An interview with Ali Mallah of the Canadian Arab Federation.

Photo: Walking in south Lebanon 2006. Interview by Stefan Christoff for Tadamon!

In recent weeks, major media outlets in Canada have featured numerous news reports on Hezbollah, outlining that the armed Lebanese political party is planning military operations in North America. Media reports have been based on anonymous intelligence sources in the U.S. and Canada.

Major media coverage in Canada was ignited by a T.V. report from the U.S.-based ABC news network claiming that Hezbollah was planning operations in Canada in response to the assassination of Hezbollah’s military commander, Imad Mughniyeh, in Syria this past winter.

(…اكثر)

Report: Palestinian Center for Human Rights. June 19th 2008

Photo: © Stefania Zamparelli. Palestinian child in the Gaza Strip.

On 11 June, eight-year-old Hadeel Al-Sumairi was killed when her home in southeastern Gaza was shelled by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). Less than a week earlier, eight-year-old Aya Hamdan al-Najjar was killed by a rocket fired from an IOF helicopter. These two young girls had been living just a few kilometers apart, both in villages in the southeastern Gaza Strip near the border with Israel. Their violent deaths highlight both the continual dangers facing families who live anywhere near the Israeli border — and the grim and rising child death toll in the Gaza Strip. Sixty-two children have been killed by IOF in the Gaza Strip this year — almost double the number of children who were killed by the IOF in Gaza during the whole of last year.

(…اكثر)

Statement: Trade Union Friends of Palestine (ICTU). June 5th 2008

Photo: Scott Weinstein. Apartheid wall in Palestine.

At its Biennial Delegate Conference in May 2008 the public sector union IMPACT passed two motions criticizing Israeli suppression of the Palestinian people and calling for a boycott of Israeli goods and services. The motions also called for divestment from those companies engaged in or profiting from the occupation as well as an education campaign to raise awareness of the plight of the Palestinian people. Conference furthermore called on the Irish Government to take a stand on Palestine independent of EU foreign policy, demanded the restoration of EU funding, and also called for the suspension of the preferential trading status enjoyed under the Euro-Med Agreement.

(…اكثر)

Call to support the first major student union in Quebec or Canada to back
the international campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel…

Montreal May 2008: Across the world grassroots movements struggling in opposition to Israeli apartheid are marking the 60th year of the Palestinian Nakba (”catastrophe”) – 60 years of dispossession, ethnic cleansing and exile for Palestinians resulting from the creation of the state of Israel.

A grassroots response in opposition to Israeli apartheid is growing throughout the world sparked by an appeal launched by Palestinian civil-society organizations in 2005 for an international campaign directed at the government in Israel, a campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions. This critical campaign is modeled on a successful international campaign similar in nature that played a critical role in bringing an end to the apartheid regime in South Africa.

(…اكثر)

Al-Ahram. May 2008.

Photo: Cairo open sky.

In May 1968, student protests in Paris challenged the foundations of the social order in the heart of the industrially advanced West. Al-Ahram Weekly investigates what remains of the wave of student activism that swept the world 40 years ago and recalls events at the time in Egypt…

On 20 February 1968, and while Cairo University students were preparing for a general meeting the following day to discuss the political situation following the June 1967 defeat of the Egyptian army at the hands of the Israelis, news of the lenient court sentences handed down to Air Force commanders for their role in the defeat triggered a wave of angry protests that reverberated across the country.

(…اكثر)

Adam Hanieh. Socialist Project: the Bullet.

Photo: Active Stills. Demonstration against Apartheid wall, Bil’in, Palestine.

In July 2005, over 170 Palestinian organizations urged the world to adopt a campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel in the manner of South Africa Apartheid. This call was signed by all the main Palestinian trade union federations, as well as refugee, women and student organizations from across Palestine and the Arab world. It represented the broadest political statement in Palestinian history, precipitating a powerful global solidarity campaign that has grown dramatically over the last few years.

(…اكثر)

Broadcasts from Beirut IV: An interview with journalist Anthony Shadid.

Photo: Carole Kerbage. Lebanese military tank on Beirut street May 2008.

A Tadamon! interview project aiming to highlight progressive voices from the ground in Lebanon on the ongoing conflict, voices independent from major political parties…

As negotiations in Doha, Qatar continue between national political leaders in an effort to reach a settlement to the contemporary internal conflict in Lebanon, Tadamon!’s Ola Hajar spoke with veteran journalist Anthony Shadid. This interview focuses on the impacts of U.S.-driven policies in the Middle East within the context of the ‘war on terror’ and their specific impacts on Lebanon, also this interview focuses the U.S. position towards Hezbollah’s role in Lebanese politics.

(…اكثر)

Broadcasts from Beirut II: An interview with Bilal Elamine.

Photo: Al-Akbar, youth protests in Beirut.

A Tadamon! interview project aiming to highlight progressive voices from the ground in Lebanon on the ongoing conflict, voices independent from major political parties…

Conflict in Lebanon has spread this past week beyond Beirut, to mountain areas above the capital city, to Tripoli in Northern Lebanon. Throughout Lebanon a tense political stand-off remains between the U.S.-backed government lead-by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and a political opposition fronted by the armed Lebanese political party Hezbollah.

(…اكثر)

Broadcasts from Beirut I: Interview with activist and publisher Samah Idriss.

Photo: Lebanese gunman in Beirut.

Lebanon is currently facing a major political crisis, as armed battles have erupted in multiple districts in Beirut, battles between pro-government forces and the political opposition backed by the Lebanese movement Hezbollah. Currently the Lebanese capital is divided, as opposition forces maintain a hold in West Beirut, having handed control in certain districts to the Lebanese Army, while the western-backed Lebanese government remains in lock down within government buildings.

Today Lebanon’s government has maintained a contested hold on official state power in Lebanon without representation from Hezbollah or other opposition parties for over one year. This week the government announced that Hezbollah’s independent communications network or telephone system operating in Lebanon as illegal, sparking the current crisis. Hezbollah’s independent telephone or communications system is considered to be a critical element to the success of the Lebanese resistance to Israel in successfully halting Israel’s 2006 attack on Lebanon.

(…اكثر)

Bold claims about Middle East peace from
London ring hollow in the empty streets of Gaza.

Sami Abdel-Shafi, Gaza City, the Guardian. Saturday May 3 2008

It is a strange feeling: after working as a productive professional in Gaza for five years, I have become a black market junkie. I make several phone calls a day hunting for fuel for my car, diesel for the electricity generator waiting on standby to power the house, even cigarettes and vitamins. The only way to get hold of these things, to buy life-saving medicines, to purchase the essentials for a life of basic dignity, is through the black market, if at all. Today all Gaza suffers severe water shortages, with the fuel needed to pump and transport water (as well as sewage) dangerously scarce. The few cars seen on Gaza’s mostly empty streets today almost invariably run on used cooking oil due to the lack of diesel.

(…اكثر)