On Pride

How Jews and Israelis get excluded by those who preach inclusion

I spent a large portion of Canada Day reaching out to various community groups and organizations asking them if they support a recent ‘solidarity statement’ put out by the Tri-Cities Pride Society (TCPS) - a statement that they put out in the days before hosting their Pride events in the Tri-Cities - three suburbs east of Vancouver.

Here is their full statement:

We’re reposting our Solidarity Statement from last year, as we continue to commit to the values and actions firmly stated here!

“The Coquitlam Pride Festival is rapidly approaching and we are so excited to hold this celebration of our vibrant and diverse 2S/LGBTQIA+ communities. While doing so we want to ground this celebration in the politics and ethos Pride grew from and to reflect on the structural contexts in which we exist and resist.

Cis-heteropatriarchal structures are responsible for the existential threats that folks of diverse gender and sexual identities have faced and continue to face. This structural violence against queer, trans, and Two-Spirit people has its roots in and is continually maintained through settler-colonialism and imperialism both near and far. As a pride society we will keep aiming to platform and amplify Two-Spirit, Indigiqueer, and other Indigenous queer and trans folks. While we take part in these joyous celebrations of identity and diversity we never want to forget that we do so on stolen land and the responsibility that entails. We strive to continually deepen our solidarity with all individuals, nations and movements practicing, reinstating and defending Indigenous sovereignty. This means Land Back!

We also want to unequivocally state our support for a Free Palestine and opposition to Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism. We aim to align our procurement and sponsorship practices with the BDS movement and screen potential sponsors and partners to ensure their operations are in agreement with our values and those of the communities we serve.

Additionally, our events and programming will always be spaces where police, armed forces, and other instruments of state violence are not welcome in a professional or promotional capacity. This is in the spirit of community care, the sentiment of “we keep us safe” and in remembrance that Pride is a commemoration of an uprising against police brutality and violence.

Accountability to our community is top of mind for us. We always welcome engagement, discussion, and constructive feedback from you on how we can best uphold the values of a liberatory politics! We wish you all an abundant and nourishing pride season and hope you will join us in our vision for Queer Joy and Liberation.”

With care, love and solidarity,

The Tri-Cities Pride Society Board

First, let’s review the misinformation/disinformation, also known as lies.

The ‘Free Palestine’ movement was established by Hamas and proxies in North America and Europe. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that this wasn’t a grassroots movement, but a coordinated effort to delegitimize the only Jewish state - an effort backed by Iran. It’s why so many of my Persian friends reached out to me after the rise of Jew hatred and anti-Israel sentiment exploded in the days after October 7, 2023. They saw and knew that Iran was orchestrating and funding the activities that took over our campuses and our streets.

For the record, all Israelis - Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Druze - are governed by one set of laws. There is no apartheid in Israel - it’s a lie. As my friend Celeste Haldane, former Chief Commissioner of the BC Treaty Commission likes to remind me - if folks want to see real apartheid they can look right here at Canada where we have an Indian Act governing one group of people and other laws for other people - that’s apartheid. Israel isn’t an apartheid state.

And as for Israel being a ‘colonial state’. That too is a lie. In order to be colonial there must be a central location of power elsewhere from which to colonize - think Britain and its activities abroad like in Canada or Australia. The same goes for France, think of Martinique or Cote D’Ivoire. Through thousands of years there has always been a presence of Jews in the Levant (the region of the Middle East) and in the current State of Israel. During those years there have been various invaders: Romans, Greeks, Crusaders, Turks and more, but the Jewish people have always had a presence in their indigenous lands. From where could the Jews have had a seat of power outside the region from which ‘to conquer’? They didn’t. In fact, the opposite is true. The Jewish State is a decolonized state, a place that Jews have been able to reclaim after years of being denied access to self governance in their indigenous lands, lands that have continuously been the focus of Jewish worship, history, storytelling, cultural practices, language and common ancestry.

Second, why pick on Israel?

There are many, many geopolitical conflicts in the world right now. The war in Gaza that was started when Hamas slaughtered, maimed and raped thousands and kidnapped and tortured hundreds has not been the only war that is being waged in recent times. People are being slaughtered in Sudan. Thousands of Christians in Nigeria are being killed and no one is talking about these conflicts. Why just pick the only Jewish state to make a geopolitical statement when we see how China treats its minorities or how Russia invaded Ukraine? This is part of a broader effort to dehumanize Jews/Israelis and delegitimize the Jewish state - the latest iteration of antisemitism.

What’s even more stunning is when an LGBTQ+ group chooses to ignore that Israel is the only safe place in the region for people who identify as LGBTQ+. Hamas and other nations governed by Islamists and/or Sharia law strictly forbid homosexuality and regularly torture and kill those who are LGBTQ+.

Third, ‘aligning procurement and sponsorship practices’ makes it sound like this organization will only work with and receive support from those who agree with them on all of these principles - including the one that dehumanizes and delegitimizes Jews and the Jewish state.

(They also maligned the police and armed forces … that’s a substack for another day).

So I spent Canada Day determining who these partners and sponsors are so that I could determine if they agreed with this statement made by the Tri-Cities Pride Society. I reached out to representatives of Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody. I reached out to some MLAs and an MP. I reached out to the Port Coquitlam Foundation and the Port Moody Arts Centre as well as Freshet News - all of whom are listed as sponsors or partners on various social media posts. (I didn’t reach out to the Coquitlam Teachers Association or to CUPE because their actions and statements have led the antisemitic and Jew hating charge - that I will detail in another substack later - but suffice it to say, reaching out to them would not be worth the effort).

I shared the ‘Statement of Solidarity’ with everyone of these groups. Representatives from all three cities were not impressed by the statement and promised to get more information. The MLAs expressed concern to me and assured me that they were not at all impressed with the groups TCPS statement of solidarity, one MLA noted that participating in this event didn’t mean that you endorsed their position - really? That really surprised me given that the MLA claims to stand up to antisemitism but had said absolutely nothing about it - guess it’s all a ruse.

The leadership at the City of Port Moody was quick to respond and was pointed out that the Port Moody Arts Centre, which supported a youth Pride event a week earlier is operated independently of the city. To the credit of the Port Moody Arts Centre, they responded immediately and published a statement that they did not support the TCPS Statement of Solidarity and told me that they would be reconsidering any future partnership given the known position of the TCPS.

The leadership at the City of Coquitlam was minimal at best. There was an effort by one city councillor to engage the TCPS leadership. One of the other MLAs did the same. They both said they offered TCPS advice about how to apologize to the community. The advice wasn’t taken when the group published a follow up statement (see photos below) that didn’t apologize to the Jewish community, that only explained that they were just following ‘their values’ and ‘of course Jews are welcome’. They continued to note that only Israel, the Jewish homeland is to be singularly identified as a pariah state, they don’t mention any other international conflict that concerns them - only the one that is the result of a terrorist group that slaughtered and raped 1200 and kidnapped 251 on October 7. The TCPS don’t actually apologize for making Jews and Israelis feel unwelcome, they certainly didn’t seek to learn more about how antisemitism and antizionism hurts Jews They also didn’t apologize for the misleading comment in their ‘Statement of Solidarity’ that implies that all their sponsors and partners ‘align with their values’.

TCPS claims that learning is important to them, but they have learned nothing and don’t appear to be interested in learning.

To make matters worse, for their follow up statement, the TCPS chose to demonstrate that they did their due diligence in this second statement by referencing Independent Jewish Voices and Jewish Voices for Peace - two fringe groups who are antizionist and seek the dismantling of Israel. These two groups represent less than one percent of Canada’s 400,000 Jews. Think of it this way: Using these fringe groups as references is like going to a group of gay people who believe in conversion therapy for gay people and using them to defend your position on conversion therapy. That is exactly what TCPS folks did.

Deciding to note these references tells me that the TCPS was looking for cover and they thought that by referencing this group, their anti-Israel, anti-Jewish position is legitimate - this is called tokenism and it’s racist. Moreover, I learned that when explaining their follow up position to mayors and others, they credited the councillor and an MLA for their help in crafting the follow-up statement, even though they didn’t really take the advice from either the city councillor or the MLA.

The Port Coquitlam event is not for another two weeks and while they have been made aware of this statement and have expressed concern, I await their formal response.

Freshet News, a fledgling news cooperative is also listed as a sponsor of one of the TCPS events. A representative of Freshet let me know that they received my information about the solidarity statement and rather than acknowledge that they did not agree with the statement as put out by TCPS, they looked forward to reading this piece. I am not sure what that means for them, but given that they have chosen not to acknowledge any problems with the TCPS Statement of Solidarity, I have to assume they are okay with it. Silence is complicit. Suffice it to say that I won’t be giving them any more money to help them find their way as a struggling cooperative news source in our community. A good reminder that we all get to make choices about who and what we support.

As a final comment, I invite you to take a look at the photo at the top of this piece, this is the banner used by the TCPS Facebook Page, a page from which I am now banned. You will notice a woman at the front of the photo with short gray hair wearing a rainbow scarf - that’s me. I remember that day well. The Coquitlam Library was hosting a Drag Storytime and there were anti-Queer protesters coming to protest the event. I grabbed some of my family members and we joined the counter-protest, committed in the our values that love is love.

I remember talking with a queer person that day, a woman who is a prominent leader in the labour movement who was teary because they were tired of the fight to be included and valued for who they are. The words being hurled at her were hurtful and they were penetrating. I told her to go home, that we, straight folks, have her back. She didn’t need to stay to be insulted and made to feel like she doesn’t belong. I have yet to see her or many other leaders reciprocate in any meaningful way now that Jews are a target of hate.

Many leaders tell us that they stand up to antisemitism and Jew hatred but they don’t actually DO that. They are happy to talk about how ‘it’s not okay’ or that ‘it’s not who we are as a community’. Some leaders might even go a step further and try to reach out to the group to ‘better understand their perspective’ and in this case, try to ‘help the group better understand how they are hurting the Jewish community’. But to actually take a public stand and announce how this statement is not acceptable to our community standards - I have not heard that from a single community leader. I had one leader even tell me that I shouldn’t have to carry this burden alone, yet she says nothing that demonstrates that she is ready to take on the burden - so we go it alone while community groups make statements that excludes Jews and Israelis - all in the name of love.