Turn off the Canadian Media, Please
by Justin Podur, from Z-Net, January 9, 2009.

If national media help make a nation, then we all need to stop reading and listening to conventional Canadian media if we want to make a decent Canada. Benedict Anderson, perhaps the leading scholar of nationalism, wrote that the daily newspaper (along with other innovations like novels, maps, censuses, museums) played a key role in creating national consciousness. People in a country like Canada use their own media - public (CBC) and private (CanWest, TorStar, CTVglobemedia) - to know what is happening in their own country. Media are also an important part of forging a national identity. They are supposed to represent the broad spectrum of Canadian opinion. When they present information on the rest of the world, they do so from a Canadian perspective and have the Canadian audience in mind.

And today, if you want to have the first idea what is happening in Israel/Palestine (or most of the rest of the world), the best thing to do would be to turn them off completely.

Statement by Dr. Rueben Roth for Palestinian Support Rally, Sudbury, January 9, 2008

I regret that I was unable to join you at today’s demonstration.

I’m an anti-Zionist Jew, a claim that often confuses and confounds
those who have set ideas about the State of Israel and its claim that it
represents all of the world’s Jews. This also goes for the claims by
the B’Nai Brith and Canadian Jewish Congress that they represent the
views of Canadian Jews.

I grew up in a family that had both socialist and religious Jewish
traditions. I went to rabbinical college as a youth and was a
longstanding member of a socialist Zionist organization as a teen. I
came to my own conclusions about the conflict in the Mideast only after
many years of researching and questioning the establishment and history
of Israel. I came to realize that by the use of the political philosophy
of Zionism, and its militaristic and imperial actions, Israel
represented the antithesis of BOTH the secular progressive Judaism AND
the religious Jewish tradition as I had known it.

Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi wrote that Jewish history has been “a chain of
historic suffering and disasters; slavery, exile, hatred, pogroms and
[…] hostility (Beit Hallahmi, 1992).” I agree, and the events
unfolding in Gaza are a contradiction of Jewish culture and tradition as
I grew up knowing it.

This action is happening right now! If you can, please go right now to 180 Bloor Street West to demonstrate your support for their action! Press release below - please forward widely!

Jewish Women Occupy Israeli Consulate in Toronto
Toronto: Wednesday January 8, 2009 Time: 10:25 am

A diverse group of Jewish Canadian women are currently occupying the Israeli consulate at 180 Bloor Street West in Toronto. This action is in protest against the on-going Israeli assault on the people of Gaza.

The group is carrying out this occupation in solidarity with the 1.5 million people of Gaza and to ensure that Jewish voices against the massacre in Gaza are being heard. They are demanding that Israel end its military assault and lift the 18-month siege on the Gaza Strip to allow humanitarian aid into the territory.

Israel has been carrying out a full-scale military assault on the Gaza Strip since December 27, 2008. At least 660 people have been killed and 3000 injured in the air strikes and in the ground invasion that began on January 3, 2009. Israel has ignored international calls for a ceasefire and is refusing to allow food, adequate medical supplies and other necessities of life into the Gaza Strip.

Jewish Women Occupy Israeli Consulate in Toronto
Toronto: Wednesday January 8, 2009 Time: 10:25 am

A diverse group of Jewish Canadian women are currently occupying the Israeli consulate at 180 Bloor Street West in Toronto. This action is in protest against the on-going Israeli assault on the people of Gaza.

The group is carrying out this occupation in solidarity with the 1.5 million people of Gaza and to ensure that Jewish voices against the massacre in Gaza are being heard. They are demanding that Israel end its military assault and lift the 18-month siege on the Gaza Strip to allow humanitarian aid into the territory.

Israel has been carrying out a full-scale military assault on the Gaza Strip since December 27, 2008. At least 660 people have been killed and 3000 injured in the air strikes and in the ground invasion that began on January 3, 2009. Israel has ignored international calls for a ceasefire and is refusing to allow food, adequate medical supplies and other necessities of life into the Gaza Strip.

If you would like to sign on to this letter, send an email to
antizionistjews@gmail.com with your name and city

January 5th, 2009

Like much of the world, we have spent the last week watching in shock and disgust as Israel continues its assault on the Gaza Strip. With the body count rising and a new tragedy in full bloom, we feel that it is important to speak out as Jewish youth in Canada and to denounce what Israel is doing in our name.

The Jewish diaspora is diverse and divided on its positions on the state of Israel’s policies. At this juncture in history, as Israel has committed its worst massacre in Gaza since it began its illegal occupation in 1967, we feel that it is crucial that Jews speak out and denounce Israel’s actions that amount to no more than war crimes committed by an apartheid state.

As Jewish youth, we are diverse, but we are unified in our solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Gaza.

Some of us are students. We are outraged by the bombing of the Islamic University in Gaza city, as well as other civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and mosques.

By Dan Freeman-Maloy, the Bullet, Socialist Project.

There is every reason to be outraged. But despite the severity of Israeli atrocities in Gaza, we have little right to act surprised. Whatever else can be said, Israel has made it abundantly clear that until its actions are met with credible international sanctions, it will subject Palestinians (and very likely others in the region) to massive, recurring waves of violence.

This was clear when the Obama-Biden campaign helped to lay the political foundation for this assault. It was clear when, amidst threats of such an operation and ongoing colonization in the West Bank, the European Union voted to upgrade relations with Israel earlier this month. For those of us in Canada, it has been clear as the Harper government has sharpened its alignment with Israel in the absence of any sustained parliamentary opposition.

Desperately seeking Obama
By Sunera Thobani, from Rabble, January 2, 2009

The New Year has begun with Muslims around the world being taught a lesson in the crudity of racial equations: 400 Palestinian lives equal six Israeli lives.

Reeling from having learnt that over a million Iraqi and Afghan lives equal 3,000 American lives, the logic of this racial mathematics is certainly no new thing. After all, the first U.S. Constitution engaged in just such calculations of human worth, and Katrina demonstrated their ongoing effects. But the lesson has the power to shock every time: the images of Palestinian bodies being pulled out of the rubble in Gaza that flood news reports are unbearable to witness.

Surely the lesson cannot be lost on President-elect Barack Obama. That such violence can be waged on so defenseless a population with the support of the Bush Administration is unconscionable. That Obama chooses to remain silent is nothing short of cowardice.

CANADA:Native Rights Concerns Cloud 2010 Games
Jon Elmer
http://ipsnorthamerica.net/news.php?idnews=1870

VANCOUVER, 1 Dec (IPS) - A coalition of indigenous elders, social justice activists and community organisers is voicing opposition to the upcoming Winter Olympics, promising to continue their protests up to and throughout the 2010 games.

Taking advantage of a three-day media briefing hosted by the official Olympic body in late November, the Vancouver Organising Committee (VANOC), activists and native representatives invited the local and visiting international media to an office in the heart of the what is commonly known as Canada's poorest neighbourhood, the Downtown Eastside, to hear 'the other side of the Olympic story'.

Rallying under the banner of 'No Olympics on stolen native land', speakers representing nine native and community groups outlined connections between native poverty, dislocation and homelessness and the staging of the games in Vancouver and Whistler, 120 kms north of Vancouver.

Afghans to Obama: End the Occupation -- An interview with an Afghan women's rights activist
By Sonali Kolhatkar, from Z-Net, November 30, 2008.

President Elect Barack Obama wants to increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan. But the US/NATO occupation is less popular than ever. Eman, an Afghan woman's rights activist with RAWA tells Uprising host, Sonali Kolhatkar, that Obama must end the occupation. RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, is the oldest women's political organization in Afghanistan, struggling non-violently against foreign occupations and religious fundamentalism for more than 30 years.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Many on the American left are celebrating the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the US. But while he has pledged to end the Iraq war, he has also promised to increase troops in Afghanistan. What is your opinion of Barack Obama and his stated policy on Afghanistan?

President Obama: Change the world can believe in?
by Sunera Thobani, from Rabble, November 3, 2008.

As the widely anticipated election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States grows closer, the priorities that will shape the early days of his Administration require critical attention.

With the banking system still in crisis and financial markets on a volatile rollercoaster, the pressure will be great for a President Obama to focus on domestic issues. But the new Administration will also be saddled with the increasingly unpopular War on Terror. How will Obama deliver on his promise of change to Americans, as well as those around the world who have greeted his candidacy with such enthusiasm?

The election campaigns have demonstrated Americans are more concerned about their houses, retirement savings, jobs, healthcare and education than they are about international issues, and Obama has successfully distanced himself from the deregulation promoted by the Bush Administration. But it will be critical for Obama to likewise detach his Administration from the disastrous Bush foreign policy.

Three steps could signal a clear break with the past: ending the Afghan war, closing down Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and prosecuting war crimes.