How Many Parades In The Middle East Will Have QuAIA Contingents?

Jewish groups plan show of force at Pride

By SUE-ANN LEVY, Toronto Sun

Last Updated: June 25, 2010 7:03pm

The presence of a controversial hate group calling itself Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) will not deter the Jewish community from marching in this year’s Pride parade, a contingent of Jewish leaders said Friday.
“We are more determined than ever to galvanize a large number of marchers for the parade,” Kulanu executive director Justine Apple told a press conference at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre.
Apple, whose group represents the LGBT Jewish community in Toronto, said both gay and straight delegations will be marching from the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Canada Israel Committee and a number of Toronto synagogues to “speak out” against discrimination and to “take back” the Pride parade she once knew.
“We will not be bullied from attending our parade,” she said. “Groups that bring messages of hate cannot be given licence to hijack the parade and turn it into a propaganda tool for such anti-Israel venom.”
Bernie Farber, chief executive officer of the Canadian Jewish Congress, told the media he will be marching in the July 4 parade and will be sending an e-mail blast to the entire Jewish community to stand in support of the only state in the Middle East that supports gay and lesbian rights.
Apple and others reserved their harshest criticism for the Pride board for deciding to reverse their earlier ban on the participation of QuAIA in this year’s parade.
Their about-face came little more than a week after the city handed Pride their $123,807 grant cheque — on good faith that any groups violating the city’s anti-discrimination policy would not be allowed to march this year.
“Clearly Pride Toronto has cowered and given in to the bullying and intimidation tactics of (certain members of) the LGBT community,” Apple said.
“The inclusion of these groups ... turns Pride into a made in Canada Durban II, an anti-Israel gong show,” added gay activist Martin Gladstone, whose DVD documented the involvement of the QuAIA contingent in last year’s parade.
It would seem that city officials have also done an about-face.
The city’s diversity manager Ceta Ramkhalawansingh indicated a month ago that Pride may be in violation of the city’s anti-discrimination policy for allowing QuAIA to march in the parade.
But on Friday she sent the Toronto Sun an e-mail indicating Pride has put “new procedures” in place that ask all participants to sign an anti-discrimination declaration.
“We understand that the intent of Pride’s new procedure is to allow members of the community to express diverse views in a mutually respectful way,” she wrote, carefully avoiding the fact that QuAIA will be marching with the same messaging as in the past.

sue-ann.levy@sunmedia.ca