by Barry Weisleder / November 2006
Over 600 people attended a landmark conference, Boycotting Israeli Apartheid: The Struggle Continues, held Oct. 6-8 in Toronto. Leading anti-apartheid activists from Palestine, South Africa, Canada, and England addressed the way forward in the global campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions.
Jamal Juma’a, coordinator of the Stop the Wall Campaign in Palestine, emphasized that this movement would succeed as it had in South Africa. Salim Vally, chair of the Palestine Solidarity Committee in South Africa, analyzed Israeli apartheid and its resemblance to that of South Africa.
Betty Hunter, general secretary of the UK Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and Jonathan Rosenhead, member of the British Committee for Universities in Palestine, spoke on the lessons of Palestine solidarity work in England. Robert Lovelace, co-chief of the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation, closed the conference with a powerful comparison of the experiences of colonialism in Canada and Palestine.
The conference was organized by the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA), a movement formed in response to the call by 171 Palestinian organizations in July 2005 for the international community to implement a boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) strategy against Israel. To get involved in the campaign against Israeli apartheid, contact CAIA at endapartheid@riseup.net or through http://www.caiaweb.org
