News Highlights:
- Israel invades Jericho and raids a Palestinian prison compound, kidnapping the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Ahmed Saadat was being guarded by British and American monitors who left the prison just before the Israeli raid.
- Palestinian official Saab Erekat says Western donors never gave money directly to the Palestinian Authority, always through NGO’s.
- Hamas leader Khalid Meshal condemns Israeli PM Ehud Olmert’s announced plan to finalize Israel’s borders by 2010 through unilateral actions:
- Israel is building a district police station in the E1 area, which is occupied West Bank land between Jerusalem and the settlement of Maaleh Adumim; a new large settlement is planned for the occupied area and Ehud Olmert says E1 will be developed to have “territorial contiguity” for Israel.
- Israel is preventing 2000 Palestinians from returning to the Jordan Valley, in an attempt to stop them from demanding their land back; Israel has illegally (even by Israeli law) transferred thousands of dunams of Palestinian land to settlements and army bases.
Feature:
Splitting the Sky, an indigenous activist, was live in the studio to talk about the recent trip of the Assembly of First Nations chiefs to Israel and the response. He talked about the complicity of the AFN with the Canadian establishment in many areas, and also detailed the historic similarities between the indigenous peoples of Palestine and the Americas. There was discussion of the open letter that had been sent to the AFN criticizing the trip, signed by 47 groups and over 100 individuals.
Focus on Zionism:
Highlights of the activism call entitled “Why are people afraid of Rachel Corrie’s words?” The appeal is calling on people to mark the 3rd anniversary on March 16th of Rachel’s murder by an Israeli bulldozer, and to protest the cancellation in New York of the play My Name is Rachel Corrie.
Here is an audio file of this show: