09) PARTNERS IN APARTHEID: BOYCOTT INDIGO BOOKS AND MUSIC
By T.J. Petrowski
Branches of Indigo Books and Music and its subsidiaries Chapters, Coles, SmithBooks, and IndigoSpirit are familiar coast to coast, thanks to the company’s monopoly control of retail bookstore sales in Canada. But behind the inviting facade lies a terrible reality – the murder of Palestinians.
Heather Reisman, the founder and CEO of Indigo Books and Music, and her husband, Gerry Schwartz, the co-founder of Onex Corporation, are among the most pro-Zionist capitalists in Canada. With a combined net worth between $1.5 billion and $2.5 billion, they donate millions of dollars to support Israel’s occupation of Palestine, through the Heseg Foundation, which they founded to provide scholarships and other support to foreign-born soldiers who serve in the Israeli military.
The Heseg organization handed out over $100,000 worth of rewards to Israeli soldiers who participated in the 2008-2009 assault on Gaza. The assault, which aimed to weaken the democratically-elected Hamas into submission, killed 200 Palestinians in a single day, and more than 1,400 (including 400 children) in total.
Reisman and Schwartz are close to several powerful Israeli military leaders and war criminals. On the Heseg board are army and air force chiefs of staff, the head of Israeli intelligence (Mossad), and Major General Doron Almog, who has been accused of war crimes for his role in bombing civilians in Gaza during 2000-2003.
Israel’s genocidal war on the people of Lebanon in 2006 killed thousands of civilians and destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure. At that time, Reisman and Schwartz, in a highly publicized spectacle, switched from backing the Liberals to the Harper neo-conservatives, who gave strong support for Israel.
Kate Gilmore, speaking for Amnesty International, dismissed claims that Israel tried to avoid civilian casualties: “Many of the violations identified in our report are war crimes, including indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks. The evidence strongly suggests that the extensive destruction of power and water plants, as well as the transport infrastructure vital for food and other humanitarian relief, was deliberate and an integral part of a military strategy,” she told the press.
The level of destruction in Lebanon invalidates Israeli claims of ‘collateral damage’ and indicates that the war was about much more than ‘self-defense’. The Lebanese government estimated that 30, 000 houses, 900 businesses, 120 bridges, 94 roads, and 31 other vital points were destroyed in the 7, 000 Israeli airstrikes and 2, 000 naval shells launched against targets in Lebanon. The firing of over a million cluster bombs left large swathes of southern Lebanon uninhabitable, and the extensive use of cluster bombs near the end of the war “looked suspiciously as if Israel had taken the brief opportunity before the war’s end to make south Lebanon – the heartland of both the country’s Shi’ite population and its militia, Hezbollah – uninhabitable, and to prevent the return of hundreds of thousands of Shi’ites who had fled Israel’s earlier bombing campaigns.” (See Jonathan Cook, www.antiwar.com/cook/?articleid=11459)
The use of white phosphorus shells, a chemical weapon that causes skin to melt away from the bone and can break down, was a clear war crime committed by Israel. In total, an estimated 700,000 Lebanese were displaced and around 1,100 killed by Israeli forces in the 34 day military campaign.
All peace loving people should support the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid’s boycott of Indigo Books and Music.
(The above article is from the February 15-28, 2015 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)