I am withdrawing my support for the apartheid-free pledge

While I still support Palestine from a personal standpoint, I regretfully withdraw my support for the apartheid-free pledge and permanently break all bonds with the local Palestine rally organizers.

I am sure even the casual observer has observed the surrounding drama from quite the distance. The weekly marches in town have drawn a lot of controversy, especially when the Victoria Police Department decided to withdraw from mashalling them, invoking a strain in resources.

I briefly joined Tadamon Coast Salish at the time in a capacity of legal adviser. I found most concerning that the Victoria Police Department decided not to ensure the marchers’ safety in such an arbitrary fashion, especially considering that denial seemed to be made on the basis of religion; the announcement was even delivered to Muslim and Jewish organizations which had no involvement in the rallies whatsoever.

I thought I could make a difference. Instead I left the organization in a matter of weeks in disgust.

There was suffocating internal drama within the group which I care not to elaborate about at length. My main area of concern, however, was the leadership’s attitude toward the local Jewish community.

In particular, one of the organizers objected to my denouncing antisemitic graffiti at the Congregation Emanu-El, even though it raised money for Palestinian refugees, and outright accused me of bothsidesism, which I deny. It is my conviction that the Palestinian liberation movement should work with its numerous Jewish allies and condemn hate in all its forms; instead the local Palestinian leadership went out of its way to alienate them.

I had also warned them against filing frivolous complaints against the Victoria Police Department at the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner. They proceeded against my advice:

A criticism they had was what they say was Chief Fiona Wilson tagging two Israeli lobby groups, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and the World Jewish Congress, in a former social media post. A post Wilson shared in commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2024 where a number of other Jewish-centred organizations were tagged.

Any reasonable member of the public would recoil upon reading such an offensive claim. Don’t just take my word for it, read this letter published within days by the Times Colonist:

They have gone beyond support for Gaza

Re: “Pro-Palestine marchers demand return of police traffic control,” April 29.

The hubris and entitlement of the pro-Palestine marchers is breathtaking.

I strongly doubt that they have a right to a certain form of police protection (traffic safety measures) under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, especially when the police have limited resources and competing priorities.

I also take offence to the protesters attempting to make a reasonable apprehension of bias claim against Police Chief Fiona Wilson because she made a social media post in 2024 commemorating the Holocaust that was tagged to a couple of organizations that the protesters don’t like.

What are the protesters actually saying? That any statements commemorating the Holocaust are merely “personal political commitments”, or possibly that the Holocaust can be dismissed?

Finally, I take great offence to a protester’s dismissal of criticisms of the disruptive nature of the marches and rallies as complaints by “Zionists.”

In the context of the article, that protester’s statement crosses a bright red line. It fosters hate, and it does nothing to support the children and women in Gaza that the protesters say they care about.

John Blakely
Victoria

The leadership has made even more offensive public statements toward the Jewish community on blog posts, like this one: The Displaced Grief of the Comfortable. I’ve shared it with a supportive member of the Jewish community, who replied: This post has introduced me to ways of being racist I didn’t even know existed.

I have also objected to the undignified behaviour that the organizers have exhibited at the rallies. They would regularly engage with counterprotesters with tirades and even physical altercations, all the while lecturing others against following their example. One incident which led to a counterprotester being removed from the Legislature precincts was actually instigated by one of the rally organizers, and while I feel no sympathy toward the former, I simply cannot condone the behaviour of the latter.

I have since attended the marches on occasion, hoping that the situation would improve; it instead festered to the point that attendance has plummeted to unsustainable levels and the remaining marchers openly denounce the leadership’s ill behaviour. Morale is extremely low and the attendees openly trade insults.

In desperation, I have attempted a coup by forcing the removal of one Palestinian organizer whose views are simply abhorrent and the object of widespread opprobrium within the local ranks; it backfired. I was even accused of supporting the apartheid-free pledge as a shameless vote grab, which I deny; I had made clear to the leadership from the onset of the campaign in November that I was running for office in order to further its goal of making the apartheid-free pledge an election issue, not the other way round.

By the way, I have observed that many Palestinian organizers around the globe have embraced increasingly radical views toward Israel, going as far as glorifying Hamas and calling for the Zionist regime’s methods to be turned against it, may these be mass displacement, apartheid, or genocide. I joined this movement to promote a free Palestine where people of all races and religion could coexist in peace, not for the oppressor to become the oppressed. I thought our respective goals were the same; I was wrong.

It is my conviction that the movement is losing its way and is hurting its own cause in the court of public opinion. I therefore withdraw my support, and I call for the remaining marchers to quit disrupting traffic in vain and go home.