Protest Against Ziionist : Toronto

Written by Tom Patrick
Monday, 04 December 2006

Protestors against “Israeli apartheid” gathered in front of the Israeli consulate in Toronto on 2 December 2006.

Soon after the afternoon protest began on Bloor Street, speakers mounted a parked pick-up truck and called for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel and Israeli institutions.

“There’s been a series of atrocious massacres and collective punishment against the people of Gaza,” said Hazem Jamjoum, a member of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid. “We’re demonstrating here in solidarity with the people of Gaza and calling on all Canadian institutions to cut any ties with Israeli institutions and the apartheid state.”

“It can’t go on unopposed” said Zack, a protestor, referring to the more than 300 Palestinians who have been killed since June, “especially when Canadians may be deepening ties - deepening relations - with the Israeli apartheid.”

“This brutal, oppressive Israeli occupation has been going on for [forty] years,” said Khaled Mouammar, a protest organizer. “The Palestinian people have been ... under siege, they [have been] starved, and unfortunately our government [in Canada] stands in alliance and provides unrestrained support to this state, which commits war crimes and apartheid.

“We have to stand up as Canadians and say: You do not represent the Canadian public!”

Suzanne Weiss, a holocaust survivor from the organization Not In Our Name, a Jewish group that opposes Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, lent her support. “Zionism does not speak for us!” she shouted into the microphone. “We oppose Zionist violence and racism; we defend the rights of Palestinians…”

“Zionism is not a national or religious identity, but a political strategy,” Weiss said, drawing parallels between the treatment of the Palestinians by Israeli authorities and the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis in World War Two. “Just as the Nazis struck down the Jewish people with inhuman violence, so [too] Israel and its allies strike out today against the Palestinians…"

“The spirit of the anti-Nazi movement lives today in the movement for Palestinian liberation. The Canadian government supports Zionism, racism, segregation, starvation and murder of the Palestinians,” Weiss said, turning to Canada’s role.

“Harper’s criminal policies encourage expressions of hatred in this country. Ottawa subsidizes Zionist fundraisers [with] tax deductions; Ottawa supports Israeli apartheid and inspires hate against both the Palestinians and Jewish people, like the graffiti recently found in front of Palestine House,” said Weiss, referring to vandalism that Palestine House, an education and culture centre in Mississauga, suffered the previous weekend. On November 26, the words “Jews + Nazi = Palestine” and a Star of David were spraypainted on its property.

“People from Palestine House see this as part of a pattern of assault against the Palestinian people,” said Jamjoum. “They’re under much heavier assault in Palestine, but even here we’re facing this racist discrimination.”

Jamjoum said that the Jewish Defence League (JDL), a militant Jewish group considered a terrorist organization by the FBI, has often used vandalism as a means of intimidation.

However, although the JDL has been accused of having ties to this particular act of vandalism, Palestine House president Farid Ayad told the Toronto Star that he felt the vandal’s message was “a statement not just against Palestine, but also against Jews.” A math symbol and numbers were spraypainted on a school portable behind Palestine House in the same colour of paint on the same night, leading police to suspect the incident may be the result of callous mischief perpetrated by drunken teenagers.

James Clark of the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War said there were many reasons for the protest, but he wanted to focus on two: to show that the protestors stand in “solidarity with the people of Palestine and their struggle as they resist Israeli apartheid, occupation, imperialism and war"… [and to discuss] our government’s shameful role in perpetuating this crisis in Palestine.”

Clark criticized the blatant irony of Canada’s foreign policy, referring to Canada’s supposed mission to spread democracy in Afghanistan while ignoring the democratically elected Hamas-led government in Palestine.

“The Palestinians elected a majority government, and what was our government’s response to that democratic process? Was it to encourage it? Was it to congratulate the Palestinians? No! 'Our government’s response was to say: We refuse to recognize the democratic election in Palestine.' Shame on Canada!”

“Our government is not serious about spreading democracy in Afghanistan … [It] is not serious about spreading democracy in any other part of the world.”

Clark declared the necessity to not only stand in support of Palestinians in Palestine, but to also support Palestine House in the face of the vandalism, which he referred to as a “hate crime.”

Hammam Farah, a York University student from Gaza, spoke of his four-year-old cousin who died because of a lack of medical care, resulting from Israel’s stringent border control. “We would like to remind our government that its free-trade agreement with Israel is not free, it costs blood...”

“How can Canada claim to be proud that it has severed its ties with South African apartheid years ago, but does not sever its ties with Israeli apartheid today? Where does this hypocrisy stem from? The answer lies with those who benefit from the oppression of millions of people. And our purpose for boycott, divestment and sanctions is precisely to put an end to those benefits…”

“In the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians are expected to live in unviable, poverty-stricken areas … ghettos of misery, inexhaustible reservoirs of cheap labour, stripped of their rights and the land of their birth. Those who resist are either killed or imprisoned.”

Besides the comparisons to the treatment of Jews in World War Two and blacks in South Africa’s apartheid, another common comparison was between the Palestinians and Aboriginals in North America.

“What happens in Palestine is almost a reflection of what happens here,” said one protestor. “Israel has developed a kind-of-like colonial settler state: European settlement that pushes off the indigenous population of Palestine.”

“This is happening in this country because our political elite, and many of the mainstream media, does not even care for people in Canada who live under the poverty level – six million people,” said Khaled Mouammar, the first speaker of the day.

“Millions of natives/indigenous people are being denied their rights and … they have been colonized, exploited and discriminated against. It is no wonder then that these same … political elites [do] not care for the Palestinian people who are suffering poverty, starvation and discrimination … It’s all one struggle.”

As the cold December winds flapped the Palestinian flags and swayed the picket signs, the protest came to an end. The boisterous chants calling for an end to Israeli apartheid faded, but the fires set by injustice continued to burn in the bellies of every protestor touched by the event.