Canada’s government has failed to respond to the ongoing crisis in the Gaza Strip.
Today, Montreal families recently visiting relatives in Gaza remain trapped under the Israeli bombardment, having received no assistance from Canadian consulate authorities in the Middle East or in Ottawa.
Gaza’s humanitarian situation is at its worst since Israel occupied the territory in 1967, say UK-based human rights and development groups.
Montreal, March 7, 2008: A wide spectrum of community associations, NGO’s and labor unions have united to launch a joint appeal to people across Canada and to government of Canada to call for peace in Palestine.
Le cinéaste Malcolm Guy, à travers une lettre ouverte aux Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois, se retire du jury du prix annuel 2008 de la Fondation Alex et Ruth Dworkin. Cette récompense, à laquelle est jointe une bourse de 5000 $, a pour but de favoriser la tolérance dans le domaine du cinéma.
Condemnation of a virtual blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip by Israel since last June reverberated loudly yesterday along Montreal’s prime downtown shopping strip.
A vocal 90-minute march by more than 230 demonstrators – punctuated with such chants as: “Israel is criminal, Canada is complicit” – broke the weekend-afternoon tranquility of Ste. Catherine St. W.
Craig Appleby did not take part in the Second Lebanon War. The 36-year-old Briton from Farnham came to Lebanon in September 2007, more than a year after the end of the fighting. A month later he had joined the list of war dead.
An Israeli cluster bomblet, one of hundreds of thousands of bomblets contained in cluster rockets that the Israel Defense Forces fired at Lebanon during the war, blew up in his hands not far from Bint Jbail. Appleby, a British Army veteran who was head of one of the UN cluster munition clearing teams in South Lebanon, was killed instantly. A week earlier, a six-year-old Lebanese boy and a shepherd were also killed by bomblets.
WASHINGTON (AFP): The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.
“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,” long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.
Lebanon ended the year much as it had begun, in political limbo. In November 2006, six ministers’ resignations paralysed the government and crystallised the two-year-old split between government loyalists and the opposition. A year later, president Emile Lahoud’s term ended without a successor, leaving a dangerous vacuum at the top. As the year drew to a close, it looked as though Lebanon would drift rudderless until either fractious politicians resolved their power struggle, or frustrations spread to the streets.
JERUSALEM: The Israeli army on Monday said it will not press charges against officers who ordered the use of cluster bombs during last year’s war in Lebanon, brushing off international criticism that the weapons unnecessarily put Lebanese civilians at risk.
Announcing the results of a more than year-long probe, the army said investigators determined Israel’s use of cluster bombs was a “concrete military necessity” and did not violate international humanitarian law. Lebanese officials accused the army of covering up war crimes.
Israel’s housing ministry said yesterday it plans to build 307 new homes in a settlement in East Jerusalem, drawing swift condemnation from Palestinian officials.
Tenders were published for housing units in Har Homa, a settlement to the south-east of the city on land captured by Israel in the 1967 war and later annexed. East Jerusalem is now home to around 200,000 Jewish settlers. Most of the international community does not recognise Israel’s annexation of the east of the city.
