Green Party leader, Elizabeth May, finally addresses ‘rumours’ she spoke at a pro-Hezbollah rally on August 12, 2006 in Toronto. In fact, Elizabeth May claims she spoke at a peace rally via this press release.
OTTAWA - Contrary to rumours circulating on the internet, Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party of Canada did not appear at a Hezbollah event two years ago.
August 12, 2006, Ms. May did speak at a peace rally in Toronto along with Jewish and Arab Canadians to call for an end to the violence then raging in the Middle East.
In her remarks she strongly condemned Hezbollah for launching rocket attacks in to Israel as well as Israel for the bombing of Lebanon. The Green Party of Canada supports peaceful resolution acceptable to all parties in the Middle East.
Photo: CARLOS OSORIO/TORONTO STARI was at the same so-called peace rally Elizabeth May spoke on August 12, 2006. Of course, Elizabeth May probably wasn’t able to notice me as I was standing across the street from the pro-Hezbollah supporters and behind the Israeli flags. In fact, my son was holding the Israeli flag for some time. Now, I have not been to a great many ‘peace rallies’ in my day so excuse me if I misunderstand ‘peace rally’ etiquette, but I would have assumed that burning the Israeli flag was not an act of peaceful attentions or a plea for peaceful resolution to the conflict. My bad.
What I really want to ask Elizabeth May is; why absolutely no Jewish leaders from any mainstream Jewish organization from B’nai Brith Canada, to the Canada-Israel Committee, or even the Canadian Jewish Congress spoke at the so-called peace rally. Then it would be fun to ask her to list the names of the Canadian Arab organizations whose leaders represented at the so-called rally for peace.
2 comments:
This is a dead story. It only took me 15 minutes to get the back story about this rally.
The original call out letter was from a bunch of moderate peace groups, including among others the “Jewish Women’s Committee to End the Occupation”. Hezbollah was not invited and when they arrived they were asked to leave by the rally organizers.
There is a whole thread on Rabble.ca with posts by the event planners. There are also posts from some participants talking about it the next day. The initial call out letter is available and so is a bunch of discussion about the confusion caused by the loose associations of the groups involved.
Most informative is a post from someone called “Ohara” on Aug 13, 2006
To wit:
“Though I was heartened to see that the marshalls took some action in demanding that terroism promoters and anti-Semites should go home.”
“Go organize your own rally, don’t sabotage (ours), he said”
So clearly the rally organizers had no desire to have Hezbollah and their ilk at the rally and told them to leave when they arrived.
The thread is right here read it for yourself:
(rabble.ca) http://tinyurl.com/torally
I think it is pretty clear that Elizabeth May received an invitation to speak at a peace rally (badly) organized by some moderate peace groups and that more radical groups crashed the event.
I would hope that responsible journalists would perform at least 15 minutes of research before posting such inflammatory material.
You could have just asked Ms. May for her opinions on the conflict, she tends to be very candid.
Jewish Women's Committee to End the Occupation becomes a mainstream Jewish community group only in an alternative dimension/reality.
Again, where were the leaders of mainstream Jewish organizations and why were they not invited to speak at the alleged "peace rally" – or did your research not show this?
According to your link, the usual anti-Israeli haters were all contacted, and yet, no where in material quoted from the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War on the thread you linked to - suggests Hezbollah should end its aggression towards Israel or towards Israeli civilians, but there is a rather prominent
-
STOP ISRAEL'S BOMBING NOW!
Israel out of Lebanon and Palestine!
No to NATO occupation!
End Bush - Harper war drive!
Toronto Coalition to Stop the War
Do tell why 4,200 rockets fired into Israeli civilian centers by Hezbollah does not rate a mention at a flyer distributed towards promoting a 'peace rally'. Or are you going to suggest the only go Jews are the ones to lay down their arms and die defenseless before Hezbollah's rocket barrages?
Also, please do enlighten me on what is the peaceful significance of the signs reading "Victory to the Intifada" which were prominently displayed at the said peace rally. And why were so many speakers concentrating on the Israeli-Palestinian issue when the alleged need for the 'peace rally' pivoted around the then war between Israel-Lebanon?
Lone Crow, I really don't care what your research turned up for one simple reason - I was there and saw it all unfold in front of my own eyes. My witnessing beats your 15 minutes of backspin.
I heard no speakers or any 'marshals' suggest publicly any Hezbollah supporters should leave the rally, remove his/her signs, flags or t-shirts, but there sure were a number of them, and the crowd really seemed quite warm towards them. You, of course know, when reports of the deaths of IDF soldiers were announced to the crowd of alleged peaceniks cheered!
I am not up on my peace rally etiquette, so tell me - are the announcements of dead persons traditionally cheered at 'peace rallies' or only the deaths of Jewish ones? You know, what I did missed hearing - the denunciations of Hezbollah from both the CAF & Palestine House - your 'moderate peace groups'. Perhaps you can send me the link to those speeches too. Take a good look at the picture I posted. This came from the Toronto Star's own report of your alleged peace rally in action.
Furthermore, Elizabeth May has to be a classed A fracking idiot to read the call-out by the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War and not realized the alleged peace rally would be 1) a very one sided affair and 2), not be co-opted by all the usual hate Israel crowd considering the line-up of guest speakers/sponsors. The issue isn't dead - not by a long shot or as long as you cannot wipe out the memories of those who attended. And for the record, I am not a journalist, nor have I ever aspired to be one, all I am is a witness who witnessed directly the events which transpired...which is a hell of alot more than your smug 2 cents is worth.
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