A couple days after the fact, and a couple more things have come to my attention about the rally on Saturday.

First, the march went from the Israeli Consulate to the American Consulate. As it got to the American Consulate, a number of people spat and stomped on, then lit on fire, the Israeli flag. From the Toronto Star comes this image:

Note that the guy with his face covered is the same guy in my photos below, face uncovered. Seems quite cowardly to me to cover your face when burning the Israeli flag. No one arrested for this blatent display of hate, unlike the reports coming from San Francisco (via zombietime). The story from the Star is here.

Secondly, I noticed in yesterday’s paper, there were a couple of responses to the Star’s article that decried the paper’s use of a “sensational headline,” and inflamatory photo of some youth’s burning a flag. The letters can be found on the Star’s site here. But here is a sample:

I’m surprised and disappointed in your sensationalist headline regarding the pro-peace march on Saturday. The march had Muslims, Jews, Christians and many other faiths walking in unison, calling for peace and an end to occupation, destruction and the killing of civilians. Your headline focused on a few idiots burning a flag. The message across the board was: “Stop the killing.”

and

It is shocking to see kids dying, Red Cross volunteers being killed while altruistically helping injured civilians and UN peacekeepers being slaughtered. We are against violence, period. It breaks my heart to see civilians killed in both Lebanon and Israel, in Rwanda or Darfur, in New York or anywhere in the world. This is the message of most of the demonstrators and you chose to fail to show this.

(emphasis mine)

Even if one were to grant the idea that it was only a few burning a flag, and this action didn’t represent the ideas or hopes of the majority of the crowd, it is difficult for me to imagine that the message across the board was “stop the killing.” This is specifically because of what I noted below, that the rally leader and the crowd announced and cheered the deaths of 46 Israeli soldiers at the hands of Hezbollah. While I hold out hope that there are some (read: a minority) peace protestors who actually desire peace, I largely do not believe anything these people say. I was there, I witnessed the rally, I saw the crowd cheer when the leader announced the soldiers’ deaths, and I listened to the woman who said that the rally organizers wouldn’t let her fly her banner denouncing Israel and Hezbollah. Against violence…period? I sincerely doubt it.

Thirdly, some news reports stated that there were either 5,000 (Toronto Star), or 8,000 (Canadian Press) in attendence according to rally organizers. This is just blatently untrue. Even these reports were followed with the line: Police could not confirm this number, or “Police said this number was inflated.” Yeah, I would say inflated - because it was not nearly that large. I said below that I thought that there were about 1000. I would be willing to say somewhere between 1000 and 1500. But, there is no way that there were 5000, let alone 8000 there. This is an attempt by the rally organizers to inflate their numbers…in short, propaganda.

The more I reflect on the actions of the protestors on Saturday, the more disgusted I am with their blatent racism, and now thier whitewashing of it in the media. If you are so proud of yourselves to announce in public your support for Hezbollah, then be just as proud of it when you talk to the papers. If you have no trouble hating Israel or Jews in public at a rally - then hate them just as much when you talk to the paper. Or, is it that in the crowd you have a certain amount of anonymity, but put on the spot individually, you know that your actions are wrong, or at least will be perceived that way by the public? It is duplicitous, and I have little respect for it.

Want to object to the paper’s story of the rally on Saturday? Want to say that you are for peace, and have credibility. Then explain the picture above, and explain the crowd going nuts at the news of the deaths of Israel’s soldiers, and explain not letting a woman from Iran wave a banner that said Hezbollah are terrorists.

By the way - 82% of Canadians agree with Israel’s actions in defending itself.

technorati tags : Hezbollah Israel Toronto Protest

Posted by casey on Tuesday, August 15th, 2006 at 4:55 am.