Pro-Palestinian protesters threatened my life, but the police who witnessed it told me to move along. On June 9, along with 50,000 Canadian Jews, I participated in the annual Walk with Israel. The counter-protesters were light in number, but vile in behaviour.
As my family passed one group, two masked protesters held their hands forward, using their fingers to create a downward pointing triangle. This gesture is used by the most radical pro-Palestinians, mimicking the triangle superimposed by Hamas over human targets in their terrorist videos. In context, such gesture is no different than pulling an index finger across one’s throat or pantomiming a gun and pulling the imaginary trigger.
Adjacent to the triangle-makers were other masked protesters videotaping the Walk’s participants. The Jewish community was threatened that such videos would later be used to identity the participants. Clearly, the counter-protesters were threatening bodily harm or death to people they could later identify.
Uttering threats is an offence under Canada’s Criminal Code. This behaviour cannot be tolerated. Unfortunately, it will be difficult to identify the perpetrators after the fact.
Almost all of them had keffiyehs wrapped tightly around their heads, with only eyes showing. Covering one’s face in such fashion may itself amount to a crime – a crime the police have also been ignoring. Enough is enough.
Calls to “Globalize the Intifada” or “Free Palestine by any means,” reasonably.