From an Israeli to Jack Layton

Lia Tarachansky — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:06:43 +0000

Dear Jack Layton,

I would like to commend you on your decision to participate in the Durban Review Conference in April 2009. Canada's boycott of this Geneva conference goes to demonstrate the government's recent change in foreign relations to Israel. It goes hand in hand with the recently signed Canada-Israel Free Trade agreement, and the Security Agreement between our two countries.

I am a Canadian Israeli and have previously lived in the West Bank in an illegal settlement (on Palestinian land). In spite of the fact that the entire world has again and again agreed the occupation of the West Bank, the building of Settlements, and the construction of the Wall are contradictory to international law, Israel has proceeded to ignore them. In spite of the International Court of Justice decision, and the annual voting by the United Nations on the Palestinian Refugee's right of return, Israel has been implementing racist, apartheid laws and enforcing them year after year.

As a former refugee from the Soviet Union, I remember not belonging anywhere, I remember the complete dire poverty, and the deafening fear of persecution. We have been faced with centuries of anti-Semitism in the former USSR and have lived through immense discriminatory violence within our lifetimes. That is why when we escaped to Israel we were at first blind to the political significance of our presence there and what our new nation was doing to its indigenous population. It took living in the West Bank as economic settlers to see the system of apartheid for what it really is.

Doha Trade Talks Take a Step

Wed, 25 Aug 2004 23:26:19 +0000

In Geneva on July 31st, negotiators for the G20 group of developing nations, along with the G90 group of the world's poorest countries, reached an agreement with G8 nations for a "framework for establishing modalities in agriculture," a step in the Doha round of trade talks that had been stalled since the WTO's September 2003 meeting in Cancun.

Despite pressure from non-governmental organizations opposed to globalization, the G20, led by Brazil, negotiated an agreement with the G8 to force the world's leading nations to stop subsidizing farm exports and taxing farm imports in order to give greater access to foreign markets to developing nations.

Globalization opponents are concerned that G20 nations are giving up too much control of their own domestic economies in exchange for an increased role as suppliers of raw material. Short-term benefits, they say, do not out-weigh the disadvantages of giving up democratic controls over domestic economies. Supporters of the trade talks claim that money made by the developing economies of the G20 by farming, along with foreign investment, will pay for developing the skills of the countries' labour forces, benefiting them in the long term.

The Dominion - Geneva

From an Israeli to Jack Layton

Doha Trade Talks Take a Step