18 May, Vancouver: Nakba71 – The Palestinian Narrative and Boycott Israeli Wines Picket

Saturday, 18 May
2:00 pm
SFU Vancouver
515 W. Hastings
Vancouver, Canada
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/441083029995730/

Followed by:
4:15 pm
BC Liquor Store, SFU Harbour Centre, gather W. Cordova entrance
Vancouver
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/872688873067520/

Speakers, Films, Personal Testimonies #ExistResistReturn

Gaza-born Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a former Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.

Sobhi Al-Zobaidi is a Palestinian filmmaker, artist and scholar who was born in Jerusalem in 1961 and who grew up in the Jalazone refugee camp near Ramallah. He studied economics at Birzeit University and Cinema at NYU. He is currently completing his Ph.D. at SFU.
He will be presenting his film, My Very Private Map

Local Palestinians will also present their personal stories of being Nakba survivors or descendants.
(This event is part of a Cross Canada Day of Action marking Nakba71.)
**

(This event will follow the public meeting Nakba71 – The Palestinian Narrative at SFU Harbour Centre and is also part of the Nakba 71 -Cross Canada Day of Action to End Canadian Complicity)

David Eby, BC’s Attorney General, is responsible for the provincial Liquor Distribution Branch. For many years, there has been an ongoing local campaign to call for a boycott of Israeli wines, many of them produced in the Occupied Territories, which are being sold in our publicly owned BC Liquor Stores. We had hoped that the NDP government would be more concerned with these blatant violations of international human rights; we asked Mr. Eby to respond to this issue but received exactly the same response we got from previous governments, which was to completely ignore the issues raised and instead focus solely on “personal choice”.

The wines in question are either from the Galil Winery, which is a joint venture with the Golan Heights Winery (the name of which speaks for itself), or from the occupied West Bank, including the illegal Gush Etzion settlement bloc around Jerusalem. Two wines of particular note are the Efrat Judean Hills Kosher and Vision Malbec, both produced by the Israeli Teperberg Winery. This winery openly states that some of its vineyards are in occupied Palestinian territories and even provides a map on its website showing vineyards in the occupied West Bank.

All of this is in direct contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention and “stated” Canadian policy. Detailed information on Israeli wineries can be found in the exhaustive study done by “Who Profits” entitled Forbidden Fruit: Israeli Wine Industry and Occupation.