Tag: Canada

Royal Ontario Museum proceeds with unlawful exhibit

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East

7 June 2009

Dear Friends,

Later this month, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) will be showcasing artifacts illegally seized by Israel in 1967 after it occupied East Jerusalem. In cooperating with the Israel Antiquities Authority to import and exhibit the Dead Sea Scrolls, the ROM would be in violation of Canada’s obligations under UNESCO legal conventions and protocols, and its own obligations as a member of the Canadian Museums Association (CMA).

Please click here to send an email to officials at the ROM, the CMA as well as provincial and Federal party leaders.

More Info

The Dead Sea Scrolls were largely excavated from Qumran (see map below) in the West Bank between 1947 and 1956 by the Palestine Archaeological Museum with the Department of Antiquities of Jordan and the École Biblique Française. The Scrolls were in East Jerusalem until 1967.

Map of Qumran

As a signatory to the UNESCO Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (1954), as well as the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (1970), Canada cannot import cultural property from an occupied territory, and must, if it can, take the cultural property into custody and return it to the competent authorities of the territory previously occupied at the end of hostilities. The Palestinian Authority objects to the exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls because they were illegally obtained.

The CMA sets out in its Ethical Guidelines that museums “must avoid even the remotest suspicion of compliance in any illegal activity,” and that “museums must guard against any direct or indirect participation in the illicit traffic in cultural and natural objects; this may include natural or cultural objects that are: stolen; illegally imported or exported from another state, including those that are occupied or war-stricken; illegally or unscientifically excavated or collected in the field.”

Considering its legal obligations, the ROM should not under any circumstance import the Dead Sea Scrolls until they have been returned to the competent authorities in the West Bank.

Warmest thanks,

The CJPME Leadership
CJPME Website

Palestinian village sends pair to sue Quebec companies

CBC Canada

2 June 2009

Two representatives of a small West Bank Palestinian village will tour Canada this month, as they prepare a lawsuit against two Quebec-based companies for allegedly violating international law by building Israeli settlements on occupied territory.

Mohammed Khatib is a member of the Popular Committee Against the Wall in the town of Bil’in, west of Ramallah. He will hold a news conference on June 4 at Quebec Superior Court, along with Israeli lawyer Emily Schaeffer, who represents Bil’in.

The town’s claim was filed July 9 against sister companies Green Park International and Green Mount International. It also asks the Quebec Superior Court for an injunction to stop further construction and demolish apartment buildings already erected in Moddin Illit, a Jewish settlement northwest of Ramallah.

Bil’in alleges both companies committed war crimes by building housing in the settlement, Israel’s largest in the West Bank. The lawsuit also names Annette Laroche, who is named as the director of both companies.

The apartment buildings are built on land that was part of a Palestinian village until Israel seized the West Bank from Jordanian control in the Six-Day War in 1967.

The village is home to about 1,700 people.

In the lawsuit, the village’s municipal council and chief Ahmed Issa Abdallah Yassin allege Green Park and Green Mount acted as “agents of Israel” by building the housing.

The lawsuit asks the court to rule whether the construction violates the Fourth Geneva Convention, which deals with the protection of civilians in times of war and occupation; Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act; the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms; and the Civil Code of Quebec.

The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids an occupying power from transferring its own civilians into occupied territory.

In a news release Tuesday, Lynn Worrell, a spokeswoman for the town of Bil’in, said preliminary court proceedings are scheduled to be held in Montreal June 22.

Bil’in tour: Israeli apartheid on trial

Tadamon

23 May 2009

Apartheid Wall
Apartheid Wall

Bil’in speaking tour featuring:

Mohammed Khatib.
Popular Committee Against the Wall, Bil’in, Occupied Palestine

Emily Schaeffer.
Israeli lawyer representing the village of Bil’in

Bil’in, a Palestinian village in the West Bank, has become an internationally celebrated symbol of Palestinian popular resistance to the ongoing construction of the Israeli apartheid wall and settlements on their land. Since 2005, villagers have led weekly protests, with the active participation from both Israeli and international solidarity activists, in opposition to illegal Israeli colonization and annexation of Palestinian land.

In June 2009, Mohamed Khatib of Bil’in’s Popular Committee Against the Wall and Emily Schaeffer, an Israeli lawyer representing the village of Bil’in, will be embarking on a tour of 11 Canadian cities to speak on Bil’in and the historic court case scheduled to be heard in Montreal in late June 2009.

The village has filed a lawsuit in Quebec Superior Court against Green Park International and Green Mount International, two companies registered in Quebec. The companies are accused of illegally constructing residential and other buildings on the village’s lands. According to the lawsuit, the lands of Bil’in are subject to the rules and obligations of international law because the West Bank is currently under Israeli military occupation.

Bil’in’s case against the construction of settlements on their land is based on the provisions of the Geneva Convention, which prohibit an occupying power from transferring its civilian population into territory that it has occupied as a result of war. The case against Green Park and Green Mount seeks an immediate order from the Canadian court that it end its illegal activities.

check out the itinerary to see when the tour will be visiting your city!

Montreal conference:
FRIDAY JUNE 19 19hoo
De Seve Cinema, Concordia University
1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd.

tour itinerary

June 4 – Montreal Press Conference to launch tour!

June 5 – Halifax

June 6 – Fredericton

June 8 – Vancouver

June 9 – Victoria

June 10 – Edmonton

June 11 – Moncton

June 12 – Toronto

June 15 – Ottawa

June 17 – Quebec

June 18 – Sherbrooke

June 19 – Montreal

June 22 – Demonstration in Montreal at the first day of the Bil’in hearings

The Bil’in Tour is organized by Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), Tadamon!, and Young Jews for Social Justice.

more information about Bil’in and the Bil’in case

It takes a village

Stefan Christoff | Hour

7 May 2009

Montreal’s ties to illegal Israeli settlement

In April, Palestinian activist Bassam Ibrahim Abou Rahme was killed by Israeli military forces after being shot at close range by a teargas canister, becoming the 18th Palestinian to have been killed for protesting against the Israeli wall being built in Bil’in, a farming village.

“Bassam was a leader from the Bil’in movement against Israeli apartheid. Everyone in the village loved Bassam, who regularly worked with Israeli activists,” remembers Abdullah Abu Rahme, a Bil’in resident and activist.

Local residents have held weekly demonstrations every Friday in attempts to alert the world to their cause.

Rahme says Bil’in has been severely impacted by the construction of the security wall, which will annex around 50 per cent of village lands, mainly farm lands. In some areas, the wall towers over eight metres high and is fortified by armed military watchtowers. The village is also battling Israeli attempts to build illegal settlements on the land, a project with ties to Montreal.

Bil’in has launched a lawsuit in the Quebec Superior Court against two companies registered locally, Green Park International and Green Mount International, who are currently helping to build an Israeli-only settlement on land within Bil’in’s municipal jurisdiction.

“Israel is colonizing our land and stealing it for future generations. They are trying to erase Palestine,” explains Rahme.

In June 2009, Bil’in village is scheduled to have a series of court dates that will determine if the lawsuit filed with Quebec Superior Court will be heard.

A solidarity protest with Bil’in village is scheduled for Friday, May 8, at noon outside Indigo bookstore (corner of Ste-Catherine and McGill College).