Protesters holding photos of the Israeli women who were assaulted, kidnapped and murdered on Oct. 7 held a silent vigil at a Take Back the Night rally at Toronto’s Christie Pits on Sept. 12.

The annual gathering, sponsored by the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre for 40 years, raises awareness about sexual assault. 

Meanwhile, about 100 people—roughly the same number as participants in the rally—came to signal their anger that the centre never acknowledged the rape of Israeli women on the day Hamas terrorist attacks killed 1,200 people and took over 250 Israeli residents hostage.

Female hostages who have since been freed have reported ongoing sexual assault in Gaza.

In January, the centre sponsored a program making posters for a pro-Palestinian march, until it withdrew out of concern that its provincial funding would be jeopardized.

“The mission statement on their website is a world free of sexual violence and yet they didn’t acknowledge what happened to the Israeli victims of sexual violence on Oct. 7. We think that’s extremely hypocritical and extremely hurtful,” Lisa Urbach, one of the organizers with Canadians for Israel, which organized the protest, told The CJN.

Toronto Rape Crisis Centre’s decision to adopt a political viewpoint also alienates Jewish women who may need their assistance, Urbach said.

“There’s a young woman in our group who said she is no longer comfortable accessing their services and she was sexually assaulted.”

A line of five police officers separated the protesters from those attending the rally, which included a few men wearing keffiyehs that covered their faces.  

The event protesters were largely silent, but yelled ‘Israel’ when a speaker listed places where global conflict had led to sexual violence and included Palestine, but omitted Israel.

The pro-Israel group’s signs included large and graphic photos of hostage Naama Levy in bloodied sweatpants on Oct. 7, the day she was abducted into Gaza and of Liri Albag, who looks gaunt and hollow-eyed in a more recent photo distributed by Hamas.

Shoshana Gottfried, who participated in the protest, said it was the right decision to remain silent during the rally, but also “infuriating” that Israeli women’s abuse has been ignored by the Toronto centre.

“I expect better from an organization that has crucial work to do. They serve an important need in the city and they’re either willing to compromise it for political ideology or they generally believe that half of us are liars.”

Gottfried said she hoped the protest at Christie Pits marked a shift in the Jewish community and that future events would take a “more offensive approach.”

“I appreciated that this kind of rally was specifically done and executed in a way that was very much telling other people, we were not in a community centre or a synagogue or a Jewish day school. We were on a public street, showing pieces of evidence to the general public.”

Karlene Moore, a member of the Take Back the Night committee who was designated to speak to media, refused to discuss the centre’s position on the violence perpetrated against Israeli women or the protest.

 “We’re not going to have a response to disrupters,” she said. “We are here for this event and these survivors here and that’s our goal tonight is to have a rally and a march for survivors, protesting, celebrating resilience, creating community.”