Pro-Israel rally in Ottawa

I just got back from a pro-Israel rally in Ottawa. Several hundred people turned out--a smallish crowd, Jewish and Christian, many waving Israeli flags. The turnout wasn't bad though, considering that it was organized hastily. Word only went out on on Friday.

It was organized by 4MyCanada, the good folk at the Life Centre, a charismatic evangelical church and some folks from B'nai Brith Canada.

Two MPs came and spoke, both Conservative: Jeff Watson, who came in from the Essex riding near Windsor, and Royal Galipeau, who represents Orleans.

Evangelist Bill Prankard was also there.

The rally was heartwarming and moving. The Christian speakers prayed for Israel, prayed for the soldiers fighting Hamas, prayed for the Palestinian people who are captive to the terrorist group. They upheld Irsael's right to defend herself.

They also spoke movingly of the Holocaust, the need for the State of Israel to exist to it never happens again, and the importance of Canada and other countries standing firm in support of Israel's right to defend herself.

Several people mentioned the news media and the biased coverage against Israel. Amen to that.

On the way home, I was thinking how many secular Jews and liberal Christians disdain the evangelicals (the "religious right") who have an unwavering support for Israel. They are distrustful of the motives and think it's only because these Christians are focused on End Times and looking forward to the Apocalypse.

I think today's rally would have dispelled those prejudices. It was nice, too, that a range of Christians were represented---I saw some Catholics there as well as evangelicals.

It also made me sad that the big Jewish organizations have not stood with us when human rights commissions have persecuted people in the Christian faith community: Scott Brockie, Bishop Henry, Stephen Boissoin, Mayor Diane Haskett, I could go on and on.

Yet the humn rights commissions seem to be strangely silent when one "enumerated group" starts calling for the extermination of another.

Where are the police and Criminal Code charges for making threats and for inciting hatred during some of the pro-Hamas rallies that have been taking place across Canada?)

Kathy Shaidle was at yesterday's in Toronto. She has a round-up of links and troubling photos and videos. Here's what she wrote (my bolds):

I didn't write about this yesterday because I had no internet for hours ("somebody", according to the Rogers tech, "had pulled out our phone line" or something.)

Also because, frankly, I spent most of the demo on the verge of tears and needed to sit on this for a while.

One Jewish protester explained the small Jewish presence by citing the Sabbath.

"That's crazy," said a woman who came later and let me hold her Israel flag for a while:

"There aren't enough Orthodox in Toronto for that to matter. Thursday night they had a rally at a synagogue. A synagogue? Why, so they can hide and feel safe in there? Who sees you in there?"

Before I showed up, union big wig Sid Ryan gave a speech talking about how he understood what it was like to be oppressed because he was Irish.

And an American flag and an Israeli flag were burned.

Somebody on our side snatched what was left of the Israeli one and hung it on our barricade.

When the cops told us it was too dangerous for us to stay, I grabbed the flag from the barricade, not wanting to leave it to the tender mercies of the city's furious cab drivers, terrorist supporters and welfare cheats (the Kadar family was there) assembled only a few feet away.

It is now draped rather awkwardly on a shelf above my computer.

As we left, a gang of very young masked dudes with foreign accents screamed at us second- and third- generation Canadian taxpayers, "Go home! Go home!"

One of them was holding up a Hezbolah flag and the other, a Canadian flag.

This is Toronto, 2009.

That Jewish child who is "gonna fuckin' die"? He was standing right beside me.

Where were you?

You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

Anti-Semitism is growing in Canada and these commissions are useless in stopping the most virulent source of it. Instead they focus on a handful of white supremacists and then expanded to persecute Christian pastors and who happen to speak out against homosexual behavior.

The human rights commissions are persecuting the very people who would provide a bulwark of support for the Jewish people in Canada. It's time groups like the Canadian Jewish Congress, B'nai Brith and the Simon Weisenthal Centre wake up to this.

Where are the people who accused people like Kathy Shaidle, Kate McMillan, Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn of being Nazis because of their unwavering support for free speech, but who say nothing when there is actual incitement and death threats (such as the throat slit gesture a man made at a previous anti-Israel rally)?

I mean, there is stuff going on that I think crosses the line, that makes poor Alberta Pastor Stephen Boissoin's letter look like a love letter in comparison. He never called for ovens, or said the Nazi's didn't do a good enough job. I'm American born, and love the more robust free speech tradition there. But if police are telling a small group of counter-demonstrators they must go home because it is getting too dangerous, I better see some arrests made, or we have already said goodbye to civilized debate in this country.

What's disturbing is how many people are coming out to defend Hamas and so few coming out to defend the Jewish people. Obviously the regime of human rights commissons have not stopped genocidal, hateful speech in Canada. In fact, human rights commissions have been hijacked to undermine the very Judeo-Christian foundations of our society. Without that framework we have no meaningful pluralism or democracy. Fine job, folks! Look at what you have wrought.

Hmmm. I find Mark Steyn has posted similar thoughts over at The Corner:

During the last year, as the Canadian Islamic Congress and their eunuch stooges in the "human rights" commissions attempted to criminalize my books and columns as "hate crimes", various leftie groups - including PEN Canada and the Canadian Association of Journalists - came to see the country's censorship laws as incompatible with freedom. The only public defenders of the "human rights" commissions were, of all people, the Canadian Jewish Congress, B'nai Brith Canada and other "official Jews" (in Ezra Levant's words) who insisted state censorship was necessary in order to cow the last three "white supremacists" in Saskatchewan into submission and prevent such horrifying crimes as scrawling swastikas at knee height in public toilets.

So the Canadian Jewish Congress made common cause with the Canadian Islamic Congress and the neo-Nazi takeover of the prairies (or, at any rate, prairie toilets) has been prevented. And now explicitly genocidal eliminationist threats against Jews are being bellowed out at public rallies. But that's okay, because it's not a hate crime, unlike my book. Which may explain the curious silence of the CJC and the toilet warriors.