Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘activism’

Fuck the moronic thugs who decided that setting police cars on fire and smashing store windows was an appropriate Saturday afternoon activity.

Fuck Stephen Harper and the Conservative government for thinking that hosting this summit in a major urban centre was an appropriate use of over a billion dollars of taxpayer money.

Okay, rant over.

The Toronto Star has a photo essay from this weekend. Sometimes, pictures really do say a thousand words.

Today was one of the deadliest for Israel so far in this war. Two rockets that crashed into buildings in Haifa, killing three and injuring dozens, have prompted this response from Shadi Mzawin, an Israeli Arab whose sister and grandparents was injured by the attacks:

“I hope Nasrallah gets a rocket between the legs for what he is doing to me here, for harming grandma and grandpa.”

Meanwhile in downtown Montreal, fifteen thousand people turned out to protest and spew the usual rhetoric:

A demonstration billed as a protest for peace assumed a distinctly anti-Israeli flavour Sunday as protesters denounced the Jewish state for killing hundreds of Lebanese.

[ . . . ]

While many participants claimed they weren’t singling out either side in the bloody conflict, some carried placards that linked Israel to Nazi atrocities during the Second World War.

“Israel learned from Hitler and the student has surpassed the master,” read one sign.

If those fifteen thousand people truly desired peace, they’d be out there echoing Shadi Mzawin’s calls to put an end to Nasrallah, once and for all.

Lebanese Montrealers are demonstrating, blaming Israel for the civilian deaths in Lebanon and pointing a finger at the Harper government for what they see as its pro-Israel stance and for failing to do enough to help Canadian civilians evacuate. It was the first of four planned demonstrations against Israel being held this week in Montreal.

Meanwhile, IDF sources are saying that Hezbollah is preventing civilians from evacuating in Lebanon. I guess they’re more useful as human shields or as propaganda martyrs than as living, breathing people. (Via Meryl, who rightly uses the word “despicable”, though I can’t imagine why she would be surprised).

It’s sad that two communities being victimized by the same group are so at odds with one another. But then, that’s how groups like Hezbollah operate, manipulating people and playing groups against one another. Sadly, this too is nothing new.

IDFDave has photos of the protesters idiotarians against Bush (via Damian Penny).

As I scrolled the online album of swastika posters, antisemitic and racist statements, and just plain idiocies, it occurred to me that anyone both reasonable and against Bush’s policies had two choices yesterday: To join forces with the wingnuts, or to stay home.

No wonder most of them stayed home.

The wingnuts do these protests a vast disservice. It’s one thing to be against Bush. Hell, I’m not exactly his #1 fan either. But it’s quite another to associate with people who wrap the American flag in swastikas and who hold signs depicting Sharon and Bush as monkeys. There are plenty of good arguments for protesting against the US’s foreign policies, but I really hope that most Canadians are still turned off by yesterday’s kind of displays.

What if you held a protest and nobody came?

The first demonstration — of Palestinians and sympathisers of the Palestinian cause opposed to Washington’s support of Israel — attracted less than 40 demonstrators.

According to a quick head count by journalists, the protest attracted 39 demonstrators, 42 journalists and television crew members and three police officers.

A second, ostensibly larger, demonstration scheduled for the midst of the evening rush hour — was called by a group calling itself Students Against Bush.

Nobody turned up.

I’m sure Jaggi Singh will find a way of blaming the Zionists and the corporations for the massive failure of his protests.

Muslims marched against terrorism in Cologne, Germany today, in a heartening display of the so-called silent majority’s opposition to Islamist extremism:

About 20,000 people marched through the western German city of Cologne Sunday in a demonstration against Islamic terrorism that was organized by a Muslim group.

Carrying placards proclaiming that “religion doesn’t produce terror” and that “terror is a crime against humanity,” two groups estimated by police at about 10,000 each converged for a rally in a downtown square.

Germany’s Muslim community is largely Turkish in origin, and its institutions are perhaps less hijacked by extremist groups than other Muslim communities in Europe – for example, France.

I can’t find any reports on whether this march also denounced terrorism against Israel. I somehow doubt it. But even despite this, it is encouraging to see people speaking out against terrorism, because the battle between the moderates and the extremists for the hearts and minds of Muslims in the West is still raging.

The Gazette reports that today’s Hillel rally outside Concordia was “peaceful”:

Almost two years after a violent demonstration outside Montreal’s Concordia University against former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there was another protest.

Only this time, it was more vocal than violent.

About two hundred people staged a peaceful demonstration outside the university’s downtown campus Tuesday.

They were protesting the administration’s decision not to allow a speech by another former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak.

I’m sure we’ll be seeing lots more on the 6 o’ clock news. This story was just a placeholder. But even in its brevity, it says a lot.

Hillel holds peaceful protests. The right to free speech in Canada incorporates – and in fact, depends on – the right to peaceful protest.

But when the line is crossed into violence, protest becomes thuggery. That’s what happened when Netanyahu came to speak.

And now, Barak is denied his right to speak because of the fear of a repeat of the violence of the 2002 Netanyahu riots. SPHR has succeeded in shutting down any speech it doesn’t like at Concordia, through the use of violence.

But when speakers came who Hillel disagreed with, they protested peacefully. So speakers continue to come who Hillel disagrees with.

In other words, the viewpoint that the violent thugs agree with gets to be heard. But the viewpoint that the peaceful demonstrators agree with gets shut down.

Concordia is sending a strong message here: violence works. Who will be the next groups to employ SPHR’s tactics to muzzle speech they don’t like?

That’s why this isn’t just an issue for pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian students. It’s not just an issue for Concordia students. It’s an issue for all Montrealers, all Canadians, and all people committed to democracy. We cannot let violence win.

That’s one of those questions that people have stopped even trying to answer. But I wonder… why does nobody notice how senseless the marriage is between self-defined “liberals” and the “Palestinian cause”?

Why, when the Left claims to be for democracy, does it support an autocratic dictatorship over a free and democratic state?

Why, when the Left claims to be for women’s rights, does it support the Palestinians, who pay lip service to gender equity while still living in a society that doesn’t see very much wrong with “honor killings” of a woman who isn’t a virgin when she marries… instead of Israel, where women really do have equal rights in every sense of the word?

Why, when the Left claims to be for minority rights, does it support the Palestinians, who want an Arab-only state (no Jews need apply) instead of the pluralistic democracy that is modern Israel?

Why, when the Left claims to be for gay rights, does it support anti-gay discrimination as opposed to Israel, where (with the exception of marriage) gays have equal rights?

Why, when the Left claims to be for peaceful conflict resolution and against war, does it support the armed intifada and rationalize Palestinian suicide bombings?

How have the Palestinians become the media darlings of the Left, when only a few decades ago, the same idealistic people were rushing to Israel to go work on a kibbutz?

It seems like it should be so obvious as to be a no-brainer. And yet, from Europe to North America to Australia, left-wing groups, academics and student groups, unions and minority-rights groups are all rallying for the Palestinian cause of wiping out the only democracy in the middle east. Whether they claim to be for a two-state solution (but because they support the so-called Palestinian “right of return”, those two states are really both Palestinian), or a “one-state solution” (i.e. Jews as an oppressed minority in yet another Arab state in the mideast), they are, in effect, calling for Israel’s destruction.

Do they really not get it? Do they really have such a hard time seeing that the marriage between the Left and the Palestinians makes about as much sense as, say, the marriage between fundamentalist Christians and Israel? (Don’t get me started on that one…)

Because it seems to me that anyone with truly Liberal values would be first in line to support Israel. And even though this is hardly an original question, I think we ought to keep asking it until answers are forthcoming… until people realize that the motivations of certain groups are not what they may seem… until the Left has a crisis of conscience about its own habit of supporting murderous terrorists and dictators over democracies simply because it’s “fashionable”.

Toronto has been hit with a wave of antisemitic vandalism… at exactly the same time as the massive one-year anniversary protests of the war in Iraq.

Coincidence?

I can just hear those anti-globalisation protesters now:

“Yo, dude, it’s awesome! Not only do we get to break stuff and make asses of ourselves . . . but we get to go to Cancun! Party time! (Oh, and capitalism is evil and it’s all a Zionist conspiracy and let’s smash some windows).”