News Highlights:

• July 12th – an elderly disabled Palestinian man crushed to death when Israeli troops demolish his home on top of him in Gaza.
• U.S. and Israeli officials begin talks on defining boundaries in the West Bank within which Israel can continue settlement expansion; U.S. says Palestinian state in 2005 “increasingly unlikely”.
• July 12th – Israeli PM Ariel Sharon orders construction on the West Bank apartheid wall to continue and vows to reject ruling by International Court of Justice ICJ that stated the barrier is illegal and should be dismantled.
• July 9th – U.S. Democratic presidential candidate and Senator John Kerry criticizes ICJ ruling, claiming apartheid wall is a “legitimate response to terror”.
• U.N. General Assembly to consider resolution to implement ICJ ruling.
• Ariel Sharon and Labor leader Shimon Peres have talks on new governing coalition in Israeli Knesset.

Feature:

An interview with the new president of the Canadian Arab Federation, Omar AlGhabra, about the activities of CAF, especially its recent press release on the apartheid wall. CAF had called on the Canadian government to heed the ICJ ruling and work to implement it, rather than claim the ICJ doesn’t have jurisdiction. There was discussion about world opinion on the ICJ ruling, which is overwhelmingly in favour outside of North America and Europe. Omar also spoke about CAF’s objectives as the major umbrella group in Canada for Arab-Canadians.

Focus on Zionism:

Highlights of a July 13th press release by Amnesty International criticizing an Israeli law that forbids Israelis married to Palestinians from the occupied territories from living together in Israel.

News Highlights:

• July 6th – Israeli forces in Nablus kill a respected Palestinian academic and his son during a military raid near a refugee camp.
• July 6th – Israeli High Court issues temporary injunction to halt work on one section of the apartheid wall near Azzawiya; protests continue by villagers and internationals as Azzawiya will be completely enclosed by the wall.
• July 3rd – Israeli troops in Gaza kill two Palestinian boys, aged 9 and 15; Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza has been under military siege for a week.
• July 4th – Dr. Azmi Bishara, a member of the Israeli Knesset, launched a hunger strike to protest the apartheid wall Israel is building in the West Bank, and in advance of the ruling expected soon from the International Court of Justice; Israel’s Foreign Minister says Israel will not accept the ruling.

Feature:

A special Eyewitness Palestine in a series about the apartheid wall and its impact on Palestinian daily life in the West Bank. The decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague is expected July 9th, and Azmi Bishara, a member of the Israeli Knesset, started a hunger strike on July 3 to draw attention to the horrific consequences of the wall. The full statement he released upon starting the strike was read, and he called upon the international community and the Arab countries to take the necessary steps to stop the building of the apartheid wall. There was also a report by Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery about recent demos against the wall, and explaining how the Israeli Court decisions might be used as a cover by the Israeli government to ignore the ICJ ruling.

Focus on Zionism:

Highlights of a press release from Human Rights Watch, issued July 2nd, criticizing Israeli military attacks on local Palestinian media. The release spoke about the most recent attack in Gaza, which destroyed the offices of AlJeel press agency, in an 11-storey building that also housed the offices for CNN, BBC and AlJazeera.

News Highlights:

• Israeli troops take over part of northern Gaza Strip today; preparing for “a prolonged operation” according to Israeli officials.
• Israeli incursion into civilian areas follows attack by Palestinian resistance on Israeli military base June 28th, in which at least one Israeli soldier was killed.
• Two Palestinians shot dead in Gaza on June 28th, one of them a 13-year-old boy.
• Armed settlers attacked Palestinian farmers in Hebron on June 27th.
• On June 27th, tens of thousands of mourners in Nablus attend the funeral for seven Palestinians killed during an Israeli siege on the city.
• The mayor of Beit Foreek arrested and held at the Ariel settlement, as he returned from the funeral in Nablus.

Feature:

A live interview with Sid Shniad from Stopwar.ca about the recent sham U.S. “handover of power” in Iraq, conducted in secret two days in advance to the announced date. He talked about the development of the Iraqi resistance over the last year, and also about an event Stopwar.ca was holding on June 30th to mark the charade of Iraqi sovereignty. Sid is also a member of the Trade Union Committee for Justice in the Middle East, and he detailed what the group had been doing, including a recent educational workshop, and what they stood for.

Focus on Zionism:

Highlights of a June 28th report about activities of Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, that aim to raise awareness about the systematic torture of Palestinian political prisoners by Israeli security forces.

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.

News Highlights:

• June 14th – Israel starts to annex 150 km in the northern Western Bank for further construction of the apartheid wall, and plans a new settlement south of Jerusalem.
• Despite “promises” to the U.S., Israel is proceeding with the wall east of the large settlement of Ariel.
  Israel is also considering building thousands more houses in West Bank settlements.
• June 13th – two Palestinians wounded in Jenin, the city and refugee camp of Jenin have been constantly raided in the last week.
• Palestinian female political prisoners face inhumane conditions; 29 Palestinian women currently in Israel’s Telmond jail.
• A leading U.N. official warns Caterpillar it may be complicit in human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza, due to its sales of armored bulldozers.

Feature:

Another in the series of Eyewitness Palestine reports on the apartheid wall, this one consisting of two reports, one a personal testimony of a Palestinian villager and the second a commentary by Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery. Abu Jihad from Deir Ballut spoke about how his home and 14 others are being completely isolated by checkpoints and the approaching apartheid wall. Uri Avnery, in an article entitled The Nightmare Comes True, explained how 55% of the West Bank will be Israeli and each Palestinian town will be isolated in its own tiny enclave.

Focus on Zionism:

Highlights of a report from Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights – Concordia about how one of their student members had just been acquitted in a Montreal court of “uttering a death threat”. The unfounded charges had been brought forward by Hillel and Birthright Israel members, and supported by Concordia security personnel. The group concluded that the fact the student had ever been charged at all was one more example of the biased treatment of Palestinian and Arab students at Concordia.