[Org4j-announce] Ottawa for Gaza, Aug 5th to 9th +

Mon Aug 4 18:29:59 PDT 2025

Four notices:

*Daily this week (Tuesday-Friday) 12 noon - 2:00pm *
*Protest outside Israeli embassy* -- at 50 O'Connor
* see text below, attached poster, and link:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DM3e7cYvJtv/

*Wednesday Aug 6, 11:00am - 1:00pm (weekly)*
*Gaza family reunification vigil *-- at Immigration HQ. 300 Slater (at Kent)

*Saturday Aug 9, 1:00pm - 9:00pm*
*Ottawa Run for Palestine annual charity picnic/BBQ*
*& Saturday Sept 13, 9:00am - 1:00pm*
*Ottawa Run for Palestine annual charity walk/run*
* see attached poster, and links:
https://ottawarunforpalestine.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ottawarunforpalestine/events
https://www.instagram.com/p/DLyHKN9Ra44/

*Also,** Video recap for two full weeks outside Egyptian Embassy:*
https://www.instagram.com/p/DM6ixz1xtss/
https://www.facebook.com/reel/764129759453560
"For two weeks, we stood united in front of the Egyptian embassy, demanding
they open the border and allow aid into Gaza.
10 days. Different faces. Different races. Different faiths. One cause.
We succeeded in delivering our message.
Together, we proved one thing: The people united, will never be defeated.
This is what solidarity looks like. This is how change begins.
#FreePalestine #EndTheSiege #Gaza #UnitedForGaza #HumanityFirst
#PeoplePower "

== == == ==

*TUESDAY - FRIDAY,   AUGUST 5TH - 8TH*

🚨Ottawa🚨 We're calling on all of you to join us for a week of mass
rallies in front of the Israeli embassy daily from Tuesday August 5 to
Friday August 8 from 12 to 2pm. For 665 days the zionist regime has waged
genocide against Palestinians, killing over 60,249 men, women and children.

Since March, the occupation has reached new levels of cruelty by blocking
all aid and disrupting usual distribution channels through humanitarian aid
agencies, plunging Palestinians in Gaza into a forced man-made starvation.

We cannot sit aside while one of the gravest injustices in modern times is
perpetrated - we cannot allow Gaza to starve! For the next week we are
calling on everyone to come to the Israeli embassy at lunch time. Bring
your pots and pans to make noise but also as a symbol of the starvation
Palestinians are enduring.

International pressure on Israel is at an all-time high. Let this be the
moment we turn the tide and break the siege!

https://www.instagram.com/p/DM3e7cYvJtv/

== == == ==

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Organizing For Justice <org4justice at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 30, 2025 at 4:38 AM
Subject: Ottawa for Gaza this week + New report + More on Holocaust
Monument.
To: <org4j-announce at lists.resist.ca>

In this email:

1) Report on Canadian exports of weapons to Israel despite government
denials.
2) Actions in Ottawa Wednesday through Friday, including online webinar
Thurs evng.
3) Further on the National Holocaust Monument vandalism (clarification on
last email).

=== === === === ===

*NEW REPORT RELEASED*

"We've just uncovered hundreds of shipments of weapons from Canada to
Israel."
https://armsembargonow.ca/report/
- Report itself, Action Briefing Thursday evening, and Send Message to
Politicians

Groundbreaking Report Details Canada’s Role in Arming Israel’s Genocide of
the Palestinian People
https://worldbeyondwar.org/report-details-canadas-role-in-arming-israels-genocide/
- More detailed summary of report, and links to first link

Report suggests arms still flow from Canada to Israel despite denials
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/arms-ammunition-shipments-israel-canada-1.7596091
- CBC article reporting on the newly-released report and giving context

=== === === === ===

* Join us for a week of action against the starvation of the people of
Gaza. *

*Message from Palestinian Youth Movement Ottawa pymottawa at gmail.com
<pymottawa at gmail.com>*

* On* Wednesday, July 30*, we will join community members at a sit-in
outside the Egyptian embassy at 9AM, then head to the israeli embassy for a
rally at noon.

* On *Thursday, July 31*, join us for an urgent movement briefing webinar
at 7PM to better understand Canada’s role in this genocide.

* Then, on *Friday, August 1*, we will be marching in protest at 6PM from
the Human Rights Monument.

Due to the international pressure, air drops have started falling in
certain parts of the Strip, but this is hardly a solution. These have
killed more people than they have helped in the past year, and barely
contain enough aid to save the thousands of people on the brink of
starvation. And still the bombs are dropping, the occupation army is
targeting them, and Gaza is still under rubble.

The time to act is now. Gaza needs us to be out in the streets, to confront
those complicit, and to stand in solidarity with our people, until the
genocide ends and Palestine is free!

Register for the urgent movement briefing webinar here:
https://actionnetwork.org/events/briefing

=== === === === ===

*More about the National Holocaust Monument "FEED ME" graffiti vandalism*

*Clarification from the short note in previous O4J email*

It turns out that whether or not it was a hate crime  is yet to be formally
decided.

The agreed-upon statement read to court as part of the guilty plea
apparently didn't identify it as a hate crime.

The CBC article linked in the last email *(included below)*, stated the
defendant's lawyer said "his message and his actions weren't motivated by
hate, but were motivated by a genuine concern ... with respect to the
ongoing situation in Gaza."
The CBC article also stated, "Lawrence Greenspon, a prominent defence
lawyer and co-chair of the National Holocaust Monument committee, said
Friday that the message may not have been hateful, but where it was placed
- and the manner in which it was done - caused the Jewish community
concern."

However, in an in-depth interview with the Canadian Jewish News published
Monday, Greenspon states that "it's just not real" to say it wasn't a hate
crime - and indicates that victim impact statements may be where the judge
will hear that it was.
Not only that, he also goes further to say politicians blaming Israel for
what is happening in Gaza is what is fueling antisemitism. Excerpt:
"... at the time, all the politicians were tripping over themselves to
condemn this act of desecration [of the National Holocaust Monument]. To be
the first one to say this is not acceptable, this is terrible, this is
awful. Yeah. And then they walked away and started making comments about
what's happening in Gaza and condemning Israel for what's happening in
Gaza. Right after they condemned this terrible act of desecration of the
National Holocaust Monument. What do you think it is that fuels
antisemitism in Canada and worldwide? It's the linking of the two, the
linking of what's happening in Gaza to the underlying hatred of Jews that
has become an epidemic."
**Source:
https://thecjn.ca/news/pain-lingers-despite-guilty-plea-by-the-man-who-defaced-canadas-holocaust-monument/
<https://thecjn.ca/news/pain-lingers-despite-guilty-plea-by-the-man-who-defaced-canadas-holocaust-monument/>*

He had stated the view more clearly in an initial interview with the CJN
after the vandalism. Excerpt:
Lawrence Greenspon... said that beyond the investigation and prosecution of
those responsible for the vandalism, the root cause of rising antisemitism
in Canada requires action, not only the right words at the right time, from
government officials.
“Our political leaders, including our prime minister, have to stop blaming
Israel for the situation in Gaza,” Greenspon said in a brief interview with
The CJN. He called Hamas the “real culprits” for the group’s activities
“stopping the food and the medical aid and the water getting to the Gazans
who need it.”
Framing the situation to blame Israel, as the joint statement [in early
June] from Prime Minister Mark Carney and leaders of France and the U.K.
did, he says, “is fueling the fires of hatred which cause these types of
crimes.”
**Source:
https://thecjn.ca/news/national-holocaust-monument-in-ottawa-vandalized-overnight-police-hate-crime-unit-investigating/
<https://thecjn.ca/news/national-holocaust-monument-in-ottawa-vandalized-overnight-police-hate-crime-unit-investigating/>*

Since he is speaking on behalf of the National Holocaust Monument
Committee, it is worth sharing this recent op-ed by Omer Bartov, an
Israeli-American "Dean's Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies" at
Brown University, USA.
In the latter part of the piece, he gets into some very relevant critical
comment on the "culture of Holocaust commemoration" in relation to what is
currently happening in Gaza. Excerpt:
Those engaged in the worldwide culture of commemoration and remembrance
built around the Holocaust will have to confront a moral reckoning. The
wider community of genocide scholars — those engaged in the study of
comparative genocide or of any one of the many other genocides that have
marred human history — is now edging ever closer toward a consensus over
describing events in Gaza as a genocide...
Most Holocaust scholars I know don’t hold, or at least publicly express,
this view. With a few notable exceptions, ... the majority of academics
engaged with the history of the Nazi genocide of the Jews have stayed
remarkably silent, while some have openly denied Israel’s crimes in Gaza,
or accused their more critical colleagues of incendiary speech, wild
exaggeration, well-poisoning and antisemitism. ...
What I fear is that in the aftermath of the Gaza genocide, ... the study
and remembrance of the Holocaust could lose its claim to be concerned with
universal justice and retreat into the same ethnic ghetto in which it began
its life at the end of World War II — as a marginalized preoccupation by
the remnants of a marginalized people, an ethnically specific event, before
it succeeded, decades later, in finding its rightful place as a lesson and
a warning for humanity as a whole.

**Read it in full (link bypasses paywall): https://archive.is/E9bPJ
<https://archive.is/E9bPJ>*Original:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/opinion/israel-gaza-holocaust-genocide-palestinians.html
<https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/opinion/israel-gaza-holocaust-genocide-palestinians.html>*

*=== === === === ===*
*PREVIOUS EMAIL:*

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Organizing For Justice <org4justice at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jul 28, 2025 at 8:21 AM
Subject: Egypt Embassy daily sit-in, + Tuesday big reveal #ArmsEmbargoNow
To: <org4j-announce at lists.resist.ca>

* TUESDAY JULY 29: Exposing Canadian government complicity
* DAILY: Sit-in protest outside Egyptian Embassy in Ottawa continues..
+ MORE INFOS

=== === === ===

*** TUESDAY ***

"The Canadian Government has been lying to us. While Gaza is being starved,
Canada is sending weapons to Israel. *On July 29th, we’re exposing their
complicity*." - Palestinian Youth Movement Canada

https://instagram.com/p/DMk0T1mx9uF/

@ottawapym @pymtoronto @pymmontreal https://worldbeyondwar.org/canada/
#ArmsEmbargoNow

=== === === === ===

** DAILY ** WEEK 2 **

*🇵🇸 SIT-IN FOR GAZA — DAY 6 🇵🇸*

We are entering week 2 of our protest at the Egyptian Embassy demanding
that Egypt open the Rafah border and allow food, water, and aid into
besieged Gaza.

Gaza is starving.
Children are dying.
And Egypt is complicit by sealing the border.

Join us for a peaceful sit-in this Monday, July 28th
🕘 9AM–12PM
📍 Egyptian Embassy, 454 Laurier Ave East K1N 6R3

Stand in solidarity. Raise your voice. Break the siege.

#FreePalestine #EndTheSiegeOnGaza #OpenRafah #EgyptOpenTheBorder
#GazaUnderSiege #LetGazaLive #PalestineWillBeFree

https://instagram.com/p/DMmEsssoOoe/  -- @sd.4.palestine

=== === === ===

*RELEVANT NEWS MEDIA*

*As Gaza starves, journalists sell their cameras for food*
*(July 26)*by Shaimaa Eid in Gaza
https://www.declassifieduk.org/in-gaza-famine-journalists-sell-their-cameras-for-food/

*Our Reporter Got Into Gaza. He Witnessed a Famine of Israel’s Making.*
* (July 21)*
https://theintercept.com/2025/07/21/israel-gaza-famine-food-aid-starvation/

*Aid Distribution in Gaza | CBC Just Asking*, 1-hour call-in *(July 26)*
**They were surprisingly good at shooting down Israeli disinfo talking
points brought up by callers.*
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-1424-just-asking/clip/16160289-aid-distribution-gaza

*Former city lawyer who defaced National Holocaust Monument pleads
guilty **(July
25)*

**Turns out writing the "FEED ME" graffiti was not a hate crime after all. *
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/former-city-lawyer-who-defaced-national-holocaust-monument-pleads-guilty-1.7593968

=== === === ===

*SOME LOCAL INSTAGRAM ACCOUNTS FOR UPDATES:*

@ottawapym @sd.4.palestine @613palestine @labour4palestineott
@ottawahcp4palestine

If you aren't on Instagram, you can still see all the posts using a site
like https://imginn.com

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