Montreal - February 17, 2009: The 5th annual International Israeli Apartheid Week (March 1st- 9th, 2009)

Montreal - February 17, 2009: The 5th annual International Israeli Apartheid Week (March 1st- 9th, 2009) takes place in the wake of Israel’s horrific attacks and continued siege on the people of Gaza. Initiated by students at the University of Toronto in 2005, IAW has since spread to 25 cities across the world, including in Palestine and South Africa, and is organized by a global network of student and community organizations as part of worldwide actions in solidarity with the Palestinian people. In Montreal, IAW has been endorsed by over 35 organizations, and the diverse network of campus-based and community groups are planning nine full days of educational events, from lectures and workshops to film screenings.

IAW Montreal’s international lineup of speakers will address issues including the apartheid paradigm, Palestinian solidarity struggles and anti-apartheid student movements. Speakers include: Palestinian journalist and writer, Laila al-Haddad; Lebanese political prisoner and author Soha Bechara; former executive member of the African National Congress Ronnie Kasrils; Omar Barghouti, founding committee member of The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, among many others.

The week-long series also includes cultural events such as a screening of Slingshot Hip Hop, a documentary about young Palestinians who use hip hop as a tool to resist apartheid, with a presentation by its director Nackie Salloum. Other events include Apartheid in Canada, a panel featuring Indigenous activists resisting the ongoing theft and destruction of their lands; No Pride in Apartheid, a film screening and discussion focused on queer struggles against Israeli occupation and apartheid; and Feminist Responses to Israeli Apartheid, a panel featuring Jewish professor and author Judy Rebick and third-generation Palestinian refugee Rafeef Ziadah.

“The aim of IAW is to educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and to build a global movement of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns in response to the call for boycott, issued on July 9, 2005 by over 170 Palestinian organizations,” said Leila Pourtavaf, a member of the Israeli Apartheid Week Montreal organizing committee. “The goal of this movement is to target the extensive political and economic support that governments, corporations and educational institutions in Canada and elsewhere provide to the Israeli apartheid regime.”

“Israel’s apartheid system works on several registers: Palestinian citizens of Israel are barred from living on over 90% of the land, and are discriminated against in most aspects of life, particularly in education, health care, public services and employment, said Meg Leitold, another IAW organizer. “Palestinians expelled in 1948 and 1967 are denied the right to return to their lands, making them one of the largest refugee populations in the world, while anyone of Jewish background -from anywhere in the world- has the automatic right to become an Israeli citizen and live in Palestine.”

“Like the Gaza Strip, the West Bank is effectively a hermetically sealed prison…I try in vain to recall anything quite as obscene in apartheid South Africa,” said Ronnie Kasrils, reflecting on the occupied West Bank where Palestinians live under separate and discriminatory military law, in isolated Bantustans surrounded by the Wall. Kasrils, a former executive member of the African National Congress, will be speaking during Israeli Apartheid Week at McGill University.

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For further information on IAW:
http://montreal.apartheidweek.org/
www.iawmontreal.org/

Media Contacts:
Meg Leitold (English): 514-660-7230
Hubert Gendron-Blais (French): 514-390-0110