Women militantly defend their newfound equality with greeting cards and flowers
By Carmelle Wolfson
March 13, 2010
 
Pounding the gavel of justice on the table this past March 8, the Israeli Bar Association held a women’s swimsuit and fashion show to mark International Women’s Day (IWD). In Israel, like much of the world, the annual day signifying women’s struggle for liberation from global patriarchal oppression has instead become a hallmark celebration of greeting card manufactured emotions, like Mothers’ Day and Valentine’s Day.
 

HEBRON, OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORY - Demonstrators during a protest marking the 16th anniversary of the Baruch Goldstein massacre at the Ibrahim Mosque, where 29 Palestinians were killed. 25/02/10
 
For photo gallery, click here.

HEBRON, OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORY - Demonstrators running from tear gas released by the
Israeli army in Hebron, during a protest marking the 16th anniversary of the Baruch Goldstein massacre at the Ibrahim Mosque where 29 Palestinians were killed. 25/02/10
For photo gallery, click here.

By Jesse Rosenfeld
 
I grew up in an anti-apartheid household in Toronto. My parents met while my father was touring southern Africa as part of a Canadian anti-apartheid organization, building links with postcolonial African socialist states and the South African liberation movement. On long car journeys, our family would mix Nelson Mandela’s autobiography with Just William children’s story tapes, and my parents would occasionally hire a babysitter so they could attend organizing meetings for the international boycott campaign against South Africa.
 

As much as I was taught about apartheid, the violence of segregation, and the brutality of a state designed only to serve a settler population, I didn’t experience it first-hand...

By Nidal Hatim
 
In Arabic, the words ‘police’ and ‘authority’ carry many similarities but also great differences. Both words rhyme (solta and shorta) and the sad reality for Palestinians is that over the course of the shameful negotiations process stemming from Oslo, we were left with a police force but no authority, except the authority of surrender. The initial results of these unequal and badly exercised negotiations between Israel and the selfish leadership of the PLO was the overall disastrous decline in the situation that the average Palestinian has experienced, in addition to the continued deprivation of freedom and the right of return.
 

By Jesse Rosenfeld
 
In a uniquely Canadian polite and subtle way, the country’s Conservative government has made a clear statement in support of Israel’s continued siege on Gaza and entrenched Palestinian division. Slashing its funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) while transferring that support to the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) judicial sector – specifically towards training prosecutors, judges and police – Canada is using aid to make its political intentsions clear.
 

On the surface it may appear as though Canada’s Conservative government, lead by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has traded aiding an international...

By Nidal Hatim
 
I swear that if Mickey Mouse claims victory over Karl Marx, I’ll never jam to Bob Marley or the Imam again.
 

Listening to Marley, tires spinning and steering wheel shaking, in a three-going-on-30-year-old car, we putter along the West Bank road that has been slowly washed away over time by modest Palestinian rains. The occupation’s heavy military vehicles haven’t helped matters, destroying the road they continue to dominate.
 

My friend Ibtissam at the wheel, I sit at her side, trying to navigate the sound system’s CD player to locate the Marley classic “Them Belly Full (But We Hungry).” As the song ends, we reach Road 60, connecting a group of large settlements such as Beitar...