Every one of us was expecting tensions at this latest Palestine solidarity rally, may that be the organisers, the police, or the protesters themselves.
At least 500 Palestine supporters gathered for a thirteenth weekend in a row at the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia in Victoria, bracing themselves for a confrontation with Israel’s supporters which had been very long in coming.
Indeed rabbi Lynn Greenhough of the Kolot Mayim Reform Temple in Victoria had announced her intention to block the Palestine solidarity car motorcade at Ogden Point on New Year’s eve, and written a piece published by the Times Colonist denouncing the protesters’ platform as “pure evil”. VicPD responded by temporarily setting up CCTV cameras along the march’s planned itinerary, and the organisers by calling forth a flying squad of several additional wardens and at least three legal observers.
Several hostiles indeed showed up early on, not only mingling with the crowd but outright agitating it, looking for a confrontation; one of them, to nobody’s surprise, was notorious troll Charles Bodi. Wardens and police liaison officers did their best to keep the factions separate, but after months of boiling tensions these proved rather hard to contain.
One of the speakers read aloud an address to counterprotesters on behalf of local activist group Victoria to Palestine essentially closing the door to dialogue in response to their inflammatory rhetoric and threats of escalation. On their part, the organisers urged restraint, warning against engaging with the hostiles and to report any incident immediately.
When the march left for the streets of Victoria, roughly twenty counterprotesters were waiting for them, some waving Israel flags or hostage signage. While there was no physical altercation, several participants on both sides tried to incite one by testing the cordon’s resilience, earlier warnings having somehow fallen into deaf ears; such was the tension that even a warden ended up giving a counterprotester the finger, which is of course verboten.
The worst part behind, the marchers took their message across downtown. Speakers had earlier noted that many people remain ignorant of the current conflict’s actual levels of escalation and horrific war crimes being committed, to say nothing of the manufactured humanitarian crisis, so today the crowd echoed lines meant as advocacy instead of just the usual slogans. It is worth noting that mainstream media coverage has largely been criticised as biased and tepid, while a great many people indeed get their news from Twitch and Netflix, leaving them largely in the dark. Protesting is turning into a mission to educate the public about the perils everyone faces if the crisis continues, not just in Gaza but worldwide as escalation pitting headstrong factions against each other threatens global stability itself.
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