Israel may finally have crossed the line in the court of public opinion because the recent wave of support for Palestine shows no sign of subsiding. Residents of Victoria keep showing up in huge numbers and their outrage does not abate.
At least five hundred Palestinian supporters rallied at the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia in Victoria to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the end of the decades-long occupation of Palestine by Israel.
The event was held in coordination with a worldwide campaign of rallies this Saturday, the most prominent of which being an immense march in Washington DC that attracted tens of thousands of participants from all over the East Coast. Which did not make our own rally look any smaller, but actually way bigger.
Once again protesters braved the elements to get their message heard, including strong winds and even rain. Their message wasn’t any easier to speak than previous times either. A Palestinian speaker whose family was chased out of Haifa needed encouragement from the crowd to overcome a pause during her speech, because the words would not come out; how does one speak of her people’s intergenerational massacre without emotion? With all the courage she could muster, she stressed the fact that the occupation and genocide didn’t start in October of this year and exhorted the crowd to do whatever possible to put an end to the interminable conflict, including via Boycott, Displacement, and Sanctions.
We got some sunny weather just in time for the march across town, which today led on Government Street up to Pandora Avenue, then back to the Legislature. The crowd, faithful to its strategy of targeting Israel’s sponsors, made two halts at Starbucks to denounce it targeting a union for tweeting in support of Palestine. I overheard a BC Transit employee on board a nearby bus wondering indignantly what Starbucks had to do with the conflict, which illustrates the considerable rift between factions as a parallel conflict plays out in the court of public opinion.
Back at the Legislature, the organisers were already mustering the crowd for the next rally, on Sunday, November 12, at 1PM. In the meantime, participants were once again exhorted not to just walk home until the next weekend protest, but to keep pressuring Israel by targeting our elected representatives—if only by telling the next bus driver why he shouldn’t buy his coffee at Starbucks anymore.
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Never take your rights for granted. Women in particular know even hard-earned ones are never far from being taken away.
Although the event was a relative success, its outcome leaves me most apprehensive. Regretfully, we had to end it early.
