Peter Larson

Peter Larson is the Chair of Canada Talks Israel Palestine, (CTIP) a Canadian human rights organization focussing on the Middle East. His professional career included periods at the Public Policy Forum, the Conference Board of Canada, Le Droit, and as a consultant to labour unions and federal government departments and agencies. For the last 10 years, he has taken a particular interest in human rights issues in the Middle East, visiting Israel, Iran, Jordan, Egypt and the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza. He has also led many trips to Israel/Palestine for Canadians interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the complex Israel/Palestine issue.

See Peter Larson's articles below:

UWO Rejects Pressure From Israeli Lobby Group Over UN Special Rapporteur (Aug 08, 2017)

This article was originally published on August 8, 2017 on Canada Talks Israel Palestine.

On July 20 an Israel lobby organization named UN Watch wrote to Amit Chakma, President of the University of Western Ontario saying it was “shocked” to discover that Western has been providing Professor Michael Lynk with support for his “prejudicial mandate.” (According to the UN that mandate is “to assess the human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (and) report publicly about it”.)

UN Watch is a Geneva based organization which describes itself as “concerned with the just application of UN Charter principles”. It is specially focussed on Israel and what it calls “the disproportionate attention and unfair treatment applied by the UN toward Israel.” Former Canadian Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler, a strong advocate of Israel, is on the UN Watch board of directors....

This article was originally published on August 1, 2017 on Canada Talks Israel Palestine.

A couple of years ago, two young Canadian Jews had a provocative idea: a series of critical podcasts about Jewish media and politics in Canada. They called it Treyf Podcast. (Apparently ‘ Treyf’ is a Yiddish word for non-kosher food, or for not kosher in the more metaphorical sense, as in not legitimate.”)

Since then, Sam Bick and David Zinman have produced dozens of podcasts ranging from 20 to 40 minutes covering projects and perspectives otherwise sidelined by Jewish media....

This article was originally published on April 13, 2017 on Canada Talks Israel Palestine.

To Zionists, the “Balfour Declaration” has an almost mythical status – like the Magna Carta or the US Declaration of Independence. One hundred years ago, on November 2nd 1917, Britain’s Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour sent a letter to British Zionist Lord Rothschild, promising that Britain would help establish a “national home” for the Jewish people” in Palestine, which at that time was under the Ottoman Empire....

This article was originally published on March 27, 2017 on Canada Talks Israel Palestine.

On the morning of Sunday, March 19, Israeli tax authorities barged into the home of Omar Barghouti, the prominent Palestinian human rights defender and co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for the freedom, justice and equality of the Palestinian people. They detained and interrogated Omar and his wife Safa for 16 hours that first day. Omar has subsequently undergone at least four more days of interrogation....

This article was originally published on February 16, 2017 on Canada Talks Israel Palestine.

Israel, its settlers and its military have been on an aggressive roll since the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. From shooting a Palestinian member of Israeli Knesset, to killing a Bedouin citizen of Israel fighting expulsion, to demolishing 11 homes in the Israeli Palestinian town of Qalanswah, to announcing 6000 new settlement homes in the West Bank, to renewed bombing on Gaza, to retroactively legalizing settlements in the West Bank, Israel seems more determined than ever to exert its dominance over the Palestinians....