Some Toronto residents voiced their outrage at a group of anti-Israel protesters who blockaded a busy downtown intersection and performed an Islamic prayer.
The anti-Israel protest, organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement in Toronto outside of the Israeli Consulate at Yonge Street and Bloor Street, disrupted traffic and led to heated confrontations between demonstrators and some residents.
The Palestinian Youth Movement has been a key organizer of anti-Israel protests since Oct. 8. The group calls itself a “transnational, independent and grassroots movement” against “Zionism.”
The group boasts it published the first English edition of an avowed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine member Wiam Rafeedie’s novel, The Trinity Fundamentals. The Marxist-Leninist PFLP is a listed terrorist entity in Canada.
Footage posted by independent journalist and lawyer Caryma Sa’d from the arms embargo protest has sparked an online debate on whether Canadians should tolerate these disruptions and whether they fall within the defined Charter-protected rights to peaceful assembly.
As documented by Sa’d, two pedestrians, one identifying as a resident of the area, were outraged that the Toronto Police Services were doing nothing to prevent the group from taking over the major road.
“This is an unlawful assembly here. This is un-Canadian,” one pedestrian yelled at police. “Palestinian Gestapo, all of you.”
Toronto Police Services did not respond to True North’s requests for comment.
Another pedestrian who identified herself as a resident appeared to have been prevented from moving around the protest after voicing outrage about the protest.
“This is a roadway for emergency service. If we have fire or whatever, you’re not allowed here,” she said. “I’m a resident!”
After she began voicing her concern, the crowd began shouting “Allahu akbar,” a common Islamic refrain. Some did so in the pedestrian’s face, drowning her voice out.
One of the anti-Israel protesters, identified by Sa’d as a protest marshal, began walking in front of her, impeding her movement.
“These are our roadways for safety and to get to our jobs and the TTC (transit),” she said as she walked past the crowd, which began to surround her. “Totally unacceptable in Ontario. Why we allow this (with) our government is totally unacceptable.”
She later approached the police, loudly proclaiming that blocking an intersection violates provincial and federal laws.
In the video, one individual is dressed as a Hamas terrorist in a black balaclava and a green headband. Calls for socialism were also seen on flags at the protest.
In an interview, Josh Dehaas, a constitutional lawyer with the Canadian Constitution Foundation, told True North that blockading an intersection can fall outside the Charter-protected right to freedom of assembly.
He noted that blockading a road could be considered intimidation or, more likely, mischief, as it is a crime to wrongfully or without authority prevent any person from doing what they have a legal right to do. He said people have been charged for blockading roads, such as in B.C. and Ontario, particularly during the trucker protests.
“Police should make clear that while you have a right to peacefully assemble on streets, you don’t have a right to blockade or intimidate other people,” Dehaas said. “I think that police should be doing their best to push protesters back onto the sidewalk so they’re not blocking traffic in the community.”
He said police should be charging any who are found to be using force preventing others from moving freely on public streets and those who are intimidating others, making the line of acceptable action clear.
Dehaas said politicians should be calling out blockade-style protests, and by-laws around noise and the like should be enforced.
“Peaceful assembly is a really important Charter right. But people need to know what the limit is, and they need to know what the word peaceful, in particular, is,” he said. “If your assembly is using force against other people, it’s not considered peaceful anymore because, at that point, you’re interfering with everybody else’s right.”
At the end of February, while announcing the Islamic season of Ramadan, the Global Imams Council, a collective of Islamic scholars and imams, called on the Canadian government to crack down on the “Islamist” practice of blockading streets in public prayer.
Imam Mohammad Tawhidi said laws should be enforced against the practice, saying it was a political show of force meant to intimidate others rather than an expression of faith.