoral and completely outside the core foundations of humanism, equality and justice, on which the struggle for Palestine and its national movement rests. As countless Palestinian activists and organizers, their parties, associations and campaigns, have attested throughout the last century, our struggle was never, and will never be, with Jews, or Judaism, no matter how much Zionism insists that our enemies are the Jews. Rather, our struggle is with Zionism, a modern European settler colonial movement, similar to movements in many other parts of the world that aim to displace indigenous people and build new European societies on their lands.

We reaffirm that there is no room in this historic and foundational analysis of our struggle for any attacks on our Jewish allies, Jews, or Judaism; nor denying the Holocaust; nor allying in any way shape or form with any conspiracy theories, far-right, orientalist, and racist arguments, associations and entities. Challenging Zionism, including the illegitimate power of institutions that support the oppression of Palestinians, and the illegitimate use of Jewish identities to protect and legitimize oppression, must never become an attack on Jewish identities, nor the demeaning and denial of Jewish histories in all their diversity.

Indeed, we regard any attempt to link and adopt antisemitic or racist language, even if it is within a self-described anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist politics, as reaffirming and legitimizing Zionism. In addition to its immorality, this language obscures the fundamental role of imperialism and colonialism in destroying our homeland, expelling its people, and sustaining the systems and ideologies of oppression, apartheid and occupation. It leaves one squarely outside true solidarity with Palestine and its people.

The goal of the Palestinian people has always been clear: self determination. And we can only exercise that inalienable right through liberation, the return of our refugees (the absolute majority of our people) and achieving equal rights to all through decolonization. As such, we stand with all and any movements that call for justice, human dignity, equality, and social, economic, cultural and political rights. We will never compromise the principles and spirit of our liberation struggle. We will not allow a false sense of expediency to drive us into alliance with those who attack, malign, or otherwise attempt to target our political fraternity with all liberation struggles and movements for justice.

As Palestinians, it is our collective responsibility, whether we are in Palestine or in exile, to assert our guidance of our grassroots liberation struggle. We must protect the integrity of our movement, and to do so we must continue to remain vigilant that those for whom we provide platforms actually speak to its principles.

When the Palestinian people call for self-determination and decolonization of our homeland, we do so in the promise and hope of a community founded on justice, where all are free, all are equal and all are welcome.

Until liberation and return.

Signed:

Ali Abunimah
Naseer Aruri, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
Omar Barghouti, human rights activist
Hatem Bazian, Chair, American Muslims for Palestine
Andrew Dalack, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network
Haidar Eid, Gaza
Nada Elia, US Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
Toufic Haddad
Kathryn Hamoudah
Adam Hanieh, Lecturer, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London
Mostafa Henaway, Tadamon! Canada
Monadel Herzallah, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network
Nadia Hijab, author and human rights advocate
Andrew Kadi
Hanna Kawas, Chair person, Canada Palestine Association and Co-Host Voice of Palestine
Abir Kobty, Palestinian blogger and activist
Joseph Massad, Professor, Columbia University, NY
Danya Mustafa, Israeli Apartheid Week US National Co-Coordinator & Students for Justice in Palestine- University of New Mexico
Dina Omar, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine
Haitham Salawdeh, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network
Sobhi Samour, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London
Khaled Ziada, SOAS Palestine Society, London
Rafeef Ziadah, poet and human rights advocate