I always assumed the anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 pogrom in southern Israel would get ugly. Too many in the anti-Israel crowd either don’t believe it happened, or believe the death toll was exaggerated, or think it was a false-flag event. And of course there are some who seem pretty much OK with what actually happened.
“How beautiful is the spirit to get free that Palestinians literally learned how to fly on hang gliders,” all-purpose activist Harsha Walia famously told a crowd in Vancouver two days after Hamas slaughtered some 800 Israeli civilians and took hundreds hostage — scores of whom are still unaccounted for.
Not for the first time, though, the ugliness has surpassed my expectations. I don’t begrudge anyone marching and protesting on behalf of civilians in Gaza.Israel estimates something like 17,000 civilians have been killed, which would be horrific enough. Hamas’s estimates are obviously much higher. But if the protests were to take one weekend off, just to demonstrate some basic concept of shared humanity among Canadians, this would surely be the weekend to do it.
Had Hamas not done what it did on Oct. 7 last year, many thousands of people would still be alive. This is not a time for rallies, except for ghouls.
But rallies, there are plenty. Samidoun’s Vancouver chapter leads the way in grotesquerie. Samidoun is an offshoot of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is a listed terrorist organization in Israel and Canada — as is Samidoun itself in Israel, but not Canada. It’s organizing a rally on Monday at the Vancouver Art Gallery. And the day before, at Vancouver’s creepily named Centre for Socialist Education, Samidoun is holding a “teach-in” on the “Al Aqsa Flood operation,” which was the terrorist codename for the Oct. 7 attack.
“Join us to learn more about … the operation and how it unmasked the Zionist entity for what it truly is,” the invitation reads. “Al-Aqsa Flood set the stage for a liberated Palestine, from the river to the sea, once and for all.”
Toronto’s “rally for Palestine” on Saturday purports to celebrate “one year of resistance,” which sounds quite a bit like a celebration of Oct. 7, because there sure hasn’t been much for Palestinians to celebrate since. Acts of Palestinian “resistance” since then have included killing seven civilians on a light-rail platform in Jaffa, while Israel bombs Gaza to smithereens, admittedly killing thousands of civiliansused by Hamas as human shields. The Canadian Union of Public Employees is, naturally, encouraging members to attend the rally.
Other Canadian institutions continue to struggle as well. McGill University seems to be afraid of its own students, encouraging professors to teach classes online on Oct. 7. Down the street, Concordia University’s student union is closing its “hall mezzanine” — perhaps Canada’s preeminent venue for anti-Israel protest — for the whole week.
Toronto radio host Greg Brady was forwarded an email from the Thames Valley District School Board in London, Ont., that all but encourages children to walk out of school on Monday. “Thames Valley is supportive of peaceful student-led initiatives that demonstrate engagement and provide opportunities for positive change and student voice,” the letter reads. (Heaven forbid we miss an “opportunity for student voice,” whatever the hell that is.)
And then there’s the police.
There wasconsiderable applause in Toronto this week when police laid charges of public incitement of hatred against two men for waving Hezbollah flags in the vicinity of the U.S. Consulate. “We all want to live in a country where we can speak what’s on our mind, and share our opinions in the public square,” Jaime Kirzner-Roberts of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre told the Toronto Sun. “(But) what we’re seeing now are organized efforts to promote terrorist rhetoric and activities. … There needs to be a very clear line drawn.”
Indeed, there has been considerable consternation among Israel supporters as to why such charges haven’t been laid more aggressively and often.
I can offer an educated guess at an answer: The last time Toronto police laid public-incitement-of-hatred charges with respect to waving the flag of a designated terrorist entity like Hezbollah — in that case, the PFLP — the Crown declined to prosecute.
There could well be reasons why that case wasn’t supportable and this one is. I hope so, on balance — not because I’m 100 per cent comfortable with banning flags, but because the alternative is just as grim: That Toronto’s finest are essentially arresting people in line with public opinion and political pressure rather than the law.
At the time of the PFLP-flag arrest, Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw called it “unprecedented.” Before, Toronto Police publicly argued that simply flying the flag of a designated terrorist entity probably didn’t reach a criminal threshold. (Remember: There’s no law in Canada against “glorifying” terrorism. You have to incite it.) But Demkiw said, he wanted to “send a message that we’re not putting up with this kind of hateful conduct in our city.”
Who’s the “we” in that sentence, if not the Crown prosecutors’ office?
These legal questions need answering. Canadians are massively confused about exactly what constitutes criminal hate speech, and I can’t blame them.
But ultimately, what’s most important about this anniversary isn’t what’s legal and what isn’t — who if anyone gets charged and who doesn’t. It’s more like a sort of citizenship test. If you’re celebrating Palestinian resistance on Oct. 7, then you’re celebrating ethnic cleansing, which is exactly what you accuse Israel of. And you’ll be judged accordingly — if not by the legal system then by friends, neighbours, colleagues, future employers and polite Canadian society as a whole.
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