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<blockquote type="cite"><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/open-letter-in-support-of-nadia-shoufani"
target="_blank">http://www.ipetitions.com/<wbr>petition/open-letter-in-<wbr>support-of-nadia-shoufani</a>
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<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-size:large">[ to sign the
petition, go to the above link --
where you can also see a list of
signators to date ]</div>
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<h1 id="description">Open Letter in
Support of Nadia Shoufani</h1>
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<div class=""> <img
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class=""
src="http://cdn.ipetitions.com/rev/176/assets/v3/img/default-avatar.png"
alt="teachers for palestine"
itemprop="image"> </div>
<div class=""> <strong> teachers
for palestine </strong> <span>
</span> </div>
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<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/open-letter-in-support-of-nadia-shoufani#description"
class="">The Petition</a> <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/open-letter-in-support-of-nadia-shoufani#highlights"
class=""><span class="">1</span>
Highlight</a> <a
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href="http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/open-letter-in-support-of-nadia-shoufani#comments"
class=""><span class="">144</span>
Comments</a> <a
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href="http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/open-letter-in-support-of-nadia-shoufani#signatures"
class=""><span class="">532</span>
Signatures</a> </div>
<p>As teachers and educators committed
to the values of free speech, civic
engagement, social justice, and
respectful dialogue across
difference, we are deeply alarmed by
the smears and libelous accusations
against ESL teacher Nadia Shoufani
by conservative pro-Israel lobby
groups – accusations that have been
uncritically repeated by
irresponsible journalists at the CBC
and The Toronto Star and have
resulted in the Dufferin-Peel
Catholic District School Board’s
cowardly decision to suspend Ms.
Shoufani from her job.</p>
<p>On July 2, 2016, Ms. Shoufani spoke
at the Al Quds rally at Queen’s
Park. In regards to content of the
speech Ms. Shoufani made, one would
expect officials of a school board
to be able to do some basic
research. B’nai Brith in a press
release has accused Ms. Shoufani of
having “praised terrorists,” an
accusation dutifully repeated by the
CBC. One of the men Shoufani
referred to was Ghassan Kanafani, a
writer and important Palestinian
cultural leader who was assassinated
by the Israeli Mossad in 1972. The
other was Georges Abdallah, a
prisoner in France since 1984 and a
"cause celebre" with a UN Human
Rights organization (The Working
Group on Arbitrary Detention) now
trying to free him. </p>
<p>The claim that both men were
“terrorists” because they were once
members of the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine is specious,
not only because of the
arbitrariness of terms such as
“terrorist,” but because the U.S.
did not put the PFLP on its “terror
list” until 1997, 25 years after
Kanafani was murdered and 18 years
after Abdallah had left the
organization. </p>
<p>Ms. Shoufani has also been attacked
for saying that Palestinians have
the right to resist occupation and
oppression and to fight for their
freedom. Under international law,
this is true. Israel's crimes have
been documented in detail by many
human rights organizations such as
Amnesty International and the
Israeli human rights group B’tselem,
crimes that include the use of
torture, the jailing of children,
the legally-defined crime of
apartheid, and violations of the
Fourth Geneva Convention and many
other UN resolutions governing the
Israeli treatment of Palestinians.
The illegal siege of Gaza, which
started in Sept. 2006, continues
despite many Israeli promises to
lift it. Palestinians under
occupation, with no army, navy or
air force, are trying to survive the
treatment doled out by one of the
world's most advanced military
powers. Those who are facing such
crimes do, in fact, have the <i>legal</i>
right to fight for their freedom
under the international conventions
of the very same United Nations that
voted Israel into existence. </p>
<p>As for B’nai Brith’s claims made
about the Al Quds rally, Al Quds has
evolved over the years to become an
inclusive event whose main intent is
to bring public attention to the
ongoing Israeli occupation and
persecution of Palestinians. These
days, it regularly draws in a
diverse crowd of Muslims, Christians
(Ms. Shoufani is herself Catholic),
the unaffiliated, and Jews,
including members of the
ultra-orthodox Jewish sect Neturei
Karta, who regularly lend their
voices to the Palestinian cause and
can be seen clearly in the video of
Ms. Shoufani’s speech that has been
circulating on YouTube. Apart from
the Neturei Karta, many Jewish
people were in attendance that day,
including Ken Stone, a member of
Independent Jewish Voices (Canada)
who also spoke at the rally. The Al
Quds event has for several years
been actively consulting with Jewish
community members in planning their
event. Accusations that it is some
sort of anti-Semitic “hatefest” – a
term used by B’nai Brith in its
press release celebrating the
suspension of Ms. Shoufani – is
baseless and slanderous. The Jewish
community is very diverse, after
all, and not all Jews share the same
views on Israel as B’nai Brith. </p>
<p>Though B’nai Brith was once a
genuine human rights organization,
in recent decades it has aligned
itself with the anti-gay Christian
right (its former head, Frank
Dimant, regularly praised anti-gay
pastors Charles McVety and John
Hagee) and become increasingly a
single-issue organization devoted
mainly to attacking critics of
Israel. Though it has largely
alienated the Jewish community it
still purports to serve and has seen
its membership drop precipitously
(to less than 4000 members in 2007),
it still, mysteriously, commands
attention among journalists and
public officials, including school
boards, despite the fact that its
anti-gay links would seem to
contravene Ontario’s Safe and
Accepting Schools Act.</p>
<p>Similarly, The Friends of Simon
Weisenthal has made allegations
against Ms. Shoufani. This is an
organization that has developed
close ties with many school boards,
delivering Holocaust education
programs of some merit that
unfortunately often crassly use
Holocaust education to push its own
pro-Israel political agenda – even
providing all-expense-paid trips for
school board staff to pro-Israel
conferences – despite the fact that
many Holocaust survivors, such as
the late Dr. Ursula Franklin, spoke
passionately in defense of the right
to speak publically against Israeli
crimes.</p>
<p>While school boards need to be
aware of the political agendas of
these organizations and sever links
with them, the Dufferin-Peel
Catholic District School Board has
unfortunately given into their
bullying, suspended Ms. Shoufani
from her job, and brought her to the
College of Teachers, despite the
fact that she has not been accused
of professional misconduct; that the
board’s own internal investigation
has yet to reveal any wrongdoing;
and that the rally she attended – as
a private citizen when school was no
longer in session– as well as the
content of the speech she gave were
both lawful and legitimate. Indeed,
the board has not been able to cite
any wrongdoing by Ms. Shoufani. Her
suspension, the board alleges, is
for not providing documentation they
requested on time – despite the fact
that the deadline they imposed was
both sudden and unexpected and that
Ms. Shoufani did, in fact, submit
all the documentation they
requested, through her union and on
time, which begs the question of why
she is still suspended, other than
to pacify her political critics. </p>
<p>We call on the Dufferin-Peel
Catholic District School Board to
immediately reinstate Ms. Shoufani,
who was simply expressing as a
private citizen lawful calls for
justice, and to not allow itself to
be bullied by organizations that
purport to represent the Jewish
community but who push a narrow
political agenda that is not shared
by all Jews and who use their
platform to silence and intimidate
views they disagree with. This is
behaviour we discourage in our
students. It should not be tolerated
by school boards. </p>
<p>Finally, we applaud Ms. Shoufani
for her courage to speak truth to
power, and we hope that many others
will step forward to do the same
until justice and human rights for
Palestinians are achieved.</p>
<p>Signed,</p>
<p>Teachers for Palestine</p>
<p>Educators for Peace and Justice</p>
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