Police have reported no arrests after a Pride parade in Montreal was disrupted by anti-Israel protesters and a face-off with police.
Fierté Montréal, or Montreal Pride’s march, was disrupted by several anti-Israel LGBT+ activist groups on Sunday, which claimed that Montreal Pride is funding genocide with its apparent support of “Zionist and Israeli companies.”
Police told True North that no arrests or injuries were reported despite the clash.
The protest began at Metcalfe St. and René-Lévesque Blvd. at 1 p.m. and ended on time at 4:50 p.m., though protesters disrupted the flow of the march, first intercepting the parade at René-Lévesque and Jeanne-Mance St.
A police representative said the group sometimes partially blocked the parade, forcing Pride marchers to move around them. At various locations throughout the event, the protesters completely blocked the parade.
“At one point, the longest time protesters blocked the parade completely was 30 minutes. The organizers and the SPVM officers took a bypass, taking the other side of the street to let the march continue,” police said.
A left-wing activist group Clash MTL claimed responsibility for hijacking a street sign to call to “globalize the intifada” and “escalate” last month and posted a video tagging various anti-Israel groups, who banded together and clashed with police at the event.
“Today, Montreal Pride organizers sent SPVM riot police to attack Palestine protesters who disrupted the Pride parade. It won’t soon be forgotten,” the group posted. “Bravo to F.A.G.S. #prideisariot.”
The Faction Anti-Genocidaire et Solidaire, better known as F.A.G.S, a group that describes itself as “Queers of conscience denouncing Fierté Montreal’s pinkwashing,” was a primary organizer of the protest against the Pride parade.
The group called for support earlier in the day due to police presence at the parade.
“Support needed at René Levesque and Jeanne Mance! F.A.G.S. is marching against Fierté Montreal’s investments in so-called Israel!” the group said before informing participants to dress in “flamboyant / normie queer bloc or drag bloc” to conceal identities and to blend in with the parade.
A look at the F.A.G.S. Instagram page shows the group uses an upside-down triangle in place of the letter A in its name. The inverted triangle has become a pro-Hamas symbol as an inverted red triangle is used in Hamas propaganda videos to indicate the next target of the terrorist group’s gunfire.
An inverted pink triangle was also used to indicate gay prisoners in concentration camps run by the National Socialist Party of Germany during WW2.
Another group tagged in connection with the protest was Pink Bloc MTL, which describes itself as an organization of queer and anticapitalist revolutionaries.
F.A.G.S. also coordinated a “Rad, (radical) Pride” event with Pink Bloc MTL Saturday night. The event, which was billed as anti-capitalist, anti-Zionist, anti-patriarchy and anti-police, ended in vandalized businesses and clashes with police.
Clash MTL framed the damage as the fault of police for “creating a volatile situation” when they attempted to disperse the protest.
“The demonstration ping-ponged from one end of the Village to the other, throwing fires fireworks and breaking windows on Sainte-Catherine, entering and leaving at certain moments the dense crowd of the festival to escape the police,” Clash MTL posted to Instagram. “There is no pride in genocide. Our pride is an intifada!”
One woman on a post from the Pride event, which was cancelled, claimed that she was working in one business that was targeted in the Rad Pride event, which left her “traumatized for (her) life.”
“Don’t tell me it’s a f#@%ng peaceful protest if y’all breaking things…I’m just trying to survive like y’all in this f#%^ng economy. Breaking things will never make a change. Now I’m scared to go to work just in case y’all tryna break more,” Noemy Tremblay said on Instagram.
The groups involved in organizing the protest and Fierté Montréal did not respond to True North’s request for comment.