[tadamon-l] [Montreal] Activists disrupt Israeli Ambassador to Canada

[Tadamon!]

* Confronting Israeli Apartheid in Montreal
Activists disrupt Israeli Ambassador to Canada

http://tadamon.resist.ca/index.php/post/1316

Montreal, Wednesday, April 9th, 2008: Israel's Ambassador to Canada, Alan 
Baker, was humiliated by demonstrators at the posh Queen Elizabeth Hotel 
in downtown Montreal.

Protestors successfully disrupted a lunch-in sponsored by the 
Quebec-Israel Committee, marking "60 years of relationship" between Canada 
and Israel. After effectively evading hotel security and the Montreal 
police, social justice activists burst into the appointed conference room, 
abruptly bringing to a halt the pro-apartheid discourse of Israel's 
ambassador to Canada.

Visibly stunned by the protests, Israel's Ambassador stood silent as 
protests chanted "fight the power, turn the tide; End Israeli Apartheid!" 
Throughout the disruption, over twelve thousand pieces of brightly colored 
protest-confetti were showered across the conference room and throughout 
the hallways of the Queen Elizabeth hotel, carrying a simple message: "60 
years of Israeli Apartheid, 60 years of Palestinian dispossession; Boycott 
Israel!"

Thursday's action marked the 60th anniversary of the massacre at Deir 
Yassin. In 1948, the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin came under 
military siege; over two hundred Palestinian men, women and children were 
butchered by pro-Israeli forces. This crime took place just one month 
prior to Israel's unilateral declaration of independence at the expense of 
the Palestinian people.

In cynical disregard for Palestinian history, Israel's Ambassador to 
Canada, Alan Baker, planned to celebrate Israel on the very anniversary of 
a horrific massacre.

This is the same Alan Baker who, at the height of Israel's attack on 
Lebanon in 2006, described "civilian establishments and civilian areas" in 
Lebanon as "legitimate targets." The military campaign eventually took the 
lives of over one thousand Lebanese civilians, and massively destroyed the 
country's infrastructure.

Social justice activists in Montreal from Block the Empire and Tadamon! 
successfully disrupted Baker's speech in support of a growing 
international campaign to impose boycott, divestment and sanctions on 
Israel.

Israel is maintaining a military occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza 
Strip and Syria's Golan Heights. Within Israel's unilaterally declared 
borders of 1948, the 1.5 million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship 
live as second-class citizens, under an apartheid-like system that accords 
them lesser economic, social and political rights.

Israel is in the process of constructing a massive separation wall, an 
eight meter high concrete barrier stretching over seven hundred kilometers 
of Palestinian territory, annexing significant parts of the West Bank and 
encircling Palestinian villages, towns and cities. Apartheid is an 
Israeli-enforced reality for the Palestinian people, a reality that has 
inspired a global movement for Palestinian liberation, with Nelson Mandela 
declaring; "our freedom [in South Africa] is incomplete without the 
freedom of the Palestinians."

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