What: International Palestinian Children’s Day When: 11:00am on Saturday 5 April 2025 Where: Kitchener Market Location: 300 King Street East, Kitchener, OntarioMap Contact: wrfriendsofpalestine@gmail.com
Waterloo Region Friends of Palestine writes:
Dear Friends of Palestine,
Always amongst the debris are hidden gems that call for celebration. This week amongst the ongoing carnage of Israeli’s maniacal genocide, we have a moment of brightness, a key to Palestinian liberation that will be the prize of Palestinians. International Palestinian Children’s Day is on Saturday 5 April 2025, it is a mouthful that is easily missed, but, the children of Palestine need to be celebrated and it will be a joy this weekend to shine the spotlight on them, as we also remember their suffering.
Future health care workerWe will be celebrating their spiritual fortitude, their cultural strength and their physical and mental courage. They have been born into a world of chaos and genocidal occupation and still, like a tree growing out of a rock, the children have thrived, learned, loved and played, they have dreams and visions for the future. These children are the future leaders of Palestine and they will liberate Palestine and the world one day. It is in the eyes of this future health care worker that leadership to a better place is the vision and the focus, he and his peers will arrive at a place of justice, dignity and liberation for all.
This Saturday, join the Walk with Grief to lift your spirits, in addition, come to the table for International Palestinian Children’s Day that is just inside the market (Upper level), bring your children, they can colour pictures, write notes to the children of Gaza, share in the candies and other treats available for children.
Do not miss the moment, International Palestinian Children’s Day (IPCD), bring yourself, bring your children to celebrate the future leaders of Palestine.
Please join us at the Walk for Grief, this Saturday at 11am at Kitchener Market. Also, join us inside the market (upper level near front door) 7:00am to 2:00pm.
I wanted to share with you 9 upcoming events, 2 take action alerts and a few resources below. Please scroll down feel free to share.
Also, at the end of this message is a link to a revealing interview that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken did with the New York Times on January 2nd. I transcribed some of the interview. He admits that the US “quietly got a lot of weapons to Ukraine” from September to December 2021. Blinken admits to provocation and to the US refusing to engage in diplomacy though Russia offered two draft treaties to negotiate in December 2021. Blinken also explains Washington’s decision to continue to supply weapons to Israel though Gaza is “decimated” (essentially to use Israel as a proxy to attack other countries in the region) and he admits there have been many private and public complaints in his department for what the US is doing supporting & arming Israel. See the link below.
With solidarity and hope for peace and justice in 2025,
Tamara
WEBINAR: “They Shoot Children in the Head”: A US Surgeon Reports What He Saw in Gaza
Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is a trauma surgeon who has volunteered in conflict zones around the world. The weeks in March – April 2024 he spent at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza were like nothing else he had ever witnessed: patients universally in extreme physical and psychiatric distress, the rampant dehydration and malnutrition, the total lack of medical equipment and supplies, the squalid conditions. In particular, he was haunted by something he saw again and again: children shot in the head.
Since returning, Dr. Sidhwa has been telling the world what he witnessed. His account along with those of 64 other healthcare workers appeared in the widely publicized New York Times opinion piece, “65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza“ in October. His message is clear: the U.S. must enforce American laws and stop supplying weapons to Israel. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is a surgeon at San Joaquin General Hospital in Stockton, California. He has worked in conflict zones worldwide, including in Palestine, Ukraine, Haiti, Zimbabwe and Burkina Faso.
WEBINAR: U.S. Foreign Policy
Thursday, January 9, at 5:00pm Pacific / 8:00pm Eastern
We will examine the role of American militarism in fostering a less safe, less just, and less democratic world. Experts will explore critical issues such as resistance to U.S. foreign policy, the intersections between militarism at home and abroad, the true cost of exorbitant military spending, the existential threat of nuclear weapons, and more.
We will be joined by David Vine, author of Base Nation, Island of Shame, and The United States of War; Christian Appy, Director of the Ellsberg Initiative for Peace and Democracy and author of American Reckoning; Sonali Kolhatkar, journalist and author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice and co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan; Emma Claire Foley, Defuse Nuclear War leader and RootsAction nuclear specialist; David Swanson, Executive Director of World BEYOND War, Campaign Coordinator at RootsAction, and author of War is a Lie.
On Saturday, January 11, 2025, at 19:00 CET (1:00pm EST), RESIST NATO – EUROPE will hold an online event: Resist US-NATO Aggression, Bases, and the Militarization of Europe! Uphold Peoples’ Rights and Liberation!
NATO operates as a US-led military alliance central to imperialist wars and occupations that have caused the deaths and displacement of millions worldwide. NATO’s strategy of expansionism, as demonstrated by its proxy involvement in Ukraine, intensifies conflicts and interimperialist rivalries while advancing U.S. geopolitical interests at the expense of global peace. NATO’s collaboration with non-member states through programs like the Mediterranean Dialogue, Partnership for Peace, and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative extends its militaristic agenda. These partnerships, including those with the Israeli government, further enable systemic violence, such as Israel’s human rights abuses and ongoing genocide in Palestine. By prioritizing militarization and increased military spending, NATO undermines global stability, exacerbates inequalities, and diverts resources away from vital public services.
This event will focus on organizing collective actions leading up to the NATO Summit in The Hague on June 24–25, 2025. It will also serve as a platform to discuss NATO’s role in fueling imperialist wars, expanding militarization, and undermining democratic rights. The discussions will explore pathways to support the right of peoples and nations to resist imperialist aggression, establish self-determination, and uphold their sovereignty.
January 12 – MANDATES AND REPRESSION IN PALESTINE AND BEYOND: The failure of the British colonial attempt to shape Palestine in conformance with the Balfour Declaration; Palestinian resistance and the first proposals for partition; Zionist terror; British, French colonialism in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
January 26 – ISRAELI INDEPENDENCE AND “NAKBA”: The UN proposed partition of Palestine, Israeli declaration of independence and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from 1947 to the present; Arab and Palestinian resistance.
February 2 – LOOKING IN THE MIRROR: How the U.S. has shaped the contemporary Middle East from before the Cold War to the present. Indigenous nationalism and its opponents. Addressing the domestic colonial and imperial background to US support for Israel and its destabilizing interference in the region.
Speaker: Jeff Klein is a veteran anti-war activist, retired machinist and local trade-union president, who for 8 years until 2023 taught a course on “The US in the Middle East” at the UMass Boston Lifelong Learning Institute. He is a board member of Massachusetts Peace Action and a member of its Gaza Israel Mideast peace campaign’s steering committee.
Since 2004 Jeff has traveled almost every year to Palestine/Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East, and has many close friends among veteran activists in Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan. He has also worked in Nicaragua and for the exiled African National Congress in Zambia. Check out his weekly presentations on “Genocide in Gaza” and read his articles on the Middle East.
Register to attend any or all of the four sessions.
WEBINAR: The Tragedy of the Ukraine War: Compromise or Collapse?
With speaker: Nicolai N. Petro, Professor of Political Science at University of Rhode Island. Author of “The Tragedy of Ukraine: What Classical Greek Tragedy Can Teach Us About Conflict Resolution” (2023).
WEBINAR: The Scientists Who Alerted us to the Dangers of Radiation
Canadian book launch and webinar with authors: Dr. Ian Fairlie and Cindy Folkers
Thur. Jan. 16, Noon – 1:00pm EST
This book reveals that the harmful effects of radiation exposure – especially from the nuclear sector and especially to children – are more pervasive and worse than thought. These have been known for decades but suppressed by politically-motivated censorship and overt disparagement/persecution. Anyone who ever wondered about radiation or its close relative, radioactivity, should read the book and attend this webinar. It’s timely because the feds and several provincial governments are pushing hard for more public exposures to radiation via nuclear power. It explains radiation in easy-to-grasp language which clarifies its dangers and risks. Both authors will present on the webinar.
Jan 25, 2025 1:00pm New York (EST), 6:00pm London (GMT), 7:d00pm Central European time (CET)
You are invited to join our webinar: European Nukes – Time To Go! This informative discussion will be held on Jan 25th. This webinar is addressing the growing NATO presence in Europe and the imposition of nuclear weapons in NATO countries. Moderated by Kate Hudson, CND, and Pippa Bartolotti, UNAC and GWUAN
WEBINAR: “Autonomous Armageddon: Nuclear Weapons and AI”
Join us for a critical webinar on Sunday, January 26, at 9:00am EST / 2:00pm GMT, “Autonomous Armageddon: Nuclear Weapons and AI”, to explore the alarming dangers posed by the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into nuclear weapons systems. Register now: http://ippnw.org/ai
If you know people in the Windsor, ON area, journalist & lawyer Dimitri Lascaris and I are giving a talk “War, Peace & Propaganda: What the West Should Learn from the War in Ukraine and the Genocide in Gaza” on Weds. Jan 15, 6:00pm – 8:00pm, Location: University of Windsor School of Law Moot Court, 401 Sunset Avenue, corner of California Ave. and University Ave. https://forms.gle/5ieD7hfYuobPNc2h6 (if you have contacts in the area, please let them know!)
*What France, the US and Canada did to Haiti… it’s a tragedy and a crime.
BLINKEN INTERVIEW WITH THE NEW YORK TIMES
Transcript excerpt
11:39 NYT Question: “You made two early strategic decisions on Ukraine. The first was to restrict Ukraine’s use of American weapons within Russia. The second was to support Ukraine’s military offensive without a parallel diplomatic track to try to end the conflict. How do you look back on those decisions now?”
12:00 Blinken: “If you look at the trajectory of the conflict, because we saw it coming, we were able to make sure that not only were we prepared and our allies and partners were prepared, but Ukraine was prepared. We made sure that that well before the Russian aggression happened starting in September, the Russian aggression happened in February, starting in September then again in December, we quietly got a lot of weapons to Ukraine to make sure that they had in hand what they needed to defend themselves, things like stingers and javelins, that they could use that were instrumental in preventing Russia from taking Kyiv and from rolling over the country erasing it off the map and pushing the Russians back.”
(The US is admitting it provoked the war and refused to engage in diplomacy)
33:08NYTQuestion: “The war is still being prosecuted. Hamas is no longer deemed a threat in the way that it was and the population has been completely decimated. So, I’m curious, why still provide these weapons to Israel?”
33:20 Blinken: “As I have said from Day 1, first of all, we have been and will remain fundamentally committed to Israel’s defence. And unfortunately, it faces adversaries and enemies from all directions and that means the support that the U.S. provides over many administrations, Republican and Democrat, over many years that support is vital to make sure that Israel is able to defend itself… And in turn, that means we aren’t going to have an even wider, broader conflict that results in more death and destruction. So, it’s been vital to maintain that.”
(The US is using Israel as a proxy for a wider war in the Middle East/West Asia)
Question: I do want to ask you about your own standing in the Department that you lead. Because you have had a series of very public defections over the conduct at the State Department over Gaza. The latest to speak out is Mike Casey, who was the state department’s deputy political counselor on Gaza and resigned in July. He recently talked to the Guardian about his tenure. He claimed that the State Department frequently rolled over for Israel. No one would read his reports on civilian casualties. He said that he and his colleagues used to joke that they could attach cash to the reports and still they would fall on deaf ears. That’s very dark. How do you respond to that?
Blinken: “I have inordinate respect for the people in the Department who have had different views…”
(He talks about the dissent cables within the Department. See links to Mike Casey below.)
Question: Do you worry, Secretary Blinken, that perhaps you have been presiding over what the world will see as a genocide?
We know from the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine that violations of the Minsk agreement escalated from January 2022 from the US-backed Ukrainian security forces shooting and shelling the ethnic Russian minority in the Donbass until Russia invaded on Feb. 24, 2022, there was provocation. Two wrongs don’t make a right but we need a truth & reconciliation process along with negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. See: https://www.osce.org/special-monitoring-mission-to-ukraine-closed (see daily logs of ceasefire violations in January and February 2022)
At a time when hate-crime statistics for Kitchener-Waterloo and Cambridge have made national news, a local organization says it is more important than ever to remember the 14 young women who were killed 35 years ago on December 6, 1989 at the École Polytechnique de Montréal.
CFUW K-W, formerly known as the Canadian Federation of University Women, will host a vigil for the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women on Friday 6 December 2024 at St. Columba Anglican Church, 250 Lincoln Road in Waterloo at 5:30 p.m.
Vigil organizing committee chair and CFUW K-W member, Margaret Walker, said the event will include short speeches and opportunities for reflection and remembering.
“These 14 young women should be at the peak of their careers today,” Walker said. “Instead they lost their lives at a young age solely because of their gender.”
She said the vigil is a way to affirm equal rights. “We believe this is especially important at a time when Statistics Canada has released crime data indicating that Kitchener-Waterloo and Cambridge have the highest rate of reported hate crimes across all metropolitan areas in Canada.”
The vigil will feature music performed by violinist Kaitlynn Cook and pianist Lisa Santoprete from Wilfrid Laurier University’s Faculty of Music.
St. Columba Anglican Church can be reached by Grand River Transit Bus 29. It stops at the corner of Lincoln Road and Mayfield Avenue, next to the church.
Come out Saturday, 16 November 2024 at 1:00pm to hear from Dr. Yipeng Ge at the Rally Against F-35!
Raised in the Waterloo region, Dr. Ge is a physician based in Ottawa. He spent time in Gaza earlier this year working in primary care clinics in Rafah, and has seen firsthand the impact of F-35s:
“These fighter jets have contributed to the killing and maiming of innocent children and civilians, some of whom were the patients I looked after when I was in Gaza.”
Weapons components used to build F-35s, which are then used by Israel to bomb Gaza and Lebanon, are being built right here in our community. On Saturday we’ll let our MPs know we won’t tolerate Canada’s complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide.
Join us to hear from Dr. Ge as we stand together on this national day of action. Together we can make our voices heard.
What: War, Peace and Propaganda: What the West should learn from the war in Ukraine and genocide in Gaza. When: 7:00pm to 8:30 on Tuesday 12 November 2024 Where: Westmount Boardroom, Federation Hall at the University of Waterloo Location: 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario Map Online: via Zoom: http://tiny.cc/WARPEACEPROPAGANDA Speakers: Dimitri Lascaris, journalist & lawyer, Tamara Lorincz, academic & activist, and more!
This is a free, hybrid event. Come in person or join us online. Register in advance for this Zoom meeting.
(Federation Hall is located at the corner of Columbia Street, Hagey Boulevarde. and Ring Road on campus. Paid parking next to building. Bus: Routes 201, 13, 30, 31, and the LRT has a stop on campus).
Come to discuss the war in Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza, Canada’s roles in these crises and what we can do for peace and justice. We’ll also talk about what the government and mainstream media are ignoring. All are welcome. Donations greatly appreciated.
Speakers
Dimitri Lascaris is a lawyer based in Montreal. He is also a freelance journalist and the host of a YouTube program called “Reason2Resist”. Over the past two years, Dimitri has reported from and conducted interviews in West Asia, Venezuela, Moscow and Crimea. Dimitri will discuss his latest reporting in the West Bank and Lebanon.
Tamara Lorincz is a PhD candidate at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University. She is a member of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom-Canada and fellow with the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute. Tamara will talk about her recent trips to the climate summits, Eastern Europe, Russia and Washington D.C. related to the war in Ukraine & NATO and possibilities for peace, climate and cooperation.
Organized & endorsed by the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom-Canada, People for Peace London, Council of Canadians-London Chapter, Waterloo Region Friends of Palestine, Palestine Youth Movement, Waterloo Neighbours for Palestine, Ottawa Peace Council, Reimagine Co., Mississauga-Streetsville for Palestine, and the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute.
What: “We are NOT a Willing Host” Protest Rally When: 6:00pm on Wednesday 28 August 2024 Where: Outside, Region of Waterloo Council Meeting Location: 150 Frederick Street, Kitchener Map Contact: wilmotlandowners@gmail.com
The Fight For Farmland Group is asking for support at two particularly important rallies. It is important that the public turn out to show that Wilmot Township “Is NOT a Willing Host”. This is in response to Doug Ford’s comment that they would not force a mega industrial site on an unwilling host. If it’s appropriate, we encourage you to forward this invitation on to your individual group’s contact list.
Wilmot Township Community members will gather for the “We are NOT a Willing Host” protest to stand united against the Wilmot Land Assembly. This rally aims to send a clear and powerful message to the Township that the community is firmly against being designated as a willing host for the proposed development.
This is expected to be our biggest rally yet. We urge everyone in the community to join us and show our collective strength.
The event will feature a live performance by local artist Punkeydoodles Steve, who will perform his hit song “770 Acres.”
Attendees will have the opportunity to hear from local farmers and guest speakers who will share their perspectives on the proposed development.
We are gratefully accepting donated food items for the Wilmot Family Resource Centre. Your contributions will support local families in need.
Please bring your signs and banners to show that we are NOT willing hosts!
Please join us tomorrow morning if you can before work! Please spread the word!
What: STAND WITH GAZA & SOLIDARITY WITH STUDENTS In the U.S. FOR PALESTINE When: 8:30am to 9:30am, Wednesday 1 May 2024 Where: In front of University of Waterloo, ION train crossing Location: 170 University Avenue, Waterloo Map
Join us with your flags & signs.
In Gaza, there are over 42,000 Palestinians killed and over 79,000 injured. All the universities, schools and libraries are destroyed. Most of the hospitals and homes are in ruins. Academics, doctors, nurses, paramedics and journalists and their families are killed. Israel is blocking aid and food to Gaza and Palestinians are starving. This is a genocide! See these EuroMed Human Rights statistics.
Across North America, students are rising up, occupying their campuses and condemning university complicity in the genocide unfolding in Gaza. American students have been violently assaulted and detained by police.
Canadian universities are complicit in their silence. The universities and colleges in Waterloo-Kitchener should stop being silent, should speak out against genocide & divest from weapons & war. No more research with weapons companies.