The World Peace Forum (WPF) began June 23, in Vancouver.

Thousands of delegates converged on the city to discuss war, militarism and potential alternatives. The ambitious project was initiated during the majority rule of COPE at City Hall, and it also aims to bring together progressive civic politicians with anti-war activists from around the world.

The WPF has a wide-ranging agenda, and a sprawling program to match. A friend new to the city, but familiar with the West Coast zeitgeist, joked that the only thing missing was a workshop on “Yoga for Peace.” That’s a bit of a stretch, of course, but there is a little bit of everything; in total, there are more than 300 events over five days.

There will be a Youth Forum, an Asia Forum, a Labour Forum, a Peace Education Forum — indeed something for everyone. A peace walk and rally on Saturday, June 24 featuring Cindy Sheehan promises to be the largest public event.

A number of solidarity groups will also take the occasion to address an issue critical to world peace, but too often — historically at least — glossed over by peace/anti-war movements. That issue is the Middle East conflict. Indeed, as the John Pilger documentary says, Palestine is still the issue. The current Harper government is taking Canada’s foreign policy in an even more overtly pro-Israel direction than its Liberal predecessors. The Conservatives, for instance, have been intransigent in support of the financial embargo against the new, democratically elected, Hamas government.

As always, those who protest Israel’s blatant violations of international law and Palestinian national rights are subjected to vitriolic public attack. For instance, take the reaction to the recent CUPE Ontario convention resolution against Israeli apartheid. Right-wing columnists predictably jumped on union president Sid Ryan and the CUPE leadership, while CAW head Buzz Hargrove opined in the Toronto Star that he objected to the apartheid analogy, saying he was “disappointed by this unfair depiction.”

The comparison to the brutal repression experienced in South Africa is, if anything, in many ways inadequate, as a number of anti-apartheid veterans have expressed. To take just one of many examples, the president of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), Willie Madisha, stated in a recent letter to CUPE that:

    As someone who lived in apartheid South Africa and who has visited Palestine I say with confidence that Israel is an apartheid state. In fact, I believe that some of the atrocities committed against the South Africans by the erstwhile apartheid regime in South Africa pale in comparison to those committed against the Palestinians.

Thulas Nxesi, the South African head of Education International who along with Madisha will be attending the World Peace Forum, summed up the importance of Palestine to any effort to deal with questions of war and conflict on a global scale:

    If we want to talk about a new world order, where thereVs peace and social justice, that cannot be said outside the context of a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian question.

The main event on the Middle East at the World Peace Forum — featuring Israeli educator Nurit Peled-Elhanan, Cindy Corrie, the mother of murdered U.S. peace activist Rachel Corrie, and Palestinian activist Myriam Rashid — takes places on Monday, June 26, 7:30 p.m. at Saint Andrews-Wesley Church.

The forum is appropriately titled “Israel and Palestine: No Justice, No Peace.” If world peace requires justice, then it requires freedom, self-determination and full human rights for the Palestinian people.

Derrick O'Keefe

Derrick O'Keefe

Derrick O'Keefe is a writer in Vancouver, B.C. He served as rabble.ca's editor from 2012 to 2013 and from 2008 to 2009.