I woke up Sunday, March 24th certain that I was sick. I wasn't going to go to the gym. I started a new job last Monday and learning the ropes and adjusting to the new hours and some exterior stresses apparently took a lot out of me.
But it was a sunny day and I felt well enough to attend the rally protesting the genocide in Gaza as that was the least that I could do. So I walked down Yonge Street (much slower than I usually move) and arrived a tiny bit after the 12:30 pm start time.
The crowd was criminally small. I'd say a few hundred people. On one corner there was about five middle-aged guys in expensive clothes and maybe a couple of teenagers, and they had a big Israeli flag and a smaller one and a few hand-held ones. I was later told that Forest Hill is nearby. I always see St. Clair and Yonge as a waspy neighbourhood. There's a United Church of Canada outlet named after Timothy Eaton, and Upper Canada College isn't far away.
They started chanting but I don't chant. Also, I was sick, so even if I was the sort of person to chant, I wouldn't have done it that day. At one point I was struck by the incongruity of shouting variations of "No justice? No Peace!" whilst insisting on being peaceful. I mentioned this to two young ladies on the outskirts of the crowd, saying that we didn't have to throw rocks through windows, but perhaps we shouldn't say "No peace!" if we're going to pride ourselves on being peaceful. They reacted with genuine incomprehension and a clear desire not to engage further.
More and more I looked at the pro-Israel counter-protesters with contempt. They ignore Israel's continued depredations against the non-Hamas ruled Palestinians in the West Bank. They continue to whine self-pityingly about the "double-standard" against Israel while Iran is sanctioned for a hypothetical nuclear weapons program as the world pretends to not know about Israel's existing nuclear arsenal. Israel attacks other countries and is armed and subsidized by the USA while the USA attacks and destroys Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. They blather about the higher standard of account Israel is held to while committing genocide. And these imbeciles on that Toronto street corner have disgraced their ancestors and they might as well be Germans waving a swastika flag at Jews in 1940's Germany.
I saw a demonstration marshall about my age, [a Jewish man, he told me at some point] and I said that I never thought we'd come to this. The Canadian government providing cover and support for genocide. He commiserated with me and said that he was doing what he could to shout back against it. He wished he could do more. I sympathized with him.
I had to sit down in the sun somewhere because I was getting exhausted. More people were arriving in dribs and drabs. Apparently the rally was organized by a coalition of Jewish activists in Toronto. That weekend was "Purim," of which I know almost nothing. Something about the Jews escaping persecution in ancient Persia.
At one point the crowd moved into the intersection and I got up and walked around within the edges of the circle reading the signs on the banners as the leaders in the middle led the crowd in various chants. Then I sat in the sun again until they started moving south down Yonge Street.
I should mention that this whole time there was a contingent of maybe fifty to a hundred employees of the Toronto Police Service standing around observing things.
I saw a friend and decided to walk beside him. I asked if he knew where the march was going but he didn't. He speculated that it was going to the Israeli consulate at Yonge and Bloor. We passed Pleasant Boulevard and there was a sportscar with some young men in it leaning out the windows, smiling, and waving their Israeli flags. My friend and I waved to them and I blew them kisses. We walked past Rosehill and then stopped at Balmoral and the chanting (which hadn't stopped) became slightly more intense. The crowd turned onto Balmoral, which I found odd since it was a residential street that went to nowhere except to the unremarkable intersection of Avenue and St. Clair.
The crowd didn't get far in any case as more police showed up to block them. Rich local residents were walking their dogs and such and the police were letting them go. I had on a designer wool jacket that I bought at a thrift store (it's very warm, and I wore it because I was sick) so I, by myself could pass for a resident. I was allowed to pass through the police line. More cops were coming from the west. About five of them ran past me. Three cops were walking the other way with a young man in handcuffs. I'd never been on Balmoral before so I was looking at the charming houses. Some residents came out and wondered what all the commotion was about. I couldn't tell from their back-and-forths with each other what they thought about the issue of Israel's genocide. I couldn't see anything ahead of me but one long street going to some traffic lights in the distance at Avenue Road so I turned around.
The cops were placing the young man's possessions on the trunk of one of their cars. He said that he'd come straight from work and that the knife was something he used on the job. They told him it was a concealed weapon. As of this writing I couldn't tell you if it was an Exacto-knife or a pen knife or a dagger. I didn't see it.
The crowd was back on Yonge Street and still chanting. Somebody heading north passed me with a large, chocolate labrador, and they walked into the middle of Yonge Street. An attractive woman in her thirties yelled "No dad!" I looked at the person with the dog and saw a handsome, obviously well-to-do guy in his late-sixties (or early-seventies). He stood between the demonstrators and the line of cops with a look of angry determination on his face. The demonstrators who noticed him were lefty-looking, middle-aged Jewish earth-mothers and a young Arab woman in a hijab. They continued following the chanting as they stared back at the older gentleman. The dog looked back and forth in genuine incomprehension.
In all honesty the guy looked so much like a WASP, ... like the sort of guy who would have gone to school with John Tory and who would now be pulling his strings, that I felt he was just a fuddy-duddy who hated ANY sort of noisy protest in HIS neighbourhood. A Canadian Establishment type who got angry just thinking about the merest existence of such riff-raff as these demonstrators, let alone their all gathering together in one spot to spoil his walk with his daughter and his dog.
His daughter was clearly worried about him. "He's making a stand I guess." said one of the cops to her. I just had to know. I asked her: "Excuse me. I'm just curious. Is your father Jewish?" She turned to me and answered nervously/defiantly "Yes we are." I said "Okay. I was just thinking he looked awfully WASPy and I couldn't understand what he was so angry about. I thought this was a WASP neighbourhood." She looked at me like I was an idiot (and I can't say that I blame her, though I wasn't caring about whether I made sense to her) and I walked away. Because now I understood. Her father was just another deliberately ignorant, entitled narcissist. All these Jewish-Israeli partisans ignore Israel's clear, unhidden abuses of the Palestinians, and all of Israel's contributions to the animosty between themselves and the Palestinians and anyone else (the wider Arab population of the Middle East for example) and portray themselves as innocent victims. Just as Donald Trump ignores his lifetime career of theft and racism and perversion and convinces himself that any resistance to his selfish narcissism is driven by unjustified hatred of him personally. And lying, establishment "journalists" see criticism of their imbecilic propaganda as an assault on the Fifth Estate and an attack on freedom and democracy. And US-Americans believe that terrorists hate them for the freedom. And Canadians see First Nations' resistance to our stealing their resources and abusing them as terrorism.
Supporters of Israel as it commits genocide are shit-heads. Politicians kow-towing to them are either cowards or shit-heads themselves. There is no "middle-ground" to be discovered to "heal" this "division in Canadian society." Yes. There are "strong feelings" on both sides. Palestinian-Canadians, and Arab-Canadians and Muslim-Canadians and Anti-Genocide-Canadians (which includes many Jewish-Canadians) are opposed to the mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. And Pro-Genocide Canadians are pro-genocide. And genocide is always and everywhere a bad thing. And people who support genocide are scumbags.
Eventually the stupid scumbag with the chocolate labrador succumbed to his daughters' increasingly worried pleas and abandoned his principled stand in support of the slaughter of Palestinians and they continued walking their dog.
I found a place to sit in the sunshine again and I listend to Desmond Cole talk about how the Toronto Police Service was used to control and intimidate ANY groups who spoke out against any abuses committed by Canada's ruling classes and about how they weren't on our side.
Then I decided that I felt absolutely exhausted. It was nice in the sunshine wearing my quality wool coat. I figured walking home at a relaxed pace, while getting the vitamin-D from the sunny day would be a good idea. When I got a block north of St Clair I turned and saw that the protest had resumed its march, going further south on Yonge Street. From photos and videos I've since seen on social media it seems they got to Yonge and Bloor and became a much larger crowd. When I got home I collapsed on my bed and had a nap.
Before I got up for my final walk home a tiny, red-bearded man who I've seen several times sleeping rough in this area was asking people for change, announcing he was hungry or just in need of help, over and over. I happened to have some quarters in my pocket from a recent decision to use some of the coins sitting in jars at home. I apologized to the guy that I couldn't even give him two dollars but that I didn't have a lot of money in any case. Most of the people who lived around here were rich. I said I'd been poorer at times in the past and that family and friends saved me. He said he wished he had family and friends. He didn't have anyone to help him, ever. I said that this world was a shit-hole. He said that this world can be a cruel place, that's for sure. I agreed with him.
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