Hamilton

Thursday Feb 7

Discussion led by Khaled Mumaar- Canadian Arab Federation president
Location: McMaster University, Room HSC 1A6
Time: 7:00pm

The Iron Wall About the film In 1923 Vladimir Jabotinsky, leading intellectual of the Zionist movement and father of the right wing of that movement, wrote:

"Zionist colonization must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population - behind an IRON WALL, which the native population cannot breach."

From that day these words became the official and unspoken policy of the Zionist movement and later the state of Israel. Settlements were used from the beginning to create a Zionist foothold in Palestine.

After 1967 and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the aim of the settlement movement became clear - create facts on the ground and make the creation of a Palestinian state impossible. Thirty nine years of occupation and the policy started showing results. There are now more than 200 settlements and outposts scattered throughout the West Bank blocking the geographic possibility of a contiguous Palestinian territory.

The Iron Wall documentary exposes this phenomenon and follows the timeline, size, population of the settlements, and its impact on the peace process. This film also touches on the latest project to make the settlements a permanent fact on the ground - the wall that Israel is building in the West Bank and its impact on the Palestinian's peoples.

Settlements and related infrastructures are impacting every aspect of life for all Palestinians from land confiscation, theft of natural resources, confiscation of the basic human rights, creation of an apartheid-like system, to the devastating impact in regards to the future of the region and the prospect of the peace process.

Palestinians and Israelis began the peace process based on a very simple principle: land for peace. Settlements destroy that principle and create a land with no peace.

Thursday Feb 15

Lecture: "Palestine & Israel: Roots of Conflict, Prospects for Peace"
Speaker: Professor Norman G. Finkelstein
Location: Health Science Center (HSC) 1A1, McMaster University
Time: 7:00pm

Professor Norman Finkelstein is a great advocate for Palestinian rights. To find out more, visit www.normanfinkelstein.com Norman G. Finkelstein received his doctorate in 1988 from the Department of Politics, Princeton University, for a thesis on the theory of Zionism. He currently teaches political theory at DePaul University in Chicago. Finkelstein is the author of five books:
Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of anti-Semitism and the abuse of history (University of California Press, August 2005)
The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the exploitation of Jewish suffering (Verso: 2000; expanded second edition, 2003); an international bestseller, it has been translated into twenty four foreign languages
Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (Verso: 1995; expanded second edition, 2003); translated into five foreign languages
A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen thesis and historical truth (with Ruth Bettina Birn) (Henry Holt: 1998); named a "notable book of 1998" by the New York Times Sunday Book Review, it has been translated into three foreign languages
The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A personal account of the intifada years (University of Minnesota: 1996); translated into two foreign languages
In April 2005, Finkelstein was the presenter for an hour-long documentary ("The Final Insult") based on The Holocaust Industry, to be broadcast on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom. He is also the subject of several independent film documentaries currently in production. In 2003 he was the keynote speaker on the main panel at the Rome Historical Book Fair and was a guest on Europe's main television news hour, the Sabine Christiansen show. In 2002 he delivered the annual memorial lecture in history at Alfred University.
Finkelstein was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1953. The dedication for his first book read:
To my beloved parents,
Maryla Husyt Finkelstein,
survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto,
Maidanek concentration camp
and
Zacharias Finkelstein,
survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto,
Auschwitz concentration camp.
May I never forget or forgive what was done to them.