By Sid Shniad
Independent Jewish Voices Canada

Paul Tetrault
Canada Palestine Support Network

Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) and the Canada Palestine Support Network (CanPalNet) are proud to endorse Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) activities across the country in defence of Palestinian human rights. We are declaring this in the face of knee-jerk denunciations of these campus-based events.

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RToP) is an International People’s Tribunal created by a large group of citizens involved in the promotion of peace and justice in the Middle East. These past years, following, inter alia: the international community’s failure to implement the International Court of Justice’s 2004 Advisory Opinion on the construction of a wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory ; the lack of implementation of the resolution ES-10/15 confirming the ICJ Opinion, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 20 July 2004 ; and the Israeli offensive on Gaza in December 2008 – January 2009, committees have been created in different countries to promote and sustain a citizen’s initiative in support of the rights of the Palestinian people, with public international law as a legal frame of reference.

Lecture by Ilan Pappe at the Stuttgart Conference

10 JANUARY 2011 [Lecture was given november 2010]

I begin by thanking all the organizers; I know it took quite a lot of efforts to bring us all together. It is a great achievement, and as Mazin Qumsiyeh and Haidar Eid, mentioned, and Lubna Masarwa, yesterday, you also provided a great opportunity for us to meet and we are very grateful to you for this opportunity to meet you and to meet each other. It is easier because of the Israeli oppression to meet here than to meet in Palestine where we should meet and hopefully one day we will all be there without the need to go to the frozen hills of Stuttgart to create a joint life!

And I think that’s the gist of the Zionist story that it does not allow people to meet normal life and to be normal friends that they need to go through all that hardship in order to fulfill a very elementary human impulse to live together.

The Itisapartheid Collective (www.itisapartheid.org ) and Stop the Wall (www.stopthewall.org ) want to announce the winner of the Israeli Apartheid Video Contest. 

• Expert Panel Prize for $300:   Road Map to Apartheid
• Palestinian Popular Jury Prize for $300:  Confronting the Wall (there were showings and voting in the West Bank and Gaza)
• Global Jury Prize for $300:  Ali Wall (from internet voting) Overall Prize $500:  Road Map to Apartheid

You can see the films on our website http://www.itisapartheid.tv. We hope you can
announce the winners on your websites, list serves and on Facebook.

International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid

[This page contains only the Introduction. For the full article, including Procedural History, Documents and Status secions, go here: http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/ha/cspca/cspca.html ]

  By John Dugard  
  Professor of International Law  
  Department of Public Law, Faculty of Law, University of Leiden  
________________________________
Chinese  English  Français  Español  

The Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (hereinafter Apartheid Convention) has it roots in the opposition of the United Nations to the discriminatory racial policies of the South African Government – known as apartheid – which lasted from 1948 to 1990. Apartheid was annually condemned by the General Assembly as contrary to Articles 55 and 56 of the Charter of the United Nations from 1952 until 1990; and was regularly condemned by the Security Council after 1960. In 1966, the General Assembly labelled apartheid as a crime against humanity (resolution 2202 A (XXI) of 16 December 1966) and in 1984 the Security Council endorsed this determination (resolution 556 (1984) of 23 October 1984). The Apartheid Convention was the ultimate step in the condemnation of apartheid as it not only declared that apartheid was unlawful because it violated the Charter of the United Nations, but in addition it declared apartheid to be criminal. The Apartheid Convention was adopted by the General Assembly on 30 November 1973, by 91 votes in favour, four against (Portugal, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States) and 26 abstentions. It came into force on 18 July 1976. As of August 2008, it has been ratified by 107 States.

Badil Resource Center [3 March 2010]

The Israeli parliamentary Law Committee has recently approved a law proposal the (“Nakba bill”) that, if passed by the Knesset, would impose economic sanctions on the organizers of Nakba commemorations. Every year in May, Palestinians and supporters of their right of return commemorate the Nakba of 1948, which marks the single most traumatic and far-reaching event in the long and ongoing process of forced displacement and dispossession of the Palestinian people by the state of Israel. Nakba commemorations are important events in Israel, where some 335,000 Palestinians, citizens of Israel, continue to be denied their right to return to their homes, lands and communities, and are forced to live as internally displaced persons within their own country.