BDS News

For the third year in a row, Labour for Palestine, a network of rank and file union activists promoting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israeli Apartheid, marched in the annual Toronto Labour Day parade. The float was part of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (Ontario) contingent whose 2006 historic BDS resolution was followed this year by a similar Canadian Union of Postal Workers resolution (the first national union in North America to adopt such a resolution).

Jerusalem Post Sep 1, 2008 By DAVID BRINN - Not everyone is ready to let it be over Paul McCartney's upcoming show in Tel Aviv. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has called on the former Beatle to cancel the show, saying that "Palestinian dispossession and Israeli apartheid are no cause for celebration."

DAVID EBNER, September 2, 2008, THE GLOBE AND MAIL, VANCOUVER -- Early next year, 10,000 metres above Afghanistan, unmanned aerial vehicles carrying surveillance equipment designed by MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. will become part of Canada's effort to defeat the Taliban in one of its strongholds, Kandahar province.

Sep. 1, 2008, Ehud Zion Waldoks , THE JERUSALEM POST - The North American land of many lakes and seemingly unending cascades of waterfalls has decided to help drought-stricken Israel try and conserve water. A delegation of Israeli water experts led by Jewish National Fund head Efi Stenzler and Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon brought back a cooperation agreement with the Canadian province of Manitoba late last week. Manitoba, with over 100,000 lakes, stands among the best at water conservation in the world.

TORONTO — Olive oil from some of the oldest groves in the world is garnering interest in Canada. For more than 2,000 years, Palestinian farmers have grown olives, producing an aromatic organic oil with a flavour evocative of fresh fruit. Five years ago, through the efforts of Toronto businessman Robert Massoud, the non-profit organization Zatoun was founded to import fair-trade olive oil from Palestine.

Zatoun, which means olive, is an organization in which all proceeds are used directly to benefit Palestinian farmers and their families living in the occupied territories.

In an interview with The Electronic Intifada, Jeff Halper, the Israeli-American director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, discussed the ongoing Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip and the Free Gaza Movement (FGM). Halper was one of 46 members to take part in FGM's action to challenge Israel 14-month siege on Gaza. Halper discussed all of this with EI correspondent Rami Almeghari in the occupied Gaza Strip, just hours before he reentered Israel through the Erez crossing, where he was detained and placed in custody by the Israeli army.

July - August 2008: Over the past few months the R2E Campaign at all three universities has been offering students a number of workshops under the heading of 'Know your Rights'. The aim of these workshops is to raise students' awareness of human rights, especially those related to them as students, and to encourage information sharing about human rights violations. More information provided below. In July 2008, the Campaign also submitted a report to the United Nations Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review of the State of Israel.

The Gush Shalom Movement congratulates the Barkan Wineries for moving away from the industrial zone of Barkan settlement in the northern West Bank, to Kibbutz Hulda within the internationally-recognized territory of Israel. This is an important act, removing one of the major economic mainstays of the settlements. We hope and expect that additional companies will follow the Barkan Wineries out of the Occupied Territories".

By Omar Ahmad - Students in two of London�s largest university colleges have targeted relations between the universities and the global coffee chain, Starbucks. Members of the London School of Economics (LSE) Palestinian Society picketed a Starbucks in Holborn and students at the Queen Mary University of London passed a motion condemning the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the existence of a Starbucks on campus, and forged links between the union and pro-Palestinian academic institutions.

By By LeRoy Moore, For the Colorado Daily, Friday, August 29, 2008 - Israeli authorities recently announced that they will soon move a portion of the "separation barrier" that snakes through the West Bank dividing land available to Israelis from land to which Palestinians are confined. One of the affected communities is Jayyous, a Palestinian agricultural town located in the West Bank about 25 miles northeast of Tel Aviv. Will relocation of the barrier be good news or bad news for the 4,000 residents of Jayyous whose families have farmed the area for hundreds of years?