On July 8, 2013, an open letter, signed by seventy of Canada’s top writers urged the Zionist regime to halt the eviction of 1,000 Palestinian Muslims and Christians in the Southern Hebron Hills (West Bank). They also urged the Zionist regime to reject the Prawer-Begin Plan, meant to relocate 20,000-70,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel with 35 of their communities in the Negev being destroyed.
The signatories include many of Canada’s poets, novelists and journalist – Michael Ondaatje, Yann Martel, Alberto Manguel, Lorna Crozier, Rawi Hage, Edeet Ravel, Patrick Lane, Maggie Helwig, Kyo Maclear, Stan Persky, Shani Mootoo, Lisa Moore and Shyam Selvadurai—as well as best-selling non-fiction author and health activist Dr. Gabor Maté.
Last month, British daily Guardian had reported that some of the most celebrated figures in Israeli literature were campaigning to stop the forcible eviction of Palestinian communities in the barren hills of the southern West Bank to clear land for an Israeli military firing zone.
Thomas Woodley, president Canadian for Justice and Peace in Middle East (CJPME) who organized the letter, said: “It is inspiring to see Canadian writers demonstrating ethical leadership, especially at a moment when Canada’s political leaders seem to have lost their moral compass“.
The Jewish lobby group Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), has criticized CJPME for the delegitimation of Israel.
On Monday, thousands of people protested against the Prawer-Begin Plan in Israel and PA territories. The protests were held in Gaza City, Ramallah, Hebron and Nablus. In the late afternoon, demonstrations were held in Umm al-Fahm, Sakhnin, Jaffa and Jerusalem.
Ben White, British Jewish journalist, author and peace-activist has called the mass relocation of Israeli Bedouin as Second Nakba.
”The ethnic cleansing of 1948 is the heart and soul of the Palestinian people’s struggle. This is how a landscape was obliterated and communities destroyed; homes, schools and mosques disappearing under rolling explosions, citrus groves and fields of crops separated from their owners. Palestinian lives are shaped by the Nakba, from refugee camps and fragmented families to destroyed livelihoods and murdered loved ones. The Nakba is how a Jewish majority was established in the first place, and thus it is no wonder that many people wish to consign it to ‘the past’. For just as its impact is felt deeply in Palestinian society so also the Nakba is a defining event for Zionism and the State of Israel. Nakba denial is commonplace, a history covered up by distortions and counterfactuals in the same way Jewish National Fund forests were planted over the rubble of Palestinian villages,” says Ben White. Ben White being Jewish himself, has been called “antisemitic” by Israeli propagandists for saying that Iranian president Dr. Ahmadinejad and French scholar Roger Garaudy did not deny the mass sufferings (Holocaust) of Jewish people. They criticized the Zionists’ miuse of the term Holocaust.
Personally, I don’t believe such letters will have any effect over the Zionazi leaders of Israel, who are driven by Zionist movement dream of Eretz Israel over historic Palestine, and parts of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.
Those ?antisemite? Canadians! | Rehmat's World
The signatories include many of Canada’s poets, novelists and journalist – Michael Ondaatje, Yann Martel, Alberto Manguel, Lorna Crozier, Rawi Hage, Edeet Ravel, Patrick Lane, Maggie Helwig, Kyo Maclear, Stan Persky, Shani Mootoo, Lisa Moore and Shyam Selvadurai—as well as best-selling non-fiction author and health activist Dr. Gabor Maté.
Last month, British daily Guardian had reported that some of the most celebrated figures in Israeli literature were campaigning to stop the forcible eviction of Palestinian communities in the barren hills of the southern West Bank to clear land for an Israeli military firing zone.
Thomas Woodley, president Canadian for Justice and Peace in Middle East (CJPME) who organized the letter, said: “It is inspiring to see Canadian writers demonstrating ethical leadership, especially at a moment when Canada’s political leaders seem to have lost their moral compass“.
The Jewish lobby group Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), has criticized CJPME for the delegitimation of Israel.
On Monday, thousands of people protested against the Prawer-Begin Plan in Israel and PA territories. The protests were held in Gaza City, Ramallah, Hebron and Nablus. In the late afternoon, demonstrations were held in Umm al-Fahm, Sakhnin, Jaffa and Jerusalem.
Ben White, British Jewish journalist, author and peace-activist has called the mass relocation of Israeli Bedouin as Second Nakba.
”The ethnic cleansing of 1948 is the heart and soul of the Palestinian people’s struggle. This is how a landscape was obliterated and communities destroyed; homes, schools and mosques disappearing under rolling explosions, citrus groves and fields of crops separated from their owners. Palestinian lives are shaped by the Nakba, from refugee camps and fragmented families to destroyed livelihoods and murdered loved ones. The Nakba is how a Jewish majority was established in the first place, and thus it is no wonder that many people wish to consign it to ‘the past’. For just as its impact is felt deeply in Palestinian society so also the Nakba is a defining event for Zionism and the State of Israel. Nakba denial is commonplace, a history covered up by distortions and counterfactuals in the same way Jewish National Fund forests were planted over the rubble of Palestinian villages,” says Ben White. Ben White being Jewish himself, has been called “antisemitic” by Israeli propagandists for saying that Iranian president Dr. Ahmadinejad and French scholar Roger Garaudy did not deny the mass sufferings (Holocaust) of Jewish people. They criticized the Zionists’ miuse of the term Holocaust.
Personally, I don’t believe such letters will have any effect over the Zionazi leaders of Israel, who are driven by Zionist movement dream of Eretz Israel over historic Palestine, and parts of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.
Those ?antisemite? Canadians! | Rehmat's World
