VIDEO about IndigenousPeace/War posted on February 14, 2011 by mzoghi

Free Speech Around the Israel/Palestine Issue

→Original Peoples

A public forum on the attacks by the Israeli lobby in Vancouver and Toronto. Omar Chaaban spoke about the fire under which the Social Justice Centre at UBC had come because of their $700 donation to the Canadian Boat to Gaza.

Brian Campbell spoke about the various attempts by the pro-Israeli lobby to stifle debate on campuses throughout Canada and the US, and finally Jenny Peto spoke about the criticism she was subjected to after the publication of her thesis, whose title is "The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education," and which is similar in content to the documentaries Defamation, Citizen Nawi and Dubak - A Palestinian Jew, the latter of which includes a very interesting exchange between a Palestinian Jew and an Ashkenazi Jew, in which the former tells the latter that he will leave in the end because he is not connected to the land.

It is often amusing to hear Israel-Palestine conflict portrayed as a religious conflict, when it's all about race, which is the main message of all these publications. It is of course troubling to a Palestinian refugee living in a refugee camp in Lebenon that they can't go back to their homeland, but what makes the whole situation infuriating for someone in that situation is that someone from the US or Europe who might or might not have any blood ties to the land can immigrate to Israel at will. .

As far as the people sitting over there are concerned, these are just a bunch of Eurpoeans coming over and stealing their land, which is perhaps why the indigenous people in this land sympathize with their cause so much, as exemplified by the beautiful statements made by the Native women during the question period of this event.