Bridge of Return

[For those in or near Montréal. -jlt]

Featuring Ilan Pappe, Ali Abunimah, Roland Chrisjohn and more...

May 2nd - May 4th: Bridge of Return
Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) 10th Anniversary Conference during the 60th year of ethnic cleansing in Palestine

FRI: "Zionist Apartheid and the One Country Solution"
SAT: "Native Solidarity from Here to Palestine"
SUN: "Boycott, Direct Action and Movement Building"

Full Schedule: http://www.sphr.org

*This Friday, May 2nd* Prof. Ilan Pappe and Ali Abunimah
7pm - Keynote Presentation: "Zionist Apartheid and the One Country
Solution" Opening Address by Rezeq Faraj
(McGill U. Leacock Building Room 132. 855 Sherbrooke Street W.)

Prof. Ilan Pappe was born in Haifa to German-Jewish parents who had fled Nazi persecution in the 1930s. He graduated from the Hebrew University in 1978, and obtained his D.Phil. from the University of
Oxford in 1984. He was the Academic Director of the Research Institute for Peace at Givat Haviva from 1993 to 2000, and is currently teaching at the University of Exeter in Britain. His early books dealt with Israeli policy in 1948, a subject he has returned to in his latest book, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine".

Ali Abunimah, a writer and commentator on Middle East affairs is the co-founder of Electronic Intifada. Abunimah makes the radical argument that what is needed is one state shared by Palestinians and Israelis in his book, One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. His articles have appeared in The New
York Times, The Financial Times, The Jordan Times, Lebanon's Daily Star and Ha'aretz, among others. He was born in the United States and grew up in Europe. Both of his parents are originally from Palestine and he currently lives in Chicago.

Rezeq Faraj was born in Palestine before the 1948 Nakba and creation of the State of Israel. He grew up in the Dehiesha refugee camp near Bethlehem where family members still live. In 1966, after a stay in Europe, Rezeq Faraj arrived in Canada. After 28 years in teaching, he retired in March 2003. Rezeq Faraj is the author of the book, Palestine: le refus de disparaître. He is the co-founder of Palestinian and Jewish Unity (PAJU) in Montreal.

*Saturday, May 3rd* Dr. Roland Chrisjohn, Laith Marouf and Jamila Ghadar
7pm - Plenary: "Native Solidarity from Here to Palestine"
(Concordia U., Room H-937, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.)

Dr. Roland Chrisjohn is a member of the Oneida Nation of the Confederacy of the Haudenausaunee (Iroquois). He received his Ph. D. in 1981 from the University of Western Ontario in Personality and Psychometrics, and obtained certification as a Clinical Psychologist in 1986. He has been involved in indigenous affairs in Canada for over 30 years, participating in a variety of ways in different aspects of
the struggle. He has worked with Aboriginal young offenders, women's organization, prisoner's associations, family and children services, and suicide intervention programs. He has written more than 50 articles on a variety of subjects, and is author of The Circle Game: Shadows and Substance in the Indian Residential School Experience in Canada (Theytus Press, 1997). Dr. Chrisjohn is currently working on one book on Racism in Canada and another on Suicide.

Laith Marouf majored in Political Science at Concordia University in Montreal where he held the office of VP Internal at the Concordia Student Union (2001). He is currently the Chapter Coordinator at SPHR-National and also is the Executive Producer of CKUT's "Under the Olive Tree" - eastern Canada's only Palestinian community radio show. Since visiting the Grassy Narrow Blockade on Ojibway land in the winter of 2003, he has traveled as a media activist to Native communities across Canada.

Jamila Ghadar is a founding member of SPHR at McMaster University. She has been a vocal member of her Arab community in London, Ontario. She also was among members of SPHR who mobilized in support of Six Nations struggles.

*Saturday, May 4th* Prof. Margaret Aziza Pappano, Prof. Salem Valley,
Dana Olwan, and Adam Hanieh
5pm - Closing plenary: "Boycott, Direct Action and Movement Building"
(Concordia U., Room H-110 , 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.)

Prof. Margaret Aziza Pappano is an Associate Professor of English at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario; her specialty is medieval literature. In 2006 she visited the West Bank as part of the institute, "Connecting Dearborn and Jerusalem," sponsored by the Center for Arab American Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

Prof. Salem Valley is a South African activist and a former regional executive member of the high school South African Student's Movement (SASM). He is the chairperson of the Palestine Solidarity Committee and the Anti-War Coalition in South Africa. Vally is currently a visiting scholar at the School of Social Sciences at York University in Toronto.

Dana Olwan (PhD '09 ) is national chair of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights and is an active member of the SPHR chapter on her campus. She is currently teaching in the English Department at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. She is a 5th year PhD student in the English Department

Adam Hanieh is a graduate student at York University, Toronto, and co-author of Stolen Youth: The Politics of Israel's Detention of Palestinian Children (Pluto Press, 2004). His research interests include the political economy of neo-liberalism, and Middle East politics. He is currently active with the Coalition Against Israeli
Apartheid.

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