The defendants

Who are Carel Moiseiwitsch and Gordon Murray?

Carel and Gordon decided to create the parody after a November 2006 trip to the Occupied Palestinian Territories to assist Palestinian families harvesting olives on their ancestral lands. Some of the olive groves had been untended for more than five years because of killings of Palestinian farmers or other violent intimidation from Israeli settlers and soldiers.

Once they returned home, they were outraged at the lack of any reflection of what they had seen first hand in the local media, especially Canwest’s “paper of record,” the Vancouver Sun. In Vancouver, Canwest dominates the news market through ownership of the Vancouver Sun, the Province, the National Post, Global TV, the Vancouver Courier, the North Shore News, and the Now suburban newspaper chain. With so few news sources to provide alternative views, they concluded that a newspaper parody would be the best method to point out Canwest’s anti-Palestinian bias.

Carel Moiseiwitsch is a Vancouver activist and visual artist who has exhibited internationally. She taught drawing at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design for many years and was a freelance editorial illustrator for the Vancouver Sun and Province for over a decade.

Gordon Murray is a Vancouver activist and information technologist who was involved in alternative publishing for more than 10 years.

They have both worked to support indigenous rights in Canada, Palestine, Mexico, South Africa, Western Sahara, and around the world for at least 20 years.

Who is Mordecai Briemberg?

Ex-defendant Mordecai Briemberg is a long time activist in peace and social justice causes. He has a long involvement with anti-racism work: in Canada, combating racism against first nation’s peoples and immigrants, and internationally, against apartheid in South Africa and the racism of Israeli state policies and practices against Palestinians.

Mordecai, who is a co-host of the Redeye program on Co-op Radio, has written for magazines and papers, published research, spoken at union conventions, churches, peace forums, universities and colleges, been interviewed on television and radio, interviewed others on radio, organized demonstrations, organized public meetings for, among many others, internationally renowned Palestinians like the poet Mahmoud Darwish and Jewish-Israelis like the late Professor Israel Shahak, chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights. In short, Mordecai has been a prominent, vocal and effective voice in the intense debate about how to achieve peace and justice for Palestinians and Jews in historic Palestine. That is why they named him in the original writ.