Montreal, February 22, 2023 — Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) demands that the Canadian government condemn Israel’s deadly military invasion of Nablus today in the occupied West Bank, which reportedly killed at least 10 Palestinians and injured more than 100. Today’s attack comes less than one month after a similar attack in Jenin which killed 10 Palestinians, including at least three civilians. CJPME argues that international condemnation and sanctions are necessary to hold Israeli officials accountable for these actions, which may amount to war crimes, and to prevent Israel from committing further aggressive acts.

CJPME Factsheet No. 223, published June 2021: Mass evictions in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan

Montreal, September 23, 2020  — Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is alarmed by recent actions of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law that amount to censorship of critical scholarship about Israel. The university has been widely criticized for allegedly rescinding a job offer to human rights professor Valentina Azarova after a sitting judge on the Tax Court of Canada — and a major donor to the faculty — complained about Azarova’s scholarship on the Israeli occupation of Palestine. According to the Globe and Mail, the judge who intervened is Justice David Spiro, a former board member of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. The position that Azarova was denied was director of the law school’s International Human Rights Program (IHRP).

June 14, 2018 — Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is disappointed by the Trudeau government’s decision to abstain on a UN General Assembly vote yesterday condemning Israel for its disproportionate violence against Palestinians in Gaza in recent weeks.  The resolution text rightly deplored the “excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate force by the Israeli forces against Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and particularly in the Gaza Strip,” and called attention to Israel’s use of live ammunition against civilian protesters, including children, medics and journalists. 

Montreal, May 15, 2018 — This week, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) commemorates the 70th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba. The Nakba, meaning “catastrophe” in Arabic, refers to the dispossession and loss suffered by the Palestinians as a result of the UN Partition Plan of 1947.  Over a period of several months, at least 700,000 Palestinians became refugees, and hundreds of thousands more were displaced from their homes and livelihoods by Jewish militias. The Nakba is still very much part of the living memory of Palestinians, who still haven’t been allowed to establish their own state, and who face ongoing persecution from the Israeli government.

Montreal, July 13, 2017  — The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has issued a warning concerning the mislabelling of wines from Israeli colonies (aka “settlements”) as products of Israel. CFIA clarified that these grapes are “grown, fermented, processed, blended, and finished in the West Bank occupied territory,” – territories never attributed or recognized as being part of Israel proper. Following the CFIA report, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) discontinued the importation of these mislabelled wines, with remaining bottles to be removed from store shelves.  CJPME commends CFIA for its decision to ensure rigor, transparency, and compliance in regards to the labeling of wines coming from the Middle East, specifically the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT.)

Montreal, July 13, 2017  — Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) wishes to direct media attention to Dr. David Kattenburg, the Winnipeg resident who initiated the complaint to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) which resulted in a directive to liquor vendors to suspend sales of wines falsely labelled as “Made in Israel.”  

CJPME Political Blog, Oct 26, 2016

The appearance of B’Tselem Director Hagai El-Ad at the UN last week caused a healthy furor.  While European and other politicians supported his testimony, Israel’s right-wing leaders went so far as to accuse El-Ad of treason.  Yet this tiny Israeli human rights organization did what international diplomacy has failed to do for years: it held Israel to account – just briefly – for important violations of international law. 

By Peter Lake, published on March 6, 2016

Re: Pro-Israel policy right, by Mike Fegelman, Feb. 25.

Mike Fegelman of the ironically titled pro-Israeli organization Honest Reporting, states in his letter that “…the land (of Palestine) was controlled by various entities throughout time; it was never controlled or taken from the Palestinians.”

He refers to governance, not ownership of land.

The land was, indeed, part of the Ottoman Empire and later, a mandate of the British. Neither of these “entities” engaged in ethnic cleansing or colonization of the Palestinians.

During that time, at least as far back as the publishing of my family’s 1695 atlas, it was known as Palestine.

When the UN gave Israel control of part of Palestine, Israeli militias forked over 700,000 of the indigenous population from their homes and lands, more than half of these before any of the surrounding Arab states mobilized to try to intervene.

To use the fact that Palestine was never independent as a justification for the theft of land is abhorrent.

Documentation declassified by the U.K. and Israel in the ’80s confirmed this and provided material for the correction of the former myth of “a land without a people for a people without a land.”

CJPME is pleased to publish the next of a 15 part election series analyzing the positions of Canada’s political parties. CJPME hopes that, by revealing what parties have said and done on key Middle East issues, Canadians will be better informed voters in the upcoming elections. Our next analysis studies each party’s position on the Israeli colonies also referred to as “settlements”.