16th annual Israeli Apartheid Week 2020: United Against Racism
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#IsraeliApartheidWeek #UnitedAgainstRacism Childminding & accessibility requests are most welcome via email by Feb 25, 2020: saia.opirg.uoft@gmail.com. |
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IAW 2020 Schedule
Sunday, March 8th @ 6pm (doors@5pm)
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Dr. Angela Davis:
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Thursday, March 12 @ 6:30pm
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Break the Empire's Chains: Free Gaza & All Political Prisoners! Featuring: Yafa Jarrar (via skype) & Devyn Springer |
Tuesday, March 17th @ 6:30pm
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Film: Gaza Fights for Freedom with Abby Martin (via skype)
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Overview
The Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement at the University of Toronto welcomes you to join us for the 16th annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) 2020 under the banner of United Against Racism. We are deeply honoured and overjoyed to host legendary freedom fighter and renowned intellectual, Dr. Angela Davis, for the opening keynote of IAW on International Women’s Day, Sunday, March 8 at 6pm on the theme, Justice Is Indivisible.
IAW2020 also features the radical visionaries and antiprison activists, Yafa Jarrar (via skype) and Devyn Springer on Thursday, March 12 on Break the Empire’s Chains: Free Gaza & All Political Prisoners. On Tuesday, March 17, join us for a viewing of the documentary, Gaza Fights for Freedom featuring the groundbreaking director, Abby Martin (via skype).
IAW 2020 calls on progressive movements, groups and organizations fighting all forms of racism, racial discrimination, marginalization and oppression to join forces. It advocates for Palestinian rights in the context of global struggles against racial oppression. It is more urgent than ever to join together our struggles for freedom, justice, equality and dignity and to recognize that Israel’s far-right regime is a key partner of authoritarian and even genocidal regimes worldwide, supplying them with deadly military and security technologies.
The BDS movement at UofT dedicates IAW2020 with profound love and admiration to the people of Gaza, Palestine for their courage and steadfastness (summoud, الصمود). IAW2020 at UofT interrupts the prevalent silence on the Israeli blockade that has turned this tiny seaside strip into the world’s largest and most populated open-air prison. It brings attention to the atrocious human rights situation and routine violences facing the Palestinians daily under Israeli apartheid.
ABOUT IAW 2020 - United Against Racism
First launched in Toronto in 2005, Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) has become one of the most important global events in the Palestine solidarity calendar. IAW is an international series of events that aims to raise awareness of Israel’s apartheid regime over the Palestinian people and build support for the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
This year’s IAW theme, United Against Racism, brings attention to the fact that Israeli apartheid poses a serious threat not just to the indigenous Palestinians but also to oppressed communities worldwide.
For example:
- Through Israeli-US exchange programs, Israeli soldiers, police, border agents, are sharing worst practices of racialized and repressive policing with US police, ICE, border patrol and the FBI to criminalize asylum seekers and immigrant communities;
- Israel has been a key supplier of weapons and security systems to genocidal regimes from Rwanda to Myanmar, and its security/espionage technology has played a crucial role in grave human rights violations perpetrated by rogue regimes like the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, among others.
- Israeli “field-tested” military and surveillance doctrines and products, including drones, are used by the US and EU for the creation of militarized borders that prevent entry of refugees and migrants from the Global South fleeing armed conflicts, climate devastation and poverty;
- Israel sells India an average of $1 billion in arms per year, fueling India’s militarization and repression in Kashmir, training Indian police, and serving as a model for the Hindu nationalist government’s increasingly repressive measures targeting its Muslim population and other minorities.
- In Brazil, Israeli weapons and population control technologies fuel more militarization and racist police violence by the fanatic Bolsonaro government against blacks, indigenous communities and residents of the favelas.
Palestinians and progressives worldwide are resisting the Trump-Netanyahu “deal of the century” not only because it is designed to entrench Israeli apartheid and liquidate Palestinian rights. It also embodies a trend of undermining international law and, with it, world peace.
In this context, resisting anti-democratic attempts to silence and demonize advocacy of Palestinian rights, especially in western states, becomes crucial in defending universal civic and democratic rights, including freedom of expression.
From Palestine and other Arab countries, and across wider Asia, Africa, Europe and North and South America, IAW 2020 will take place primarily between 8 March and the International Day against Racism and Racial Discrimination on 21 March. This latter day commemorates the massacre committed in Sharpeville in 1960 by the South African apartheid regime.
IAW activities will raise public awareness and take to the streets to convey the message that what was unacceptable in South Africa under apartheid must not be accepted in Palestine today. Israel’s regime of racial superiority and segregation, settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing and expropriation of the indigenous Palestinian people, underpinned and “legalized” by a system of racist Israeli laws and military orders, is a regime of apartheid as defined in international law.
Governments worldwide and the United Nations have defined apartheid as a crime against humanity that must be suppressed and punished wherever it is perpetrated. Joining the Palestinian civil society-led BDS movement in global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaigns is a moral duty of citizens, and it is the most effective means for building pressure on governments to eventually impose sanctions on Israeli apartheid similar to those that helped end apartheid in South Africa.
IAW2020 is hosted by:
- CUPE 3902’s BDS Committee
- CUPE 3902’s Racialised Workers Caucus
- UofT’s Students Against Israeli Apartheid
- UofT’s Independent Jewish Voices
- UofT’s Graduate Student Union’s BDS Committee
- New College Initiatives Fund; Youth, Activism and Community Initiative (Equity Studies), New College
- Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario
- CUPE Local 3902
- CUPE Ontario International Solidarity Committee
- CUPE Local 1281
- CUPE Ontario District Council - Toronto, Local 9103
- OPIRG Toronto
IAW2020 is endorsed by:
- Palestine Youth Movement
- CUPE Ontario District Council - Toronto, Local 9103
- Caribbean Solidarity Network
- Casa Salvador Allende
- Latin American & Caribbean Solidarity Network (LACSN)
- Women’s Coordinating Committee for a Free Wallmapu
- Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid
- CUPE Local 1281
- OPIRG Toronto
- Faculty for Palestine (F4P, University of Toronto)
- Students for Justice in Palestine, Ryerson University
- Palestine Solidarity Collective, York University
- No One Is Illegal
- UofT Leap
- Upping the Anti
- Vegans for BDS
- International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network-Canada (IJAN-Canada)
- Women in Solidarity with Palestine (WSP)
Call for Endorsers
Call for Volunteers
UofT’s Students Against Israeli Apartheid welcomes all those committed to solidarity with Palestine to volunteer for IAW2020. Volunteering at IAW is a great way to make a difference while learning and gaining experience with the BDS movement. People of all experiences are welcome! Training and support will be provided. Join the IAW20202 team here!