Montreal, February 1, 2022 — Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) welcomes a new report by Amnesty International which concludes that Israeli officials are perpetuating a system of Apartheid against the Palestinian people. Amnesty’s report bolsters the argument made by Palestinians, Israeli human rights groups, South African liberation leaders, and many other credible authorities, who for years have used the term Apartheid to describe forms of Israeli oppression. CJPME urges Canada’s political leaders to meaningfully engage with the report and its conclusions, and to adopt measures to hold Israeli officials accountable for perpetuating the crime of Apartheid.

Montreal, October 30, 2021  — CJPME joins 234 organizations in calling on the international community to protect Palestinian civil society, and to condemn Israel's "terrorist" designation of six leading Palestinian human rights organizations as a wrongful act. Read the joint statement below.

On July 21, 2021, CJPME co-signed a letter to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, demanding editorial and policy changes to improve CBC's coverage of Palestine. The letter was written with CBC Palestine (a collective of independent organizers) and the Coalition of Canadian Palestinian Organizations, and endorsed by 66 civil society groups, including CUPE Ontario, the Canadian Friends Service Committee (Quakers), and Independent Jewish Voices Canada.

Montreal, July 6, 2021  — As Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau’s trip to the Middle East comes to a close, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is calling the initiative a failure due to the Minister’s refusal to hold Israeli officials accountable for egregious human rights violations. “Canadians were shocked to see Minister Garneau take a ‘business-as-usual’ approach to a government led by Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a far-right racist and war criminal who has boasted about killing Arabs and supports perpetual apartheid,” Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME. “Any Canadians looking for indications that their government was prepared to take action to protect the rights of Palestinians will be deeply disappointed” added Bueckert.

Montreal, June 13, 2021 — Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is urging the Canadian government to take immediate action to guarantee the rights and safety of Palestinians following the nomination of Israel’s new far-right Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. CJPME warns that Bennett has a long history of violently racist statements and actions against Palestinians, and therefore poses a grave threat to the millions of Palestinians who live under Israel’s military rule.

Montreal, June 10, 2021  — Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is calling on Green Party of Canada (GPC) leader Annamie Paul to abandon her toxic, anti-Palestine approach to politics before it destroys the party, following the departure of MP Jenica Atwin. Atwin’s decision to leave the GPC comes in the wake of vile attacks against her by Annamie Paul’s senior advisor and spokesperson, who slandered Atwin as antisemitic and vowed to “defeat” her in retaliation for appropriate criticism of Israeli apartheid. Despite Annamie Paul’s insistence that this incident had nothing to do with Atwin leaving, a statement from the GPC caucus confirmed that it “created the conditions that led to this crisis.”

Amid an escalation of violence in Palestine-Israel, legislators from Europe and North America came together earlier today to talk about how to elevate the issue of Palestinian human rights in the global public discussion. 

The meeting was the first for the multi-partisan “Inter-Parliamentary Task Force to Promote Palestinian Human Rights,” which is composed of 23 legislators from 10 countries, including the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Italy, Finland, Belgium and several other European countries. 13 representatives came together for the first meeting, including MPs Niki Ashton and Paul Manly (Canada), MP Tommy Sheppard (UK), MP Veronika Honkasalo (Finland), the Podemos International Secretariat (Spain) and the Offices of Representative Betty McCollum (US) and MP Fotini Bakadima (Greece).

Montreal, April 27, 2021 — Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is calling for action following the release of a ground-breaking report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) which concludes that Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution. CJPME demands that Canada’s political leaders take concrete measures to censure Israel for its Apartheid practices, as recommended by HRW. These include imposing individual sanctions on officials responsible for committing the crime of apartheid, conditioning arms sales to Israel on authorities taking action to end these crimes, and vetting bi-lateral agreements to prevent directly contributing to these crimes.

On 22 April 2021, representatives of 28 Palestinian families constituting approximately 500 Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem, and 191 endorsing organisations (including Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East), sent a letter to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), calling to urgently include the imminent forced displacement of Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah as part of the open investigation within the Situation in the State of Palestine. Specifically, the families called on her Office to include as part of the investigation the related war crimes and crimes against humanity, including forcible transfer, appropriation of property, persecution, apartheid, and other inhumane acts causing great suffering or serious injury to inter alia mental health arising from their forced evictions.

Montreal, January 12, 2021  — Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) applauds Israel’s largest and preeminent human rights organization B’Tselem for its declaration that Israel must be properly understood as an “apartheid” regime. In a groundbreaking new position paper, B’Tselem describes Israeli apartheid as “a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” As B’Tselem executive director Hagai El-Ad wrote in an accompanying opinion piece, "There is not a single square inch in the territory Israel controls where a Palestinian and a Jew are equal."