Features

“We are waiting to rebuild Gaza as scholars”: Canadian government stalls visas for students in Gaza admitted to Ontario universities

Audio excerpts of interviews with Nour, Khaled, and Raneen – students in Gaza accepted to Canadian universities: “I am Nour from Gaza. I have got a PhD acceptance in the civil engineering department at Toronto University since May 2024. I want to complete my PhD in order to get back to Gaza and rebuild it after the destruction happened in the war,” says Nour over a WhatsApp audio call from Gaza City on Wednesday, December 3. “Here, the destruction is very huge, the buildings are destructed, infrastructure is destructed, streets destructed, so we dream about this — a good education…

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“We do not make peace with colonizers”: Palestine rally, vigil on UN International Day of Peace 

On September 21st, the UN International Day of Peace, Londoners gathered at Victoria Park for a Palestine rally and vigil. The crowd was filled with human rights posters, Palestinian flags, and keffiyehs that reeled honks of solidarity from passing cars.  End genocide, end apartheid, free Palestine, read the posters. In Gaza, a bag of flour costs a life. Against killing kids?: Palestine is your cause. Invest in justice, stop arming Israel. You can’t say I didn’t know, you can only say I didn’t care.  Speeches from community members redefined “peace” with imagery of resistance and a rage that grieves.  ***…

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“Live for what they died for”: Srebrenica and Gaza genocide documentaries move London community

“I went to Bosnia not expecting to necessarily see Gaza, but everywhere I looked in Bosnia, there was Gaza. I think maybe some of the people that feel closest to Gaza in the world today are in Bosnia,” says Palestinian community member Nabil Sultan of his visit to Bosnia, sharing his reflections on the documentary Survivors of Srebrenica screened at London Public Library on the evening of August 29th. “You see it on the streets, in the graffiti, in the keffiyehs people wear. Even in Srebrenica they have the keffiyehs — the families of the victims who were going to…

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Keffiyehs, banners, cheers, and suppression: Four days of Western University’s graduation convocations

From June 10th to June 13th, Western University convocations were held at Canada Life Place. They were invigorated by protests for Palestine.  Numerous graduating students across disciplines and faculties faced the celebratory stage with Palestine flags, banners calling for justice, and regalia draped with keffiyehs. Outside, more protesters held banners and chanted human rights declarations to the downtown rush. They stationed themselves in areas where students arrived to pick up regalia and families waited before convocations began.   University administration, London police, and Canada Life Place staff attempted to quell the protests.  *** On the morning of June 10th —  the…

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“We won’t forget, and we won’t stay silent”: London’s Bosnian community marks 30th anniversary of Srebrenica genocide

On Saturday, July 12, the Bosnian Canadian Islamic Centre (BCIC) held a memorial in the Rayner Gardens area of Springbank Park to mark 30 years since the devastating events of the Srebrenica genocide. As the hot midday sun bore down on the attendees, members of the BCIC, local MPs, City officials, and Muslim community leaders spoke on the importance of remembrance and recognition in preserving the memory of the victims and ensuring the atrocities of that day are never repeated again. In April of 1993, a year into the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the UN declared the town of…

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d an ACORN banner

The Slummies: Inside London ACORN’s “slumlord” awards

On July 14, London’s ACORN tenant organizing group held its first “Slumlord of the Year” awards ceremony, a mock award ceremony to call attention to what their survey-based data suggests are some of the city’s worst landlords. Their aim is to encourage the city to hold these landlords accountable.  Over the past several months, London ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), a tenant advocacy group, conducted a survey of tenants across the city, gathering around 80 responses. Complete with tenant testimonials and bronze, silver, and gold “slumlord” trophies to give to landlords across the city, the awards ceremony…

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“We carry your memory like fire in our veins”: 77th Nakba Day 

Whenever someone asked me my name, it was always followed by: “Are you a refugee or a citizen?” As a child, I would ask: “What is a refugee?” On this year’s Nakba Day — May 15, 2025 — an Al Jazeera article by Ruwaida Amer in Gaza describes the 1948 displacement of her grandparents from their razed village of Beir Daras to Khan Younis, where she was born in a refugee camp. Her grandfather was fifteen years old during the Nakba, married and with a baby son. The baby — Amer’s uncle — died as they fled. He was just…

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“Ongoing return”: A living archive of Palestine

To cast my net I found the waves Some laughing, some crying The wave asked me ‘what’s the matter?’ I said ‘I’ve lost my beloved’ Truly, I’ve lost my beloved Partition, a film directed by McGill anthropology professor Diana Allan, begins with an Arabic song confessing to the sea. The lyrics ring against granulated black and white footage of the sloping hills and winding roads of Gaza, 1917. The scenes shift to British soldiers marching in synchrony and to explosions – grainy, soundless, and distorted.  Sleep, my son, sleep The slumber of gazelles in the wilderness  Oh Lord, may my…

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A protestor with a Palestinian flag. Photo taken by Moses Odida.

“Western racism is its DNA”: Talk by Palestinian scholar Saree Makdisi on genocide in Gaza

Originally published at The Socialist on April 16th, 2025 On Wednesday, March 19, Dr. Saree Makdisi presented at Western University for a public lecture titled, “Gaza and the Question of Palestine.”  Dr. Makdisi is the Chair of the Department of English at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), a prominent scholar of romantic literature, and public intellectual who authored Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation (2008) and Tolerance is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial (2022).  He is also the nephew of the late scholar Edward Saïd, who is responsible for foundational work in postcolonial theory. Saïd’s seminal work, Orientalism (1979) describes the West’s…

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“There’s no Pride without Palestine”: Perspectives on pinkwashing 

On Tuesday, March 18th, two Israeli youth spoke to a Queer Theory class at Western University about queer feminist critique of Israeli militarism and pinkwashing.  “Pinkwashing” refers to the portrayal of Israel as “more humane, modern, and accepting” than the Arab world when it comes to embracing the queer community, and using this portrayal currently to morally justify the ongoing genocide in Gaza.  Einat Gerlitz, twenty-one years old, and Tal Mitnick, nineteen years old, refused to enlist in the Israeli military on grounds of pacifism. Both were imprisoned by the Israeli military and faced a slew of death threats and…

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