🍉 VanGran4Pal Community Newsletter
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**Neighbours and Friends, **
This is an urgent community call to action. Israel’s blockade of food and aid is starving babies to death. Our collective voices, right now, will have an impact. Pick up your phone and call the new minister of foreign affairs and tell her that we must sanction Israel with an arms embargo now (phone script here): +1 905-338-2008 and +1 343-203-1851. Email Mark Carney and urge him to stand up for Palestine, or use the leadnow petition link to demand a full two-way arms embargo. Show up to protest on Saturday (scroll down to events section for info).
We are all feeling grief, rage, disbelief: we cannot let it hold us back from action. A few minutes of your time isn’t much, but when added to the minutes given by everyone else like you who stands for humanity, it becomes a tidal wave that cannot be ignored. The tides will turn. We have more power than we feel we do sometimes and we CAN enact change.
Even when it takes many months, the commitment of advocates yields results: Irish student action forced Trinity College to divest from israel a year ago and the college’s last contracts with the genocidal state expired in March of this year. Just this week, King’s College in Cambridge announced it will no longer invest in arms companies following months of student protests. Continual direct action shut down an Elbit Systems factory last year. The BDS campaign has reported scores of successes and collective boycott action has greatly impacted the Israeli economy. What we do matters, and we must not stop until Palestine is free.
Read on for local events, actions and ways to keep being on the right side of history.
In solidarity always - the VanGran4Pal team
Action Updates
Implement a full, two-way arms embargo without delay.
14,000 babies in Gaza are at risk of starving to death in the next 48 hours. We need to call now and call often, and tell the new Foreign Affairs Minister that we don't have a minute to waste.
📞CALL NOW:
- Office of Anita Anand: 905-338-2008
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs: 343-203-1851
Tell Minister Anand:
CANADA MUST SANCTION ISRAEL WITH AN ARMS EMBARGO NOW!
Talking Points:
- The UN now reports that 14,000 babies in Gaza are at risk of dying in the next 48 hours if food doesn't reach them. The aid is there waiting to get in - this mass starvation is an intentional and inevitable result of Israel's illegal blockade. Your government issued strong words of condemnation yesterday, and threatened "concrete action" if Israel refused to change course. The time for action is now.
- Canada must sanction Israel, starting with an immediate two-way arms embargo. This is one of the most impactful things that your government can do to ensure that Israel is pressured to let aid in NOW, before more needless deaths, and faces repercussions for its ceaseless violations of international law.
- Israel's siege and escalating aerial assaults endanger thousands of lives every day that they are allowed to continue. You must take that action before it is too late. Stop arming genocide. Arms Embargo Now.
Stop repressive protest bans
Across Canada, governments are trying to silence dissent. Cities like Vaughan have already passed repressive protest bans, and others—including Toronto—are considering following suit. These so-called "bubble" laws are designed to criminalize peaceful protest and shield human rights violators from accountability.
We can’t allow politicians to cave to pressure from pro-Israel lobby groups working to suppress advocacy for Palestinian human rights. If left unchecked, these attacks on protest will pave the way for silencing any cause that challenges those in power.
**Take Action: **https://www.cjpme.org/stop_repressive_protest_bans
Tell the Ottowa Hospital: Cut ties with genocide
Let The Ottawa Hospital (TOH) leadership know that TOH partnership with Israel’s largest state hospital, Sheba Medical Center, constitutes complicity in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.
Divest from major banks
The Canadian BDS Coalition and World Beyond War have identified all major Canadian banks (and their subsidiaries) as direct participants in the genocide and ongoing apartheid of Palestinians. Additionally, the major Canadian banks have failed to divest from the 97 companies listed in the UN database of companies complicit in illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian lands.
The Divest From Everyday Banking campaign aims to help you end your relationship with the major Canadian banks who fund the brutal genocide in Gaza and the military occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This campaign focuses on showing you how to move your everyday banking (ie. chequing and savings activities) out of these banks and into a credit union of your choice.
Upcoming Events
** Emergency Rally for Gaza | May 24**
📅 Saturday May 24, 2025
⛺ Info Booth: 12pm - 1pm
🕜 Rally: 1pm
🚶🏽♀️ March: 1:30pm Sharp.
📍 Location: šxwẤənəq Xwtl\e7énk "Robson" Square, Vancouver
Come out now!
If you've felt the choke in your throat these past days, you're not imagining it.
It’s the weight of witnessing horror, and being told to scroll past it.
Of watching children starve while leaders shake hands and call it peace.
Of hearing words like “self defense” used to excuse the erasure of a people.
What’s happening in Gaza isn’t a tragedy. It’s a choice.
Meticulously orchestrated, ruthlessly executed, and justified by those who’ve mastered the art of murder behind podiums.
There are no accidents here. Only decisions.
If you’ve been watching and waiting for the “right moment,” this is it.
If you’ve marched before but sat the last ones out, get up again.
If you’ve never come out, now’s the time.
Because silence is complicity.
Because history is watching.
Because they want us numb. They want us hopeless.
Don’t give them that.
Come out. Raise your voice. Take the streets. Refuse to be quiet.
Bring your rage. Bring your heartbreak. Bring your body.
This is not the time for whispers.
This is the time for revolt.
**Vigil in Honour of Palestinian and Lebanese **
Healthcare Workers | May 26
🗓 Monday, May 26, 2025
⏰ TIME 5 pm
📍Burrard Skytrain Station, Downtown Vancouver
Please join the BC Nurses United for Social Justice at their Vigil in Honour of Palestinian and Lebanese Healthcare Workers murdered by Israel over the last 19 months. 🕊️ everyone is welcome to join 🍉
Mutual Aid Conversation and Workshop | June 9
🗓 Monday June 9, 2025
⏰ TIME 6 pm. Starts with light meal. Food will be put away and boxed at 6:30 pm so people remain masked.
📍1803 East 1st Ave. xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh & səlilwətaɬ lands
**Click here for information and registration **
Mutual aid is an ethic in movements and communities to directly support each other’s needs to survive and thrive based in shared commitments to reciprocity in an unequal world. There are many examples of mutual aid in our communities today trying to undo this capitalist-colonial atomization: legal funds, eviction defense, tragedy & disaster response, food & clothes distribution, health care provision, and more.
Mutual aid draws on a living legacy of sustained cooperation and resistance by Black, Indigenous, racialized, colonized, houseless, criminalized, disabled, and queer and trans communities. Many traditions of mutual aid are actively targeted and repressed, such as the colonial Potlatch Ban against Indigenous communities of the North West coastal regions, or the attempts by the FBI to disrupt the Black Panthers’ Breakfast for Children Program, or state injunctions against community-led harm reduction efforts. Mutual aid within these struggles is a radical affirmation of care, dignity, and justice.
The Anarchist Lunch Film Screening | June 13
Film Screening and Lunch
📅 Friday June 13, 2025
🕜 Time: 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Please register by Wednesday, June 11th
This is a lovely film, from filmmaker Rachel Epstein, whose father Norman Epstein was a stalwart member of IJV and, before that, of Jews for a Just Peace, as well as the Vancouver Peretz Centre. This community shabbes event is open to members and friends of all ages. During the film screening, there will be an alternative hang-out space for kids organized by the Peretz Child Activities Committee.
Admission: a contribution to the pot luck OR pay $18.00 per person
(children are free).
**Parents4Palestine Free Pancake **
Breakfast & Storytime | June 14
⏰ Saturday June 14, 10AM–12PM
📍Grandview Church, 1803 E 1st Ave, Vancouver, BC
🥞 This free event will feature a pancake breakfast and engaging storytime sessions that celebrate Palestinian culture, foster a sense of community, and encourage solidarity. Join us for a morning of connection, learning, and joy as we create meaningful spaces for children and families to come together.
Tickets: http://link.parents4palestine.ca/June14
📚Storytime for Palestine - Join the Campaign
In June, we're organizing a collective Story Time for Palestine across communities, creating joyful and educational spaces for children to learn about Palestinian culture and solidarity.
💌 Want to host a story time in your own community?
Email us at storytime4palestine@gmail.com — we can support with books, supplies, and space rentals. Let’s build this together 💚
Donation Campaign
This week we would like to highlight a campaign for a family in Gaza, which one of our members is in contact with, here is what she had to say:
Fahed, who is the same age as myself, is someone I have been communicating with for almost a year now. His brother was martyred at the beginning of the genocide, and him and his mother were separated from his other brother and his children. All the time, Fahed would tell us of how he missed those kids, how he longed for both his brothers. Fahed and his mother had to walk from the south of Khan Younis, up north to Jabalia, where his entire home was in ruins, as he explains to me that his brother is still somewhere under the rubble. Fahed sends us photos and videos as often as he can, and the destruction is TRULY something that we can never comprehend.
Recently, with the catastrophic bombardement of Jabalia, Fahed and his family were forced to flee once again, now to central Gaza. They have spent most of their donations in order to evacuate, and now have no belongings on them, and are forced to sleep on the street. On top of this, the last week has been one of the most horrific and trauma inducing, as Fahed had been sending videos of himself in the rubble, helping to retrieve the bodies of martyrs. This family is in need of much rest that the occupation makes sure they will never receive. The fate of Fahed and everyone in Gaza remains in our hands, and where we feel helpless, a small donation, or even sharing Fahed and other stories like his, can make an enormous impact on one person’s life.
You can donate here.
And follow Fahed and send him a message of solidarity on Instagram: @fahedabuzaida1 or @yalo.0
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With gratitude and in solidarity,
Your Neighbours
Van Gran 4 Palestine
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