TORONTO — Aside from insults volleyed back and forth across Bloor Street, a counter-protest staged by the Jewish Defence League of Canada (JDL) in response to a rally in support of Palestinian political prisoners remained relatively tame.
Held around 6 p.m. on April 17 in front of the Israeli Consulate in Toronto, at Bloor near Avenu Road, the rally was organized by a network of groups that call themselves the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA) to mark what a number of pro-Palestinian rights groups have for some years designated as the annual Palestinian Prisoners’ Day.
CAIA’s focus this year was to call for the freeing of Khalida Jarrar, a member of the Palestinian parliament and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), who was arrested near Ramallah April 2 by Israeli authorities for violating travel restrictions imposed on her last summer.
Jarrar, described by CAIA as “a prominent human rights activist,” and whom an Israeli military court says it is prosecuting on charges that include membership in an illegal organization and incitement to kidnap Israeli soldiers, was given a six-month term of administrative detention without trial.
Some 75 JDL supporters gathered on the north side of the street and about the same number of CAIA supporters gathered on the south side bearing signs and flags and chanting slogans. Dozens of Toronto police officers stood on either side of the street, monitoring the protests.
People on the pro-Israel side waved Israeli, Canadian and JDL flags and placards and shouted slogans such as “Long live Israel,” while pro-Palestinian protesters shouted “Free, free Palestine,” carried Palestinian and Canadian flags and held signs calling for things such as an end to “Israeli apartheid” and endorsing the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
Meir Weinstein, JDL national chairman, said his group organized the counter-protest several days prior because of the “pro-terror rally [happening] across the street from the Israeli Consulate.”
He stressed the PFLP has been designated a terrorist organization by Canada, the United States and the European Union.
JDL director Julius Suraski played both the Canadian and Israeli national anthems on a loudspeaker and briefly addressed the crowd.
“The people on the other side don’t understand what [O Canada] is about,” he said.
He underscored that Israel “is the only democracy in the Middle East” and said the protesters across the street “should be ashamed of [themselves]… [their] brethren are slaughtering people in the Middle East… They’re trying to sanitize the word ‘Palestinian,’ but we all know it’s synonymous with ‘terror.’”
To the protesters on the other side, he shouted, “Why don’t you go back to those countries where you come from and protest their killing of Christians and non-Muslims?”
He then announced he would be playing “joyful Israel music” before putting on Hebrew folk songs over the loudspeaker.
On the CAIA side, Palestinian supporter Raed Ayad, 28, said the groups that came to the protest were from the local Palestinian community, along with Independent Jewish Voices and the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network.
“I’m here to stand in solidarity with people struggling in illegal Israeli prisons… people who haven’t committed a crime. Their only crime is they were born as Arabs,” he said.
He added: “When a foreign army comes into someone’s home in the middle of the night and takes a child with no reason or charge, without standing in front of a judge… Wherever you are in the world, that’s illegal.”
Both groups dispersed around 7 p.m.
