If pro-Palestinian protesters aren't antisemitic, maybe they could stop intimidating the Jewish community. Ha, ha, I'm kidding
On Wednesday at the National Archives in Washington, two idiots poured pink powder all over themselves and the case containing the original handwritten copy of the U.S. Constitution. “We are determined to foment a rebellion,” one of the idiots declared. “We all deserve clean air, water, food and a livable climate.”
NBC News reports the idiots are members of a group calling itself Declare Emergency, but the tactic, and the supposed logic behind it, are the same as those of better-known groups like Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion. They have made it their business to vandalize some of humankind’s greatest artistic achievements — Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers,” Picasso’s “Massacre in Korea,” Constable’s “The Hay Wain” — and then demand to know why you’re so upset about that and not about climate change.
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As an intellectual exercise, it’s roughly akin to “I know you are but what am I?” I don’t think I’ve ever encountered an otherwise sane person who thought this was anything but counterproductive. Somehow, pro-Palestinian protesters in Canada have decided this same basic idiot tactic is key to their success.
On Sunday in Toronto, hundreds of people marching for the Palestinian cause, and specifically against an anticipated Israeli offensive in Rafah, decided to take 15 or 20 minutes to direct their ire at Mount Sinai Hospital — one of the city’s great Jewish institutions. “There is only one solution, intifada revolution!” they chanted. A man in a Spiderman suit climbed atop a construction awning and waved the Palestinian flag.
That account comes from David Gray-Donald at left-wing outlet The Grind, incidentally, in a piece that attempts to exonerate protesters from any antisemitic or otherwise malign intent. This was just a standard march from the Israeli consulate to the U.S. consulate, Gray-Donald and others have insisted. Mount Sinai just happened to be on the way.
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As it turns out, though, the protest didn’t actually wind up at the U.S. Consulate. Instead, Gray-Donald reports, it “turned east onto Dundas (Street) and ended in front of the Eaton Centre, at the intersection of Yonge and Dundas (streets), another common protest site.”
Curious, no? If you want to protest somewhere in Toronto that might somehow make an actual difference in Israel or Gaza, other than the Israeli consulate, the U.S. consulate would certainly be the logical place to do it. But they skipped it.
As for Palestinian Spiderman, the defence is that the guy climbs everything. “Mount Sinai Hospital was treated no differently than any other building” with respect to his parkour, journalist Samira Mohyeddin insisted on X.
Well, here’s a thought: Maybe hospitals should be treated differently? You know, because they’re hospitals? The whole nominal impetus for this march was concern for Palestinians trapped in Rafah and elsewhere in Gaza, including in hospitals. Protesting a Jewish hospital in Toronto is a very odd response, unless you’re a raging anti-Semite.
Taking it a step further, since the protesters’ Jewish fellow citizens clearly feel intimidated by some of the the pro-Palestinian tactics — protesting a Jewish community centre and daycare, for example, or blocking a road into a prominent Jewish neighbourhood — perhaps the protesters could demonstrate their professed lack of ill will against Jews by not doing those things.
Ha, ha, no.
The notion that anyone involved in organizing these protests deserves the benefit of the doubt from reasonable Canadians is laughable. Sunday’s march was organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement Toronto, which also hosted an unambiguous celebration of Hamas’s pogrom in southern Israel right after the massacre. “We call on our people … to uplift and honour our resistance and our martyrs,” the announcement read. “Join us this Monday, Oct. 9 at 2 p.m. at Nathan Phillips Square and celebrate our steps closer to liberation!”
Sunday’s march was also organized by a group called toronto4palestine, which has at least made attempts to deny Hamas’s atrocities rather than celebrate them.
“They are using these made-up acts of cruelty and barbarism to tell the world a mini Holocaust just happened to them again,” a toronto4palestine social media post complains before lapsing into outright Holocaust denial. “Is it possible that if they are lying about these events and creating a false genocide, it is likely they may have lied about certain details of a previous big genocide that may have occurred?”
(This week, the increasingly incredible Canadian Press mysteriously neglected to mention either missive in a story about said groups.)
The basic question the pro-Palestinian side asks is the same one Extinction Rebellion and its idiot ilk ask: “Why are you so upset about this but not that?” Why are you so upset about Mount Sinai but not hospitals in Gaza?
For starters, lots of Canadians are alarmed about the situation in Gaza and Rafah specifically, including the prime minister — not that his opinion matters. But the fact is the two things have bugger all to do with each other. Just as defacing a Picasso or a Van Gogh has nothing to do with climate change, protesting a hospital in Toronto has nothing to do with protecting a hospital (or anything else) in Gaza.
Well, but what am I saying? The protesters insist Mount Sinai’s Jewishness had nothing to do with anything! They were just passing by, don’t you know. My favourite argument is that many probably didn’t even know it was a Jewish hospital. This is a group of people who know for a fact Café Landwer and Indigo are owned by Jews, and target them for that reason, but presented with the words “Mount Sinai Hospital” — whose logo is very obviously a stylized Star of David — they supposedly have no clue what the joint is about?
No one believes them. No one should. They protested a Jewish hospital because they hate Jews, or at the very least are entirely tolerant of people who hate Jews. Justin Trudeau knows it. Jagmeet Singh knows it. Everyone knows it. It’s just lucky for the people of Gaza that their bigoted idiocy doesn’t make a difference.
National Post
cselley@postmedia.com
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