Halifax Israeli Apartheid Week 2011
[IAW 2012 materials coming soon. For 2011, see below.]
March 2011
Israeli Apartheid Week organizers across the globe are gearing up for the 7th year of actions in support of Palestinian Civil Society's call for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). Last year’s IAW was incredibly successful with over 55 cities worldwide joining the week to end Israel’s apartheid.
Halifax 'Israeli Apartheid' Awareness 2011
March 14 to 25 - A series of events aiming to educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns as part of a growing global BDS movement.
Lectures, films, performances and actions will highlight some of these successes along with the many injustices that continue to make BDS so crucial in the battle to end Israeli Apartheid.
Halifax Israeli Apartheid Week Website
http://halifaxpalestine.blogspot.com/
Schedule of Events
Monday, March 14:
TABLING & BOOK SALE
11am-2pm
Location TBA
Info table with pamphlets, zines and book sales.
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Tuesday, March 15:
LECTURE & BOOK LAUNCH
"Israeli Rejectionism: A Hidden Agenda in the Middle East Peace Process"
7pm-9pm
Saint Mary University's Loyola Building rm L173
Panellists:
Zalman Amit
was born in Palestine and grew up in a newly created Israel. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Concordia University in Canada and is the author of four books and over 300 articles.
Daphna Levit
taught finance and economics at the Universities of Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion. She has edited and contributed to numerous books on Middle Eastern Politics.
Zalman Amit and Daphna Levit are they authors of Israeli Rejectionism: A Hidden Agenda in the Middle East Peace Process. Through their research, they find overwhelming evidence of Israeli rejectionism as the main cause for the failure of peace. They demonstrate that the Israeli leadership has always been against a fairly negotiated peace and have deliberately stalled negotiations for the last 80 years. The motivations behind this rejectionist position have changed, as have the circumstances of the conflict, but the conclusion has remained consistent – peace has not been in the interest of the state of Israel.
Moderated by:
Jackie Barkley
of Canadians, Arabs and Jews of a Just Peace
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Wednesday, March 16:
TABLING & BOOK SALE
11am-2pm
Dalhousie Student Union Building Lobby
Info table with pamphlets, zines and book sales.
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Friday, March 18:
MEC BOYCOTT ACTION
Departure time: 12:30pm
Departure location: Outside the Killam Library
Action location: Mountain Equipment Co-op, 1550 Granville St (corner with Blower St)
We will march from the Dalhousie campus to Mountain Equipment Co-op to picket outside the store alongside Canadians, Arabs and Jews for a Just Peace.
Mountain Equipment Co-op, a Canada-wide chain, currently sources over 30 individual products from Israeli companies. These include products made by Source-Vagabond, an Israeli military contractor whose founder, Yoki Gill, and most its management are “experienced ex officers of elite IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) units”. MEC also partners with Israeli factories in the production of its ‘housebrand’ line of seamless undergarments.
The campaign to persuade MEC to end its unethical purchasing of Israeli products is part of the growing worldwide movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel due to the system of apartheid and occupation that it has perpetrated against the people of Palestine for over 60 years. This movement is a response to the call from over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations in July 2005 to implement a global campaign of BDS against Israel, similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era.
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Thursday, March 24:
GUEST LECTURE - "Canadian Foreign Policy and the Creation of Ghetto Palestine"
with Jon Elmer
Time: 7pm-9pm
Location: Dalhousie Weldon Law building room 105
Sponsored by Canadians, Arabs and Jews for a Just Peace
Jon Elmer is a Canadian journalist that has lived in and reported from the West Bank and Gaza since 2003, currently based in Bethlehem. He is a regular contributor to Al Jazeera English and IPS news agency; his work has appeared in Le Monde diplomatique, The Journal of Palestine Studies and The Progressive, among other publications. His work focuses on liberation movements as well as military and foreign policy, with a particular focus on Canada. He lectures regularly throughout Canada and the United States.
http://jonelmer.ca
IAW 2010: Canadian policy and the creation of Ghetto Palestine:
http://www.youtube.com/user/apartheidweek#p/u/1/YdDg7mu4Y5Q
Canada-Israel: One of AJE's top 10 features of 2010:
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/05/2010527184439863164.html
Canada in the Middle East, Le Monde diplomatique:
http://mondediplo.com/2010/09/05canada
Interview with Jon on BDS movement:
http://ryersonfreepress.ca/site/archives/2424
More at http://jonelmer.ca/portfolio/
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Friday, March 25:
ARTISTS FOR PALESTINE
7pm-9pm
The Company House 2202 Gottingen Street, near the corner of Cunard and Gottingen
Featuring:
A live performance of Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza by Caryl Churchill
Spoken word performances
Musical performances by Nicolas Bousserez and others
Film screenings
Art exhibit featuring the works of Dave Ron and others
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DETAILS TBA --- FILM SCREENING - "Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land"
Time TBA
Dalhousie Student Union Building, room TBA
Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This pivotal documentary exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites -- oil, and a need to have a secure military base in the region, among others -- work in combination with Israeli public relations strategies to exercise a powerful influence over how news from the region is reported.
http://www.pppl.org/