ST. CATHARINES, ON – Eva Bartlett, an Ontario activist with the International Solidarity Movement, who reported from Gaza while it was under bombardment by Israel, will be making an audio-visual presentation at 1 p.m. on Saturday, October 8th, in the Mills Room of the St. Catharines Library on 54 Church St.
Eva Bartlett
Bartlett will be speaking, of her two-year experiences in the Gaza Strip and the eight months she spent in the West Bank. She will be joined by Moses Moini, of the Mennonite Central Committee and a Niagara resident, who recently helped organize the local settlement of two Palestinian refugee families fleeing the violence in Iraq.
The event is organized by the Niagara Coalition For Peace, a coalition of social justice groups that promotes news and issues of interest to anti-war, peace, and liberation activists and is a member of the Canadian Peace Alliance and Canadian Peace Congress.
Eva Bartlett asks “can you imagine, as a comfortable Canadian, what it is to know your family can in any moment be torn apart by the world’s fourth largest army?” Through her photographs and videos Eva argues that Israel’s bombardment and incursions into Gaza are not against Hamas, stopping rockets from entering Israel, or achieving peace, but are part of a longer historical process of the destructive discrimination against Palestinians. Eva Bartlett is available for interviews before Saturday’s event by telephone and also in-person on Saturday.
The International Solidarity Movement is a Palestinian-lead group founded in part with Israeli activists to provide the Palestinian people with an international voice to nonviolently resist Israel’s military occupation. The St. Catharines event is part of a month-long tour by Eva Bartlett to better inform Canadians about recent events in Gaza.
Niagara At Large 
The international community wants Palestine to have its own country. Opposition would be the U.S, Israel (not necessarily Israel’s people though), and now Canada. I’ve always sided with Israel because of the Holocaust, and I still do; but it’s probably in Israel’s best interest for Palestinians to have their own country. Continuous occupation etc. compromises Israel’s military and moral integrity. As far as terrorism/state terrorism is concerned, Israel has probably been the worst culprit. As far as peace inititatives are concerned, Palestinians have likely been the most pro-active (despite what mains stream media might have us believe).
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Surprised that there is no mention by Eva Bartlett or other commentators of the almost daily firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel. People living in Ashkelon and other nearby communities live in constant fear of another rocket attack, and their days are punctuated by air raid sirens and the need to rush with their children to the air-raid shelter. Without denying the grievances of the Palestinians, Israel’s reaction is quite understandable. There is, of course, intransigence on both sides, but to ignore the reality of
of the situation gets us nowhere.
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I do not believe that it is pro-active for the leaders of millions of Palestinians to declare that their objective is to wipe Israel off of the map.
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Or perhaps Ms. Bartlett suffers from a Stockholm syndrome reaction to events within the Gaza Strip………..
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If you had actually been to Eva’s talk you wouldn’t be making such ignorant comments: Eva showed video that proves that what Israel is doing in Gaza has nothing to do with rockets fired into Israel. Civilian farmers and peaceful non-violent demonstrators who had been under observation from Israeli soldiers for hours were shot at by snipers hundreds of meters beyond their illegal “buffer zone” (http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/en/docs/English_Gaza_Fact_Sheet_and_Citations.pdf)
Your comments are not just ignorant but also confused: no Palestinian leader said their objective is to wipe Israel off the map, rather that is a deliberate misquote of Ahmadinejad (who is the leader of Iran, not a Palestinian or even an Arab – but maybe you can’t tell the difference or don’t care) in order to get us to feel better about bombing them to bits. If you would educate yourself with facts instead of war propaganda you might be better informed.
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Ahlan wa sahlan to all you Zionist small-minded people. Go to Gaza if you know everything.
Meanwhile:
A, you do they not realize the people of Gaza are LOCKED IN… with NO air raid sirens, no bomb shelters and absolutely no warning whenever Israel feels like letting loose some bombs. Like a week before I left Gaza when 4 IOF warplanes flew over our house, bombed eastern Gaza and returned to bomb within a few hundred metres of our home. And again 5 minutes later? Or some weeks later when a staged attack on a bus in Eilat, which was clearly NOT done by resistance from Gaza and which later was admitted by Israeli and Egyptian authorities was carried out by attackers from Egypt –which even at the time of the Israeli bombings on Gaza (repeat, no bomb shelters, no warnings) the spokeswoman for the Israeli army said they had no evidence and no reason to believe the attackers were from Gaza —which was the pretext to Israel’s latest onslaught of murder on Gaza, killing 26 and injuring over 100 Palestinians, including children.
Or, more importantly, like the first day of Israel’s 23 day war on Gaza,
where, repeat, there were NO safe havens, no way of exiting Gaza and every corner of the Strip was bombed, including kindergartens, mosques, hospitals, cars, homes, sanitation plants and key infrastructure to serve the 1.6 million locked within the Strip… And when Israel timed its initial onslaught of bombing to hit not only Hamas policemen (including traffic police or other people simply doing a job for the government in authority), but also school children on the street and people at markets.
Israel was NOT created for Jews to escape the Holocaust; the Zionist
project dates back decades before the Holocaust, as does the Zionist
terrorism, from the Irgun and other Zionist mafia, against Palestinians
and against the British in mandate Palestine at the time.
Avigdor Lieberman, an Israeli politician, has repeatedly and publicly
called for Palestinians to be driven into the sea… and even offered the
buses to do so. Whereas the old Hamas declaration has repeatedly been recanted and revised to say that Hamas wants justice, peace and REAL borders, which Israel will never abide. Why does the separation Wall cut deeply into the occupied West Bank, separating Palestinians from their land, homes, communities? It has nothing to do with security and everything to do with occupying more Palestinian lands, as with the expanding colonies and the Israeli-imposition “buffer zone” in Gaza which eats up 1/3 of Palestinian land at the most modest accounts.
Israeli leaders admit to putting Palestinians on a diet…admittedly a
very severe diet to provide minimal daily calories not respective of their
protein and nutritional needs. Empty calories largely based on starch and sugar. Malnutrition, stunted growth, anaemia, and diabetes are rampant amongst Palestinians in Gaza. At the same time, Gaza’s hospitals and clinics lack the medications and medical supplies and equipment to deal with these illnesses.
I only suffer from humanity and seeing the ugliest of humanity: Israeli
soldiers and radical colonists in reality, up close and impersonal.
COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT AGAINST 1.6 MILLION PALESTINIANS IN GAZA;
FLOATING NUMBERS OF PALESTINIAN PRISONERS IN ISRAELI JAILS AMOUNTING TO OVER 10,000 EVERY YEAR;
ONE ISRAELI SOLDIER—TANK GUNNER, NO INNOCENT—HELD CAPTIVE, NOW RELEASED—WHO SAID HAMAS TREATED HIM WELL WHEREAS PALESTINIAN PRISONERS IN ISRAELI JAILS HAVE TO GO ON HUNGER STRIKE TO ATTEMPT TO OBTAIN THE MOST
BASIC OF HUMAN RIGHTS;
PALESTINIAN FAMILIES IN GAZA HAVE NOT BEEN ALLOWED TO VISIT THEIR LOVED ONES IN ISRAELI PRISONS FOR OVER 4 YEARS;
HUNDREDS OF PALESTINIAN CHILDREN IN ISRAELI PRISONS, INCLUDING HELD IN ADMINISTRATIVE DETENTION WHEREBY THEIR IMPRISONMENT CAN BE EXTENDED BY ISRAEL’S MILITARY COURT WITHOUT THE CHILDREN/PRISONERS HAVING RIGHT TO A
LAWYER OR BEING CHARGED WITH ANYTHING
WHITE PHOSPHOROUS AND OTHER DANGEROUS CHEMICALS USED ON PALESTINIANS IN HEAVILY POPULATED AREAS… BURNS TO THE BONE, NOT EXTINGUISHABLE.
FLECHETTE BOMBS–DART BOMBS WITH 1000S OF RAZOR SHARP INCH LONG DARTS DESIGNED TO BREAK APART ON IMPACT AND SHRED ITS TARGET–USED BY THE ISRAELI ARMY AGAINST CIVILIANS AND MEDICS IN GAZA
PALESTINIAN CIVILIANS, INCLUDING CHILDREN AND BABIES, SHOT POINT BLANK DEAD AT CLOSE RANGE BY ISRAELI SOLDIERS.
16 PALESTINIAN MEDICS KILLED BY ISRAELI SOLDIERS WHILE PERFORMING THEIR INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED AS SANCTIONED AND PROTECTED MEDICAL DUTIES
PALESTINIAN WOMEN, CHILDREN, ELDERLY AND PAID LABOURERS WORKING ON THEIR LAND DAILY ATTACKED BY HEAVILY ARMED ISRAELI SOLDIERS FROM JEEPS, HUMMERS, TOWERS, AUTOMATED TOWERS, UNMANNED DRONES… WHILE PALESTINIANS WORK THEIR
LAND OVER 500 METRES FROM THE BORDER
PALESTINIAN FISHERS PREVENTED FROM GOING BEYOND 3 MILES, BEYOND 2 MILES IN MANY AREAS, ATTACKED BY ARMED ISRAELI SOLDIERS IN MASSIVE GUNBOATS WHO SPRAY THE PALESTINIAN FISHERS WITH MACHINE GUN FIRE, SHELLING, HEAVY DUTY
WATER CANNONS… OR FORCE THE FISHERS TO SWIM IN ICY WATERS TO THE GUNBOATS, THEN ABDUCT THEM TO ISRAEL, INTERROGATE AND OFTEN BEAT THE FISHERS, ATTEMPT TO COERCE THE FISHERS TO BE COLLABORATORS AND PUNISH THEM
WHEN THEY REFUSE.. PUNISHMENT INCLUDES DETENTION, BEATING, LATER HARASSMENT ON THE SEA, STEALING OF THEIR FISHING BOATS…AND DEATH.
PALESTINIAN PATIENTS DENIED RIGHT TO EXIT THE GAZA STRIP FOR MEDICAL CARE IN ISRAEL, THE OCCUPIED WEST BANK OR JERUSALEM. PATIENTS ALSO THREATENED BY ISRAELI SOLDIERS TO WORK WITH THEM AS COLLABORATORS OR “GO BACK TO GAZA
AND DIE”–AS DOCUMENTED BY ISRAELI PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS.
Basically, those who comment that Israel is the victim –the foremost recipient of American foreign aid, including military weapons and fighter warplanes –are small-minded, ill-informed spewers of rhetoric.
Eva
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reposting Saleh’s link:
Click to access English_Gaza_Fact_Sheet_and_Citations.pdf
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Clarification: I did not say that Israel was created for Jews to escape the holocaust.
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