News & Updates
Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) to host events outside of Pride Toronto
April 15, 2011
Following this week’s report from City of Toronto staff concluding that the term ‘Israeli apartheid’ does not violate the city’s anti-discrimination policy, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid is announcing new plans for Pride 2011 that will pose a challenge for Mayor Rob Ford. Instead of marching as a contingent in the parade this year, QuAIA will focus its Pride Week activities on hosting a community event to raise awareness of Israeli apartheid, and how LGBTQ communities can pressure the Israeli government to comply with international law through the campaign for boycotts, divestments and sanctions. QuAIA will also continue to contest Israel’s “pinkwashing” campaign, which attempts to use LGBTQ human rights to obscure Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights.
“Last year’s struggle was around censorship and our right to march in our community’s Pride parade,” says QuAIA spokesperson Tim McCaskell. “With the City report settling that debate, now is the time for us to move beyond the parade to build our community’s response to Israeli apartheid.”
QuAIA’s new plans will pose a challenge for Mayor Rob Ford, who announced that he would cut more than $100,000 in city tourism funding for Pride Toronto if QuAIA continued to march.
“Rob Ford wants to use us as an excuse to cut Pride funding, even though he has always opposed funding the parade, long before we showed up,” says Elle Flanders of QuAIA. “By holding our Pride events outside of the parade, we are forcing him to make a choice: fund Pride or have your real homophobic, right-wing agenda exposed.”
For more information, please visit the QuAIA website or email quaia.toronto@gmail.com.
International Women’s Day 2011: Support Women in Palestine
The Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA) takes the occasion of International Women’s Day (IWD) to press our call to lift the siege on Gaza. The urgent goal is to bring aid to the women of Gaza who suffer with their families and children imprisoned there by the Israeli government. They endure malnutrition and poisoned water, and they lack medical care, sufficient shelter, and quality of life.
We will march this Saturday, March 11th, angered by the Israeli apartheid system that attacks Palestinian women by means of land confiscation, impoverishment, daily harassment, imprisonment, and indirect and direct violence. We call on the Israeli authorities to immediately release all Palestinian female political prisoners and detainees from Israeli jails, including women in administrative detention. Palestinian female prisoners and detainees are subjected to cruel and discriminatory treatment during their arrest, interrogation, and in prison, including sexual harassment, psychological and physical punishment and humiliation, and deprivation of gender-sensitive healthcare. The repression of Palestinian women’s resistance must end!
Join the CAIA contingent on International Women’s Day to call for an end to the siege of Gaza, an end to violence against Palestinian women, and the immediate release of Palestinian women prisoners. You may also with to sign the petition on Palestinian Female Political Prisoners. For more information on the CAIA Contingent at the IWD March, please click here.
The Seventh Annual Israeli Apartheid Week Toronto 2011
Mark your calendars – the Seventh Annual Israeli Apartheid Week will take place in Toronto from March 7 – 11, 2011!
Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is an international series of events held in cities and campuses across the globe. IAW will be running for the sixth consecutive year in 2011, with events taking place in March all over the world. The week’s events will include lectures, multimedia events, cultural performance, film screenings, demonstrations, and more.
The past few years have seen a sharp increase of literature and analysis that has sought to document and challenge Israeli apartheid, including reports issued by major international bodies and human rights organizations and findings published by political leaders, thinkers, academics, and activists. Many of these efforts have highlighted the role that could be played by people and governments across the world in providing solidarity with the Palestinian struggle by exerting urgent pressure on Israel to alter its current structure and practices as an apartheid state. Prominent Palestinians, Jewish anti-Zionists, and South Africans have been at the forefront of this struggle.
At the same time, an international divestment campaign has gained momentum in response to a statement issued in July 2005 by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations calling for boycotts, divestments and sanctions (BDS) against apartheid Israel . Important gains have recently been made in this campaign in countries like South Africa , the United Kingdom , Canada and the United States .
The aim of IAW is to contribute to this chorus of international opposition to Israeli apartheid and to bolster support for the BDS campaign in accordance with the demands outlined in the July 2005 Statement: full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, an end to the occupation and colonization of all Arab lands – including the Golan Heights, the Occupied West Bank with East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip – and dismantling the Wall, and the protection of Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in U.N. resolution 194. In previous years IAW has played an important role in raising awareness and disseminating information about Zionism, the Palestinian liberation struggle and its similarities with the indigenous sovereignty struggle in North America and the South African anti-apartheid movement. Join us in making this a year of struggle against apartheid and for justice, equality, and peace.
IAW 2011 – Toronto programme
