Taking Pride on an Anti-Israel Journey of Rejection

"The focus today is to show our love, to show our solidarity and our support to a community that needs it. The message here is that everybody is welcome, everybody is included and there's so much that we can learn from each other."

"For the youth to see so many groups, so may organizations and so many people being here to support this community, it gives that sense of validation that is so important -- to make people feel they are welcome and validated."

"This community is all about love, solidarity and support."

Mr. Capital Pride 2024

 

"All of the organizations and institutions that have pulled out have done so without consultation with their workers."

"This was top bosses and employers or boards of directors making decisions without consulting the people who work there or the people they actually serve." 

Emily Quaile, Community Solidarity Ottawa

Capital Pride Parade in Ottawa, on Sunday, August 25, 2024. (Chris Tanouye/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Inclusion, love, solidarity and support? Not quite. As it happens Capital Pride organizers conferred among themselves -- without taking a poll among their members, in fact -- to reach a consensus of opinion that inclusion would mean the Palestinian community of the Ottawa region, not merely those who qualify as 2SLGBTQIA+, but they and their sympathizers in general. The very groups that have celebrated the October 7 Palestinian terrorism butchery in Israel where 1,200 mostly civilians were left dead, girls and women raped and tortured, entire families put to the torch, children, women and the elderly taken hostage into Gaza.

 

Gaza, the stronghold of the Hamas terrorist organization; considered by the government of Canada to be terrorists just as they are in most Western countries, for their unabashed and straightforward dedication to the destruction of the world's only Jewish state, in an ancestral geography, an Israel reborn for the singular purpose of offering safe haven to Jews in a hostile world that continually reverts to a state of viral antisemitism, just as we now see in Europe, North America and elsewhere, boosted by the slanderous propaganda of the Palestinian agenda to discredit and demonize Israel and Jews everywhere. 

Palestinian organizations and sympathetic groups have organized raucous, threatening rallies in cities across Europe and North America from October 8 onward, funded by foreign organizations and Islamist countries like Qatar and Iran who have also supplied organizers for these pro-Hamas protests as well as the encampments on university grounds demanding that university administrators and corporations and business leaders as well as Western governments condemn Israel for its response to the mass rape, mutilations and bloodletting by Hamas when the Israeli military embarked on a campaign to destroy the terrorist infrastructure of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, the PLFP and Hezbollah.

The declaration of 'principles' and alliances expressed by Capital Pride prior to embarkation on its annual Capital Pride parade effectively raised the level of antisemitism in and among the LGBTQ community in favour of supporting a death cult that aims its poisoned arrows at Jews everywhere, extending its campaign in less visible but rising campaign against Western 'imperialism' inimical to Palestinian aspirations and extended Islamist jihadist goals.

"Part of the growing Islamophobic sentiment we are witnessing is fuelled by the pink-washing of the war in Gaza and racist notions that all Palestinians are homophobic and transphobic. By portraying itself as a protector of the rights of queer and trans people in the Middle East, Israel seeks to draw attention away from its abhorrent human rights abuses against Palestinians. We refuse to be complicit in this violence. Indeed, to withhold our solidarity from Palestinians in the name of upholding 2SLGBTQIA+ rights betrays the promise of liberation that guides our work. We join our voice to the calls for greater protection of civilians and reject any attempts to use a devastating conflict as a pretext to advance hate."

"To breathe life into our sincere hope for an end to this war and justice for all its victims, we commit to the following actions:

• Integrating resources such as the Palestinian BDS National Committee’s boycott list in our existing review process of current and future sponsorship agreements;
• Hosting Zaffa: A Queer Arab Showcase, a Signature Event as part of the 2024 Capital Pride Festival that features discussions about ongoing issues facing LGBTQIA+ Arabs locally and abroad;
• Recognizing the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in opening remarks at 2024 Capital Pride Festival Signature Events; and
• Working with all our partners, both public and private, to push for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the immediate release of all hostages, increased access to humanitarian aid, and more accessible pathways for refugees."

Capital Pride Statement in Solidarity with Palestine, August 8, 2024, Ottawa, Ontario

Replete with the slanderous calculated falsehoods of the Palestinian propaganda, the Capital Pride Statement is a document of ignorance and antisemitism combined in a lethal cauldron of pure hate. Israel is a defender of alternate gender human rights which are legally protected in Israel; its Pride Parades are open and respectful. Whereas on the other hand, in the Palestinian Territories gays risk their very lives if their sexual orientation becomes public knowledge. In the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as in Iran, death stalks members of the Palestinian  LGBTQ community.

There is no 'genocide' against Palestinians at the hands of Israel; there IS a military campaign to expunge the presence of lethal Islamist Palestinian attackers of Jews/Israelis from the territories. The founding charters of Fatah, Hamas and other such internationally recognized terrorist groups identify their purpose as the elimination of Israel from its ancestral soil. Deadly attacks against Jews have been the Palestinian formula since 1948 with the declaration of the State of Israel. Existential threats against Israel and world Jewry emanate from the Palestinians whom LGBTQ groups lionize.

In Ottawa, reaction to the Capital Pride position statement was clear and it was a denunciation of all that it alleges in demonizing Israel while supporting Palestinian terrorism against Israel. The city's mayor began the response of rejecting the Pride position when the City of Ottawa's Mayor Mark Sutcliffe let it be known with regret, that he would not be attending the parade. Followed by the Liberal Party of Canada, the Ontario Liberal Party the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, The Ottawa Hospital, the Montfort Hospital, Ottawa Tourism, the Bank of Canada, Giant Tiger, Loblaw, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, the University of Ottawa, the U.S. Embassy, the Public Service Pride Network, Conseil des ecoles publiques de l'Est de l'Ontario, Conseil des ecoles catholiques du centre-Est, and the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board.

They did so in sympathy and agreement with the Ottawa Jewish community which felt excluded and isolated as a result of the Capital Pride statement and position taken on the Israel-Gaza conflict, repeating the slanderous accusation of Israel committing 'genocide' against the Palestinians. Ottawa's situation is not a unique one, as it happens, since Pride parades in Montreal, Toronto, Halifax and Vancouver have been disrupted by pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Hate-mongering against Jews resulted in over 100 synagogues, hospitals and Jewish community centres receiving bomb threats.

As for the Pride commitment to integrate the BDS boycott list into its review of sponsorship agreements, that remains to be seen. The TD Bank is Pride's major 'presenting' sponsor and right behind it as a sponsor is Loblaws, and the LCBO followed by the province of Ontario, all of which are listed on the BDS Coalition's "Boycott List of Shame". Shame, in very point of fact, has settled itself squarely on the Pride community for its unabashed antisemitism cloaked unbecomingly under the banner of anti-Zionism, anti-Israel provocations.

Members of the OCDSB carry a giant pride flag during the Capital Pride Parade in Ottawa, on Sunday, August 25, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Tanouye