Activists Stage Palestine Solidarity Sit-in at Legislature

Over a hundred Palestine supporters gathered at the Legislature in Victoria for a sit-in to support a hunger striker, not fifty metres from roughly as many Zionists holding a rally of their own.

The event was announced only three hours prior by the Tzedek Collective, although word had started spreading the evening before. Officially, it was meant to support Emily, a UVic student on hunger strike until our government divests from Israel, starting with the implementation of an arms embargo.

It was held simultaneously with a protest, also on Legislature precincts, organised by David’s House of Prayer, a Christian prayer group with Israeli sympathies, in support of the Israel Defence Forces’ ongoing military incursion deep into Gaza. While organisers on our end denied we held a counterprotest, the distinction amounted to Walmart calling its employees associates; we all expected tensions between the factions, and the event unfolded accordingly.

To muddy the waters even further, Dawah preachers from Vancouver unknowingly chose this precise moment to erect a tent again not fifty metres from our own location. They spent most of their time not converting prospective faithfuls to Islam but instead arguing with an old couple whose stance on the Palestinian cause was at best highly sceptical, although not overtly hostile.

And then of course VicPD responded by dispatching no less than twenty-four officers to keep the peace, who were as assertive as you would imagine. Fortunately their objective wasn’t to crack down on either faction so they weren’t outright intimidating, and I observed that the bad blood between them and our faction from last Monday had largely dissipated. Nevertheless, we had our own police liaison officer to minimise contact with law enforcement.

Inevitably actors from each faction would close onto the other. Some exchanges led to peaceful conversation, in spite of ideological differences standing in the way of understanding. Others were flat out hostile and required the intervention of both the police and our wardens for the antagonists to disperse. In fact, our wardens were all over the place today trying in vain to keep us herded together.

Although only partially effective, the solution to this quandary was for the organisers on our end to start a dancing party on Palestinian music, turning a brewing counterprotest into a festivity of sorts. I can attest that nothing appeases restless hotheads like good music, and I recommend that organisers add this tactic to their playbook.

The organisers kept their statement for last. They denounced Christian Zionism for what it is: a factitious alliance between Christian Dominionists and Zionist Jews, the former using the latter to fulfil their twisted eschatological prophecies. In other words, American support for the Palestinian genocide in Gaza can be largely attributed to the zealous delusion that the Second Coming of Christ is to be realised once the Jewish people reclaim the Holy Land. Indeed, it’s not in Jews’ name that the Palestinian are being massacred, but in that of fanatical Christians led by demented fossils. So much for the other faction crying over Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism.