News Highlights:
- June 22nd – Israeli forces demolish a house in Jerusalem to make way for construction of the apartheid wall; 47 Palestinian homes demolished so far just in Jerusalem in 2004.
- June 22nd – Israeli soldiers teargas and interrogate scores of students at Al Quds Open University in Yatta.
- Two 15-year-old Palestinian girls arrested in Nablus along with their fathers on June 16th; Israel alleges the teens are suicide bombers, which the families say is ludicrous and community groups and NGOs call for their immediate release.
- A group of British parliamentarians shot at by Israeli forces in Rafah, as they tour the devastated camp and see where Tom Hurndall, a British student, was shot and fatally wounded; one of the MPs describes the Israeli soldiers’ behaviour as “lunatic”.
- A military judge in Iraq has ruled that top U.S. commanders must submit to questioning in the trials of the soldiers accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners; soldiers’ lawyers state that top leaders, including George Bush, created the atmosphere for such abuse.
Feature:
An in studio discussion about the trends developing in the Arab and Moslem Canadian community leading up to the federal elections. The discussion looked at several position papers, rating scales and media communiqués that had all been released in recent days. Most of the reports, except one in Toronto issued by some leaders in the Moslem community, had concluded that none of the main parties deserved a bloc vote and encouraged voters to be informed and support those candidates that had stood by the Palestinian and Arab people. The position paper issued by the Canada Palestine Association www.cpavancouver.org was discussed and listeners were referred to their website to check out the position paper and the appendixes attached to it, that had documented info about the record of the current government.
Focus on Zionism:
Highlights of an article from the Israeli Haaretz newspaper on June 21 about a University of Haifa poll that showed 63.7% of Israeli Jews thought that Israeli Arabs should be encouraged to leave the country. Furthermore, 48.6% felt the (Ariel Sharon – ed) government was overly sympathetic to the Arab population.