"We say get out, or you're dead!" "We'll give them two minutes and start shooting!"
Elias Hazineh, former President of Palestine House spoke these words loud and clear to a cheering crowd at the annual al-Quds Day gathering in downtown Toronto, Saturday, August 3, 2013.
He was talking about Jews, in Israel.
"We say get out or you're dead! We give them two minutes and then we start shooting. And that's the only way that they will understand."
Kill them if they don't leave Jerusalem.
Palestine House lost its federal funding because Ottawa called the cultural centre's activities a "pattern of support for extremism." But that didn't hinder Hazineh from speaking in the largest city in Canada, one of the most diverse cities in the world without fear of repercussion. He was only talking about Jews.
Can you imagine a group of Russians attending an anti-gay rally in Toronto saying:
"We say get out to all the homosexuals or you're dead!"
Or a group of Christians rallying in Toronto saying that about gays in Uganda?
What do you think would happen in the mainstream media? Like the CBC?
I noticed that Sun News was reporting from the rally. But I haven't seen or heard reports from other main stream media. Perhaps I missed it?
The al-Quds crowd of more than 400 happy, many flag-waving people was regaled by a young boy dressed in his modified kafiyah, and a Palestinian flag tattoo on his cheek. The permit for the rally to take place on Queen's Park had been denied, but the party-goers managed to ensconce themselves on the edge of the park.
And he said:
"Zionism preaches corruption and oppression and tyranny around the world. All these insurgencies you see in Syria they are blaming it on us... These Zionist thugs you see over there they are the representation of all these problems and fitnas in the world...they are behind the insurgencies... Israel is falsehood, they're tyranny, they're corruption, they're cancers and they're terrorizing all the Palestinians... Israel is an illegal terrorizing racist group which works for the destruction of humanity and peace in the world."
The crowd was thrilled and they also got to hear from a young girl who compared the Jews to the Nazis.
I won't talk about the fact that this type of language was prolific in Nazi Germany -- hateful language towards the Jews -- because I would be inundated with complaints of employing "straw dog" arguments.
Let's put this rally into context. The al-Quds Day rally, a global event was started by the late Iranian cleric Ayatollah Khomeini to press for the "liberation" of al-Quds, the Arabic name for Jerusalem. This man, a theocratic, autocratic despot, who denied his own people any liberty, is the Grand Puba of al-Quds.
Why wouldn't a young boy or girl growing up in Toronto feel comfortable saying such things? After all, they have learned from the masters; Naomi Klein, Judy Rebick, Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky, all the left-wing fundamentalists who describe the Middle East in black and white. The Jews are the aggressor, the colonizers, and the Palestinians are just the victims who use suicide bombers in restaurants and buses and now have people in Canada saying:
"We say get out or you're dead! We give them (The Israeli Jews) two minutes and then we start shooting. And that's the only way that they will understand."
This is multicultural Canada.