Adam Zivo: My evening among the Gaza protestors
They seemed cocooned within a parallel world: one where all sin could be neatly attributed to Israel, and where the Palestinians and Hamas were pure and blameless.
By: Adam Zivo
The last few days have seen enormous and fast-moving developments in the Middle East. The first phase of the U.S.-backed ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has been implemented. Israeli military forces have completed a partial withdrawal and, vitally, all (known) remaining living hostages have been released to Israel and reunited with their families. It’s far too soon to say whether this means that there truly is a chance for peace in the region, but for the first time in over two years, it seems somehow just barely possible.
But the path ahead will be challenging. I was reminded of this last week, days before the ceasefire took effect. On the second anniversary of the October 7th massacre, several pro-Palestinian rallies were held throughout Canada to honour the “martyrs” who, in cold blood, murdered and kidnapped over 1,200 people in southern Israel. I visited one of these events in Toronto, hoping to better understand the mindset of its attendees.
It was a grey and drizzling evening, and not many people were there when I arrived — perhaps one or two hundred. Some were Middle Eastern. Others were white Westerners in revolutionary cosplay. “All Zionists are racist! All Zionists are racist,” chanted a crowd, clapping in a cavernous downtown intersection, their Palestinian flags billowing in the wind.
A woman handed me a brochure that claimed that between 198,675 and 993,375 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s two-year military campaign — even though most authorities, including Hamas itself, have placed this figure closer to 60,000.
Holly, a 28-year-old veterinary assistant, told me that she regularly attends pro-Palestinian rallies because, lacking funds to donate, this is her way to educate others and “affect change.” Her opinions on October 7th were mixed. She claimed that the massacre had “brought much-needed awareness to the Palestinian state,” but that she “definitely” disapproves of slaughtering Israeli civilians and did not think that the event represented Hamas or Palestine as a whole.
Holly wanted a one-state solution under Palestinian rule, which she believed would be safe for Jewish citizens. After I pointed out that many Israeli Jews were previously expelled from neighbouring Arab countries, she replied: “As long as they’re not killing Palestinians, generally, the Jews there are safe, yes.” So I pushed a little more: with Hamas killing over 1,000 Jews on October 7th, could they truly be protected? She ended the interview.
Her rosy image of Hamas contradicted reality. The terror group’s charter demands the violent expulsion of the region’s Jews, and its officials routinely call for the “annihilation” and “cleansing” of the Jewish people, who are described as “filth” and a “cancer.” Murdering civilians is the logical extension of this ideology, not an aberration.
I spoke with two young Bangladeshi men — Sameer and Rubayet — who opposed Israel’s “genocide” and said that October 7th had been a “slightly positive” day for them. When asked what they thought about its victims, Rubayet replied: “I’m not sure. I mean, we can’t imagine, as you know, but yeah, it is what it is, you know.” They seemed uncomfortable with the question.
Jack McFadden, an unemployed man in his twenties, said that he was at the protest because he “can’t sit idly by” as Palestinian women and children are “brutally slaughtered,” and that anniversaries are “one of the easiest ways to amplify voices.”
He was “distraught” when October 7th happened, believing that “no one should die,” and simply wanted peace for everyone: “It’s not just civilians dying. There are Israeli soldiers dying. Soldiers die in every war on both sides … there’s kids my age who are holding guns, forced to point them at children, and that shouldn’t be the reality of our world.”
Sam, a 48-year-old Gazan who had immigrated to Canada decades ago, was intimately affected by the war. “Yeah, watching my family getting bombarded, killed, tortured. It’s horrible. You know, sometimes you just can’t sleep watching these images…” he said, adding that he felt “mixed emotions” during the October 7th massacre, because while “nobody wants something to go that far,” it was “resistance at the end of the day.”
He firmly believed that Hamas is Gaza’s legitimate and duly-elected government, and said that the terror organization had been justified in butchering its Palestinian political rivals — the Fatah party — upon assuming power in 2006 because Fatah members were often corrupt and “on the Zionist side.”
When I mentioned that Hamas is unpopular among Gazans — recent polls estimate support lies roughly between 20-35 per cent — he disagreed vehemently: “You’re absolutely wrong. You are absolutely wrong. Hamas is from the people, for the people.” And what about Hamas wanting to kill all Jews? “No, no, no. That’s a misconception. Killing every Jew? Not a chance.”
He claimed that Jews, Christians and Muslims had co-existed peacefully before Israel’s establishment: “No, not even one Palestinian has a problem with a Jewish person. It’s God’s religion,” he said, referring to their shared Abrahamic faith. But this was revisionist history: anti-Jewish riots and pogroms were regularly perpetrated by Palestinians in the early 20th century, before Israeli independence.
A student in his twenties, who went by the pseudonym “John,” said that October 7th was “a horrific incident” but claimed that it was a “false flag” by Israel (this is a common, and widely debunked, conspiracy theory). “Everything was planned. Both sides. It was planned. I don’t know if they both agreed on it, or someone fell into the other trap, but both of them profited from that,” he said.
He supported any peace plan — including U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent (now signed) proposal — but said “the people need to decide for themselves.” I asked whether this was possible, given that Hamas tortures and kills political dissidents in the strip. “That’s not true! That’s not true!” he replied, adding that the United States also lacks freedom of speech.
He complained that everyone wants to paint Hamas as a terrorist organization, “which is somehow true,” but that every government has “terroristic” elements: “They have their own dark things and massacres. And no one is perfect.”
Mary, a 58-year-old Canada Post worker with a gentle disposition, called October 7th a “terrible thing” but similarly claimed it was an Israeli-backed false flag operation: “I think if you follow the money, you’ll see what really happened there.”
Meanwhile, Gilberto, a Mexican superintendent in his 30s, was enraged by the deaths of Palestinian civilians and children. With spittle accumulating at his mouth, he shouted: “Like, the whole world decided Jews has to live here. Okay, they came. Then they start to fight all those years to get the fucking land for Jews for them, taking out the people that give them home.”
Throughout these interviews, some protesters began to surveil and record me. “He’s from the National Post!” said a few, disapprovingly. I later learned that my colleague, Terry Newman, had also been harassed while covering a parallel rally in Montreal — although, in her case, the protesters had been far more aggressive and, according to local police, posed a genuine threat to her safety.
Finally, there was Muhammad, a 34-year-old Palestinian business owner from the West Bank. He was angry at the suffering of his people and the decades of failed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that had robbed them of self-determination. His own father had poured all his money into the West Bank following the 1993 Oslo Accords, in anticipation of a peace that never materialized.
Muhammad earnestly wanted rapprochement, and remained optimistic despite the immense challenges he accepted this would entail. He opposed the Trump-backed peace plan, because it would bring foreign rule to Gaza, and preferred a one-state solution: “One people, one vote, where we can all coexist together. There’s blood spilled. We can reconcile that. A lot of nations did that before. We can do that.” I asked if this was practical. “Of course. Why not? We have done it for thousands of years. Why not now?” he replied.
Elsewhere, a line of women wearing hijabs and keffiyehs held large banners: a collage of dead children and a cartoon of a baby being targeted by rockets. I left the rally shortly afterward, before the crowd marched through the streets, with conflicted emotions.
The attendees ardently wanted to stop the suffering of Palestinian civilians, which is laudable. In this respect, they mirrored the tens of thousands of Jewish pro-peace protestors who have marched in Tel Aviv every weekend for two years. However, their reading of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was generally marred by ignorance and myopia, and they refused to grapple with the suffering Hamas had wrought upon Israelis and Palestinians alike.
They seemed cocooned within a parallel world: one where all sin could be neatly attributed to Israel, and where the Palestinians and Hamas were pure and blameless. In their extremism, they were blind — willfully or not — to the long history of Palestinian antisemitism, and often could not concede that Hamas is vicious, repressive and unloved by its own subjects.
While many of them seemingly understood, on some level, the nauseating essence of October 7th, they either ignored this crime or conspiratorially reimagined it as an act of Israeli aggression. In calling for the dissolution of Israel, they failed to seriously consider the unimaginable ethnic cleansing of Jews this would entail.
Protesting against Israel on October 7th, and treating the day as a celebration of martyrdom, is horrific. It excuses terrorism and lionizes the butchery of civilians. One can advocate for Palestinian self-determination without shilling for monsters, but the people I spoke with saw nothing wrong with their behaviour. Many of them perceived only Palestinian pain and rage and nothing else. And in this narrowness, the crowd, with some exceptions, epitomized the tribalism that enables so much of the world’s churning violence.
Adam Zivo is a columnist and founder and director of the LoveisLoveisLove Campaign. The image at the top of this article is courtesy of the author.
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As I read, I can't help but think that we have failed in our teaching of history, here in Canada. The Social Studies I grew up with did literally nothing to provide me with context to understand the general history of the Levant, or of this conflict. I did not learn some context until college, and through my own readings of experienced journalists. Into that lack of historical context drops unreliable reporting, social media frenzy, abundant conspiracy theories, and the desire of young and old people alike to feel like they are 'doing something.' The human impulse to do something is honourable. The lack of discernment around information sources is concerning.
Thank you for this article.
The perspectives shared by the protesters at the 'pro-Palestinian' rally reveals a parallel to, and inevitable progression, of Chris Selley's wise observation (often quoted by Matt):
“The Liberals genuinely believe they are the kind of people who’d never do the thing they are currently doing.”
Similarly, revealed by Adam's interviews with the protesters, to varying degrees they sincerely believe that the events of October 7th:
a) never happened at all; or
b) happened but were carried out by Israel as a false flag operation; or
b) happened and were carried out by Hamas, but were completely or partially justified; and/or
c) happened and were carried out by Hamas, but were exaggerated by Israel.
Supporters of Hamas and/or the Palestinian single state cause can, will, and do deny objective reality, because they CHOOSE TO BELIEVE they themselves are good, compassionate people supporting the noble, innocent, oppressed Palestinian victims. They also CHOOSE TO BELIEVE that Israel/The Jews are the evil oppressors that need to be stopped/vanquished/eradicated.
The really tragic, horrifying thing is that many of these protesters are closer than they think to being willing to hurt or even kill Jews themselves, given the chance, out of their warped, distorted sense of moral justification. At the minimum, nearly everyone protesting believes that Israel/The Jews deserve the suffering they've endured to date, or will endure in the future.
One could legitimately argue there are some supporters of Israel who also live in varying degrees of this self-deluding mental state; flipping the above descriptions around to fit their narrative.
The reality is this is a horrific and historic blood feud without any real parallel in our world, with objective atrocities committed again and again on both sides for centuries. There really are no good guys or bad guys, there are only less worse guys - ON BOTH SIDES. From my perspective, the Israeli/Jewish side appears to be (by far) the lesser of the two evils, but that is not the same as saying that everything they've done to the Palestinian people is justified. Less bad is still awful.
It is my solemn wish and prayer that this current ceasefire Trump is shamelessly taking credit for will lead to a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinian people.
My historical knowledge and current observations tell me this will not be the case. The hate on both sides remains focused and intense, and they are only biding time to reload and rebuild their arsenals to renew hostilities until the entire region is laid to waste, littered with the bodies of Jewish & Palestinian men, women, and children. If this were not so, I would be eternally thankful.