Israels special friend in N. America

[Crux]

oQ2MY58RunM

[TwoSevensClash]

Blame Canada!!! I was surprised about the Canadian military sales to Israel.

[freepalestine]

PFLP condemns Canadian boycott of anti-racism conference (Durban 3)

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine condemned the Canadian government's decision to boycott the World Conference Against Racism on November 26, 2010, saying that this action shows utter disregard for not only Palestinian human rights, but for the rights of all oppressed peoples around the world. That the Canadian government claims that is boycott is based on opposing "attacks on Israel" means in reality that the Canadian government is lining up alongside the Israeli state in order to defend its utter impunity despite its flagrant violation of international law that guarantees Palestinian rights.

That this action comes simultaneously with the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People shows that the Canadian government is choosing to utterly disregard Palestinian human rights and ally itself with Israeli impunity. Furthermore, the Canadian government's consistent rejection of an anti-racism process propelled and led by peoples of Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Arab world reveals its own racist policies and practices. Canada's history of genocide against its own indigenous people and its continuing denial of indigenous rights makes it a logical ally with Israel and the U.S. in rejecting an international process that demands accountability for racism, colonialism, genocide, slavery and war crimes.

The PFLP calls upon all international organizations and Canadian progressive and pro-Palestinian organizations to condemn the Canadian government racism and alliance with Israeli impunity and demand an end to Canadian alliances with Israeli/U.S. imperialism and impunity.

http://pflp.ps/english/?q=pflp-condemns-canadian-boycott-anti-racism-confere






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Progressive Canadians must challenge JNF's charitable status
Yves Engler, The Electronic Intifada, 1 November 2010

Last month, Greg Selinger, the New Democratic Party (NDP) Premier of the Province of Manitoba, and two of his ministers visited Israel. Among other things, the official delegation strengthened the longtime "progressive" government's ties to the Jewish National Fund (JNF). The trip was a sad spectacle that should embarrass every Canadian who opposes racism. Indeed, J.S. Woodsworth, the Winnipeg-based founder of Canada's social democratic party, must be turning in his grave.

The province and JNF signed an accord to jointly develop two bird conservation sites while Manitoba water stewardship Minister Christine Melnick spoke at the opening ceremony for a park built in Jaffa by the JNF, Tel Aviv Foundation and Manitoba-Israel Shared Values Roundtable. During the trip Mel Lazerek, a regional JNF president, was also appointed Manitoba's special representative to Israel for Economic and Community Relations.

Manitoba's ties to this openly racist institution are shocking, but also part of a decades-old pro-Israel policy of the NDP that must be challenged by real progressives.

Shutting out Palestinian citizens of Israel, JNF lands can only be leased by Jews. A 1998 United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights found that the JNF systematically discriminated against Palestinians in Israel. According to the UN report, JNF lands are "chartered to benefit Jews exclusively," which has led to an "institutionalized form of discrimination." In 2005, Israel's high court came to similar conclusions. It found that the JNF, which owns 13 percent of the country's land and has significant influence over most of the rest, systematically excluded Palestinian citizens from leasing its property.

JNF Canada officials are relatively open about the racist character of the organization. In May 2002, Mark Mendelson, JNF Canada's executive-director for Eastern Canada, explained that "We are trustees between world Jewry and the land of Israel." This sentiment was echoed by JNF Canada's head Frank A. Wilson in July 2009. Wilson stated that the "JNF are the caretakers of the Land of Israel on behalf of its owners, who are the Jewish people everywhere around the world."

Established in 1910, JNF Canada is one of the most important Israel-focused charities registered in Canada. It raises about $10 million annually in tax-deductible donations. Despite projecting itself as "an environmentally friendly organization concerned with ecology and sustainable development," it is a linchpin of Zionist colonialism.

The Canadian branch of the JNF has been directly complicit in Palestinian dispossession. At the end of the 1920s, a JNF representative came to Canada to raise $1 million for the lands of Wadi al-Hawarith (or Hefer Plain). A 30,000 dunam (roughly 7,500 acres) stretch of coastal territory located about half way between Haifa and Tel Aviv, the land was home to a Bedouin community of 1,000 to 1,200 persons. Without consulting the Palestinians living on the land, in 1928 the JNF acquired legal title to Wadi al-Hawarith from an absentee landlord in France.

For four years the tenants of Wadi al-Hawarith resisted British attempts to evict them. In All That Remains historian Walid Khalidi explains that "The insistence of the people of Wadi al-Hawarith to remain on their land came from their conviction that the land belonged to them by virtue of their having lived on it for 350 years. For them, ownership of the land was an abstraction that at most signified the landlords' right to a share of the crop."

The conflict at Wadi al-Hawarith became a lightning rod for the growing Palestinian nationalist movement. In 1933 a general strike was organized in Nablus to support the tenants of Wadi al-Hawarith. Palestinians, especially those without title to their lands, resented the European influx into their homeland.

After the June 1967 War, JNF Canada raised $15 million to build Canada Park on illegally occupied land. Three peaceful villages (Beit Nuba, Imwas and Yalu) were demolished to make way for the park.

Despite repeated attempts, the 5,000 expelled Palestinians were not allowed to return home. A 1986 UN Special Committee reported to the Secretary-General that it considers it "a matter of deep concern that these villagers have persistently been denied the right to return to their land on which Canada Park has been built by the JNF Canada and where the Israeli authorities are reportedly planning to plant a forest instead of allowing the reconstruction of the destroyed villages" (UN Report A/41/680, 20 October 1986 (http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/D2D88498A4BF12D2052566DB004E5998)).

The JNF Canada, which launched a $7 million campaign to refurbish the park in 2007, replaced most traces of Palestinian history with signs devoted to Canadian donors such as the Metropolitan Toronto Police Department, the City of Ottawa and former Ontario premier Bill Davis. Inaugurated by former Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker in 1975, the Diefenbaker Parkway bisects the park.

In the early 1980s JNF Canada helped finance an Israeli government campaign to "Judaize" the Galilee, the largely Arab northern region of Israel. "The government is building Jewish settlements on our land, surrounding us and turning our villages into ghettos," Khateeb Raja, mayor of Deir Hanna, a Palestinian-Israeli town in the Galilee, told The Globe and Mail in 1981. Ishi Mimon told the paper that he planned to move his family to the newly settled "Galil Canada" area because "the Galilee should have a Jewish majority" (John Goddard, "14 settlements financed Canada's stake in the Galilee," The Globe and Mail, 27 June 1981).

JNF Canada's representative in Israel, Akiva Einis, described the political objective of Galil Canada stating that "The government decided to stop the wholesale plunder (by Israeli Arabs) of state lands [conquered in the 1947/48 war]. ... The settlements are all on mountain tops and look out over large areas of land. If an Arab squatter takes a plow onto land that is not his, the settlers lodge a complaint with the police."

JNF Canada spent tens of millions of dollars ($35 million was the total fundraising target) on 14 Jewish settlements in Galil Canada. In the contested valley of Lotem a stone wall and monument was erected, reported the Globe, with "hundreds of small plaques etched with names and home towns of Canadians who have contributed money to the Galilee settlements." Most of the donors to Galil Canada were Jewish, "but a Pentecostal congregation in Vancouver, the Glad Tidings Temple, has given $1-million."

Tawfiz Daggash, Deir Hanna's deputy mayor, denounced Canadian financial support for the settlements. "I want to say to the people of Canada that every dollar they contribute [to JNF] is helping the Israeli government in its attempt to destroy the Arab people here."

The JNF has long been supported by key figures in the Canadian political elite. Former Prime Ministers John Diefenbaker, Lester Pearson and Brian Mulroney have all spoken at JNF events and leading politicians continue to endorse the organization. In addition to this political support, the JNF is a registered charity, which means that up to a third of its budget effectively comes from public coffers. Yet Canada is supposed to outlaw institutional racism.

In 2007, Lebanese-Canadian Ronald Saba filed a detailed complaint concerning the JNF's charitable status with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. The claim was leveled at the "Government of Canada for violating the Canadian Human Rights Act and Canada Revenue Agency Policy Statement CPS-021 by subsidizing racial discrimination through granting and maintaining charitable status for the Jewish National Fund."

Considering the group's political connections, it's not surprising that Canadian officials refused to address Saba's complaint or follow-up ones (all the documents can be found at Montreal Planet Magazine (http://www.mtlplanet.ca/)). With the government's failure to address Saba's legitimate complaint, it is now time to launch a political campaign to push the Canada Revenue Agency to revoke the JNF's charitable status.

Victory won't be easy but the educational work involved in such an endeavor will be invaluable. With quasi-state status in Israel, the JNF is at the heart of Israeli apartheid and drawing attention to this institution is a way to discuss the racism intrinsic to Zionism.

Real progressives in Canada have never shied away from difficult, but important tasks such as fighting racism wherever it raises its ugly head.

A section of this article relied on research first published in the article "60 Years Later: Canada and the Origins of the Israel-Palestine Conflict" by Dan Freeman-Maloy published on ZNet on 4 May 2008. This should have been acknowledged when this article was originally published but due to an editing error, this reference was inadvertently omitted.

Yves Engler is the author of Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid and The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy. For more information visit yvesengler.com (http://yvesengler.com/).
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11601.shtml

[Ocean Seal]

This is something I should expect but didn't. I'm just so used to America sponsoring Israeli terror, that its actually surprising and equally disconcerting to see our neighbor to the North doing the same. A lot of scary and reactionary things are happening in Canada. I'm not from Canada, but I'm wondering if there is anyone who can correct me regarding this.

[The Intransigent Faction]

I'm not surprised. The Harperites here in Canada have always been quick to jump to a shameless defense of Israel. For instance, mere days after Israel's 2006 attack on Lebanon killed several Canadians, Harper referred to the attack as a "measured response" against Hezbollah. They also tend to label any critics of Israel as "anti-Semitic" and to attempt to silence such critics. These guys use the same old "War on Terror" rhetoric and all.

[blake 3:17]

We're the most pro-Zionist country in the world right now.

It's why we lost our seat at the UN Security Council. It is pretty scarey in terms of domestic politics -- the two biggest parties that have taken any decent positions on Israel are the Quebec nationalist Bloc Quebecois, which do hold about a 1/5 of the seats in Parliament but are limited by their nature, and Communist Party of Canada which doesn't hold a single seat or have any hopes of getting any.

Individuals in the NDP who promote basic rights for Palestinians have gotten screwed by the party.

Best contact at moment is Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East: http://www.cjpme.org/

[blake 3:17]

The below isn't special reference to our relationship to the Middle East but just a quickety quicky lay of the land politically and economically. I don't have time to get into ideological factors like changes at the CBC, the National Post or cuts in education.



This is something I should expect but didn't. I'm just so used to America sponsoring Israeli terror, that its actually surprising and equally disconcerting to see our neighbor to the North doing the same. A lot of scary and reactionary things are happening in Canada. I'm not from Canada, but I'm wondering if there is anyone who can correct me regarding this.


Canadian politics, traditionally a few steps to the left of American politics, have shifted to the right over the past number of years. There's a bunch of strange factors -- the collapse of the Liberal Party, the formation of the Conservative Party (used to be Progressive Conservative), a basic failure in our social democratic party, the NDP.

The NDP has tried repeatedly to go New Labour or Democratic style, which made no sense at all with the Liberals already being as big as they are.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we are the biggest country in the world (geographically speaking). There are huge tensions between regions, provinces, territories and areas within provinces. Equalization issues are big. Here's the wikipedia on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equalization_payments#Canada

http://www.thestar.com/business/article/900998--ontario-a-bright-spot-in-weak-jobs-picture?bn=1

http://www.canadiandriver.com/2010/12/06/focus-on-full-time-jobs-caw-urges.htm