If Halifax Was Palestine

[Ralph Furely]

well ive been gone away to mexico for the BPM music festival for the past week, just got home last night to snow, cold, and lots of catching up to in regards to the gaza situation.  ive been going through over 100 emails with youtube links, msgs, and so on since i got back.  this is one of he finer articles a buddy of mine sent me today.  written by someone in my city, the analogies are great.  i posted it up to my Facebook and have been emailing it around to friends and family today.  its a great article so i thought i would post it here.
i know you guys dont know the cities here, towns and so on, so you wont get how great this analogy is, but regardless it is a great little read.  with a little video clip of a great poem read at a protest in NY as well.

http://issmatblog.wordpress.com/2009/01 ... mment-2579

[Ralph Furely]

im getting lots of comments on this 'posted item' on my facebook.  everyone is appreciating it.  one girl said thanks it has opened her eyes to the situation.  the article is working well.

[Ralph Furely]

from the local paper:

Visiting Israeli calls for peace
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Metro/9010254.html

An Israeli activist is in Halifax trying to put international pressure on his own country to make peace with Palestinians.

  Jeff Halper, who will speak publicly tonight at Dalhousie University as part of a cross-country tour, compared his cause with the anti-apartheid movement.

  "If it had been up to governments, there would still be an apartheid regime in South Africa," said Mr. Halper, who heads the Is­raeli Committee Against House Demoli­tions. "It was only by mobilizing the civil society that that was able to change and that's in a sense why I'm doing this.

  "I'm trying to get to the people in order to get to the governments."

  It's crucial to resolve the Israeli-Palesti­nian conflict in order to bring stability to the Middle East, he said.

  "This is like the bone in the throat," Mr. Halper said. "You can't avoid it. You've got to deal with this because it has that symbol­ic importance. This conflict is more impor­tant for Muslims the world over than Iraq." The situation in Gaza and the West Bank is fostering Islamic fundamentalism, he said.

  Israel has been bombing Gaza since launching an offensive on Dec. 27 in re­sponse to Hamas rocket fire into the Jew­ish state.

  "I'm trying to impress on people the ur­gency and the global dimensions of this conflict," Mr. Halper said. "So that even if you're not an Israel-Palestine wonk, even if you don't necessarily care about this con­flict, you begin to understand that, without resolving this, you're not going to resolve Iraq and Pakistan and Iran and the whole issue of fundamentalism in the world."

  Mr. Halper, when pressed, didn't put for­ward a solution to the Palestinian problem. "We support any solution that gets us out of this mess."
  Mr. Halper speaks at 7:30 p.m. at the Pot­ter Auditorium in the university's Ken­neth C. Rowe Building.

  Judy Haiven, an associate professor of management at Saint Mary's, said she has heard from several people in the main­stream Jewish community who are fed up with Israel's "unconscionable" Gaza bombings.

  "The Jewish community tries to pretend it's monolithic when there's lots of people ike me and others who are part of Canadians, Arabs and Jews (for a Just Peace) who want to see a change," Ms. Haiven said.

  "It's a very difficult situation because the Jews use the trump card of the Holocaust and I'm afraid it's wearing pretty thin. The Arabs had nothing to do with the Holocaust. There wasn't one Palestinian involved in the Holocaust. Nobody in the Arab world set out to kill any Jews. And yet this is brought up time and time again as a justification for what's going on now."

  Jews have "squandered" the international respect they once held, she said.

( mailto:clambie@herald.ca">clambie@herald.ca)

nice to finally hear some jewish voices..