International Israeli Apartheid Week 2010
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/international-israeli-apartheid-week-2010/

UK members of the parliamentary delegation to Gaza, organised by the European Campaign to end siege in Gaza and the Palestinian Return Centre presented ‘Eyewitness Gaza’ in Westminster on Monday evening.

In a packed Select Committee Room, British Parliamentarians, including Sir Gerald Kaufman, Bob Marshall Andrews, Baroness Jenny Tonge, Lord Nazir Ahmed, Martin Linton, Jeremy Corbyn, and Richard Howitt MEP spoke about what they had seen when they broke the siege on Gaza in January.

Joining the esteemed panellists were Lord Steel, who is going to Gaza this week, Majed Al Zeer Director of the Palestinian Return Centre and Arafat Shoukri, chair of the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza.

It was a highly anticipated event jointly organised with Labour friends of Palestine following the largest ever delegation to Gaza which comprised of 60 parliamentarians from 13 different European countries and resulting in an authoritative report.

The chair of the event Martin Linton began with a eulogy of the organisers. All the representatives and the organisers shared their gratitude towards the Egyptian authorities for allowing the delegation to enter Gaza. The importance of witnessing the daily human tragedy in Gaza was widely shared to break the information blackout over Gaza in the West.

The despair and frustration was palpable on an emotional night. ‘This was the most extraordinary experience of my life’ said Bob Marshall Andrews, ‘nothing prepares you for what we saw and heard in Gaza’.

Baroness Jenny Tonge provided a moving account of the health challenges faced by those she met and interviewed. She was struck by the level of post traumatic stress which will have a lasting effect on victims and on the of Palestinian society to recover and prosper.

Sir Gerald Kaufman, the leader of the delegation, made a very poignant speech noting the responsibility of the UK and the EU to lift the siege. ‘what we saw was collective punishment in Gaza and it is the responsibility of the people of this country and western democracy to remind everyone of the atrocity taking place every day before our eyes’.

‘Gaza was worse than I ever thought’ said Sir Gerald ‘it was incredible and callous destruction’. With the trauma inflicted on Palestinian children, sir Gerald argued that Israel was condemning itself; it is harvesting a generation of disaffected children driven with rage and anger at the injustice and intolerable situation imposed on them.

Lord Ahmed, a member of previous delegations, spoke of the total hypocrisy of the policies adopted in the region. In mentioning the 2006 election win of Hamas he said ‘the British government was prepared to engage in a long bloody war which killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq with the intention to spread democracy and here in Palestine there was democracy in action, not dictated by the barrel of the gun and we spurned it’.

Jeremy Corbyn spoke of his personal anguish in coming to terms with the terrible conditions, ‘ I felt bitter, frustrated, angry and unworthy’ he said, in describing his emotions of witnessing the conditions in Gaza and personally struggling to come to terms with the situation.

Richard Harrett, Labour MEP said ‘the ability to make peace was disappearing’ after reflecting on the situation in Gaza. He echoed all the previous speakers’ sentiments that the EU had to take effective measures, which it has in its disposal, such as maintaining its refusal to upgrade the EU Israeli trade agreement and pushing for it’s suspension in line with Article 2 which dictates respect for human rights.

Dr Arafat Shoukri then spoke of the work of the European Campaign and its continued effort to address the humanitarian crises and facilitate the political process, ‘this was a human disaster where many authorities were complicit and should feel ashamed’ he said.

Majed al Zeer, Director of PRC, provided some historical background to Gaza saying, ‘Gaza was not the first and I’m afraid won’t be the last’. Gaza, he argued was the continuation of a single problem which is the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe). ‘The Nakba was there before Hamas and before Hamas rockets, the Nakba was there before the PLO and Arafat, the Nakba was there before any Palestinian resistance, so called extremism and terrorism. Israel has made Nakba the eternal condition of Palestinians and has continually tried to erase its crimes against the Palestinian people’.

http://www.prc.org.uk/newsite/en/centre-activities/workshop/453

I don’t regard the wall as an “Apartheid Wall”. It is part of a monstrous land grab, a creeping transfer, taking whatever parts of Palestine it wishes as it looms longer and larger over the Palestinian homeland, destroying entire villages and all else besides in the process.

If this were a ‘security barrier’ as life long terrorist, Ariel Sharon, brazenly called it, it would have been built inside the so-called Green Line. It wasn’t. Enough said.

Furthermore, it has been declared illegal by the International Court of Justice, and ordered dismantled. Why it hasn’t been speaks volumes to the cowardice of the nations of the world and to the inability of the ICJ to enforce its decisions..

The occupied, oppressed, terrorized Palestinian people are the ones needing protection. Long before Israel’s 1967 unprovoked attack on Egypt, Jewish terrorists were killing the native people, destroying their towns, and forcing close to 900,000 to flee their homeland. The 1967 pre-emptive strike was another excuse to accumulate additional land that didn’t, and doesn’t, belong to Israel.

Tragically, no wall has, or will, protect the Palestinian people from the tanks, bombs, missiles, white phosphorous, gun boats, and all else besides that the IDF, terrorists in every sense of the word, delights in dropping on an innocent population.

As Stuart Littlewood, wrote:

“The Palestinians would love to hit back with F-16 jets, tanks, helicopter gunships, armed drones and naval gunboats. That would be nice and conventional and acceptable, yes? But all they have are AK47s, RPGs and rockets made in the garden shed, and they ride into battle in a pick-up truck”.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/11/spotlight-on-palestine/

Your pat little analysis, ‘dfault’, about Israel’s illegal wall is first class fiction.

According to Toronto daily The Globe And Mail, Canada’s junior foreign minister, Peter Kent, in an interiew with one of Canada’s Israeli Hasbara publications Shalom Life said that Stephen Harper government is ready to throw its full military weight behind the Zionist entity, saying: “An attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada”. Kent’s chief of staff, Norm McIntosh defended his boss by telling the newspaper that “It’s not too far from what the prime minister (Stephen Harper) has said”. Stephen Harper and his immigration minister Jason Kenney who supported Israeli genocide of 1.5 million Gaza inhabitantans during Dec.-Jan. 2009 – are known for their blind support for Israel and their hatred toward Arab and Muslim communities in Canada (Edward C. Carrigan in The Canadian Charger, Feb. 10, 2010).

Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper has gone to the extreme by saying that criticism of Israel is an old-fashion anti-Semitism.

Jason Kenney is on record of boasting that Canada was the first government in the world to remove funding for the Palestinian Authority (PA) following election of Islamic Resistance Hamas in 2006. He was also instrument in banning British MP George Galloway’s entry to Canada in March 2009. Last December, Kenney also cut government funding for Christian charity KAIROS for carrying out some humanitarian work in occupied Palestine. Interesting while KAIROS was labeled anti-Semite, the group in fact recognizes the state of Israel to exist on the stolen Arab land. It only wants Zionist thugs to pull-back from the occupied Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Jason took that action on his return from attending the Global Forum for fighting Anti-Semitism in Israel.

Kent: Attack on Israel is an attack on Canada
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/kent-attack-on-israel-is-an-attack-on-canada/

All this goes on while Canada continues to brag about being a supporter of international law, the UN Charter and human rights. The definition of these terms clearly needs revision in the Canadian dictionary.

Before 1967, when Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza, the Arabs kept the border sealed so that no Arabs (other then those attempting to attack Israel) were allowed to enter Israel. Israel opened up that border completely!
Israel only put up the barrier after repeated attacks.

Considering that Israel opened up the divider that had been closed by the Arabs, it is mind boggling to accuse Israel of apartheid!

I suggest that calling land theft “zionism” [or "imperialism"] and implying that zionism is an ideology which can be compared [nobly?] with other isms like socialism, idealism, catholicism, humanism, etc., is a grievous wrong against all indigenese and not just canadian or palestinian.

Zionism was invented by zionists. Beats me why even scholars have accepted this label as valid symbol instead as an invention and total fake?
In fact, the label does not signify a specialty nor a novelty, but the sameness; i.e., the same criminal behavior by same criminal minds that have been waging wars, killing-oppressing serfs for millennia.

I think that we wld be better off to call- and for the sake of future generations- theft of palestinian land s’mthing like european invasion of palestine or s’mthing even shorter: or Theft of Palestine! tnx