In the News March 30
46th Anniversary of Palestinian Land Day
Montreal Action Celebrates Palestinian Resistance
A rally outside the Israeli Consulate in Montreal on January 5, organized by PAJU (Palestinian and Jewish Unity) and the Canadian Palestinian Foundation of Quebec, brought together a number of pro-Palestinian activists and organizations. They were there to celebrate the news that Palestinian political prisoner Hisham Abu Hawash, who had been on a hunger strike for 141 days to protest his imprisonment without charge, had ended his fast after reaching an agreement with Israel to be released on February 26. However the celebration was bitter-sweet, as currently about 500 of the 4,550 Palestinian political prisoners being detained by the Israeli government are imprisoned without charge or trial under administrative detention.
A representative of PAJU informed that under its brutal apartheid system, “Israel can arrest any Palestinian at any time and incarcerate them without formal evidence or charges, and without due process. Administrative detention can be renewed indefinitely every six months without recourse to appeal. Therefore, Palestinians can be imprisoned for years without charge and without trial.”
She noted that Hisham Abu Hawash “spent a total of eight years in Israeli occupation prisons, including fifty-two months without charge or trial, under administrative detention.”
Another speaker called on everyone to look at the struggle of the Palestinians from the perspective of the Israeli government’s violation of their basic human rights, encouraging all to rally to their defence.
Yet another decried the Canadian government’s role in supporting the Israeli government and its activities alongside the U.S. He also condemned the U.S. embargo on Cuba and its interference in its internal affairs, along with Canada’s participation in efforts to accomplish regime change, such as in Haiti and Venezuela.
A spokesperson for the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) noted that on December 7 in the House of Commons, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly was asked by a Bloc Québécois MP why Canada had voted against three resolutions on Palestine in the United Nations where, each time, it found itself in a tiny minority, with the likes of the U.S. and Israel.
Minister Joly’s response was: “We are opposed to any initiative, within the United Nations and other multilateral forums, that is specifically aimed at criticizing only Israel, since we believe in a much more holistic approach. We therefore reject any unilateral resolutions from these forums that would politicize these issues.”
“Such statements by the Trudeau Liberals,” noted the CPC(M-L) spokesperson, “show their hypocrisy and their desperate attempts to equate the heroic resistance of the Palestinian people with the crimes committed by the Israeli Occupation forces and settlers.”
“We express highest regards for the Palestinian Resistance,” he said. “If it were not for the Palestinian Resistance, Israel would get away with their crime of ethnic cleansing and their schemes to expel the Palestinians from their homeland. What suits the Zionists, the U.S. imperialists and the Canadian government is for the world to never know what is really going on.”
“Thanks to the Resistance, the entire world can see that the way forward is to stop the crimes and those who commit them, as the state of Israel has shown that it has no interest in maintaining agreements, resolutions and peace treaties,” he concluded.
During the action, passers-by raised their fists and smiled, while cars honked their horns in support. The action ended with everyone shouting “Long Live the Palestinian Resistance!” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free!”
TML Daily, posted March 30, 2022.
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