Report on growing campaign in Canada against Israeli apartheid

Frank Barat (mondoweiss):

When Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) was created, in Canada, in 2005, only a few cities were involved. In 2012, in part thanks to the emergence of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, more than 120 cities, all over the world, had daily events, film screening, workshops and talks taking place during a whole week. Most talks I took part in were attended by a great number of people and the great cultural events in Ottawa and Toronto were packed.

What was, in my opinion, even more telling than the numbers above was the type of people involved. The audiences were incredibly mixed. People from all backgrounds, all walks of life, all ages, all ethnicities made the events challenging, interesting and often exhilarating. Young students came with their parents. Faculty teachers interested in the Palestine question attended with their kids. Artists, lawyers and academics were always present in numbers. The positive energy coming out of every single room I was in was simply incredible. The overwhelming feeling I left with was one of empowerment.

It is thanks to such initiatives that Palestine is still the issue. Despite the active role that our governments and the mainstream corporate media play in helping Israel pursue its oppression of the Palestinian People in total impunity, the People once again, are the ones making the agenda, making history.

Palestine has become a symbol of what is wrong with the world we are living in but also a symbol of what is possible when people unite, resist, stand together in solidarity and at the end of the day, make their governments irrelevant.

This movement, with a very simple message calling for justice, freedom and equality for all, is getting more globalised and internationalized every day and will prove unstoppable.