[van-announce] Vancouver Meeting on Middle East

[latinsol]

The Trade Union Committee for Justice
in the Middle East presents

Trade Unionists and the Israeli-Palestinian Crisis


Deborah Bourque

President, Canadian Union of Postal Workers,

on the recent CLC delegation to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza

************


Sid Shniad

Research Director, Telecommunications Workers Union,*

on Zionism and its critics:
Labour, the left and Anti-Semitism

****************

Thursday, February 27  7:30 p.m.

BCGEU Building
3030 East Broadway, Vancouver

******************

Co-sponsors:

Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Vancouver and District Labour Council


EVERYONE WELCOME


* Organization listed for identification purposes only


opeiu 491

The Israeli Occupation and

Palestinian human rights

Israel has occupied Palestinian territory in the West Bank and Gaza since
1967. The Israelis have created 145 settlements in these Occupied
Territories, housing 400,000 Israelis. The occupation and the settlements
contravene both international law and United Nations Resolutions 242 and
338.


The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights, an Israeli non-governmental
organization, says:

"Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based
on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area and
basing the rights of individuals on their nationality. This regime is the
only one of its kind in the world, and is reminiscent of distasteful regimes
from the past, such as the Apartheid regime in South Africa."



Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa's Minister of Water Affairs, a long-time
activist in the African National Congress and a Jewish South African, said
in the March 28 - April 3, 2002,edition of Al Ahram, an Arabic weekly, that
"the South African Apartheid regime never engaged in the sort of repression
Israel is inflicting on the Palestinians."


Hanan Ashrawi, the well-known Palestinian parliamentarian, has said:

"Sisters and brothers, I appeal to you today. You are the only source of
empowerment for a people who feel abandoned and disempowered, but who have
never lost faith in human solidarity and a shared vision of emancipation. I
appeal to you not to adopt the stance of 'cowardly neutrality' for in the
struggle against oppression, injustice, racism, intolerance, colonialism and
exclusion there can be no neutrality."


Many activists and trade unionists are taking up Ashrawi's call.  The
Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) BC Region, the Canadian Union of
Postal Workers (CUPW), the British Columbia Government Employees Union
(BCGEU), the Vancouver and District Labour Council and many other labour
organizations have passed resolutions calling for an end to the occupation.
But much is left to be done.

Union members are constantly bombarded with pro-Israeli messages in the
Vancouver Sun, the National Post, the Globe and Mail as well as on American
and Canadian television stations.

Critics of Israel are attacked as "anti-Semites."  The Canadian government
takes no action against Israel's illegal occupation, echoing the blind
support that the United States provides Israel as that country's major
sponsor.

Today, world governments preoccupied with Iraq are ignoring the growing
crisis that is being generated by Israel's occupation of the West Bank and
Gaza and its continuing breach of countless UN resolutions.

When the people of South Africa waged their struggle against the scourge of
Apartheid, trade unionists and other community activists enthusiastically
supported their struggle. We should do no less in the struggle against
Israel's brutal occupation of Palestine.


Contacts: Sid Shniad, shniad at sfu.ca 604-591-3099, or Paul Tetrault,
ptetrault at cupe.ca  604-291-1940.




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