It was in spring 2009 – as we were busily putting together our wedding celebrations – that Denise and I first heard about Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) marching in Toronto’s Pride Parade. We knew little about QuAIA, but we agreed to march in the parade with a Jewish and pro-Israel LGBT group called Kulanu (Hebrew for “all of us”). Although both Denise and I had never before considered marching in the parade, we wanted to be part of a strong pro-Israel presence to offset the lies we felt were being perpetuated by the fringe group of anti-Israel protesters.
At the parade, Toronto lawyer Martin Gladstone documented on video the activities of QuAIA and the placards they carried not only stigmatizing Israel but displaying distinct neo-Nazi overtones. Martin and his partner, Frank Caruso, first noticed – to their horror – the presence of the QuAIA group in the 2008 Dyke March. While watching from the sidelines, they spotted two lesbians carrying a homemade sign that read “End Israeli Aparthied,” followed by a ragtag assortment of dykes behind them sporting signs with similar messages. At the time, Martin was so incredulous about what he saw he thought it was a joke – they couldn’t even spell the word apartheid, never mind understand what it meant. But the next day, at the Pride Parade, the couple saw a larger group of anti-Israel activists. Here was a group using the venue of a publicly funded march and parade to spread a noxious message that had absolutely nothing to do with the celebration of gay rights.
A year later, Martin bought a video camera and got a few quick lessons on how to use it so he could film the QuAIA contingent in the Pride parade. On that Sunday, he stood in the rain and filmed everything himself. Martin hosted a screening of his film at Christmas time, and we all jumped into the fray. We decided that we had to get involved in our advocacy work as early as possible and needed to target, in particular, all of the candidates running for mayor that next year. And so our grassroots campaign began with a vengeance.
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The momentum started to build. In February 2010, then-PC MPP Peter Shurman brought a private member’s motion before the Ontario legislature, condemning the use of the term “Israeli apartheid.” In March, I wrote what would be the first of many columns fighting what I came to regard as a rising anti-Israel, anti-Semitic cancer.
It wasn’t long before the media pressure began to mount. All four local newspapers agreed – for once – that QuAIA should be kicked out of the parade. My columnist colleagues and radio talk hosts like John Tory weighed in repeatedly on the subject, all contending that QuAIA had absolutely nothing to do with gay rights – that its sole purpose was to stigmatize Israel by portraying it as an apartheid state. There was general agreement in the mainstream media that this was not a freedom-of-speech issue, as QuAIA supporters and the radical leftists tried to make it. QuAIA only found support in the fringe left-wing media.
But the cowardly bureaucrats at City Hall continued to pander to QuAIA, issuing a milquetoast briefing note at the end of April indicating that while Pride likely violated the city’s anti-discrimination policies by allowing QuAIA to participate in the 2009 parade, they were “satisfied” and convinced that Pride had put a plan in place to monitor the (hate) messaging of all participants for 2010. We were not informed what that plan was, but as we were to quickly discover, the briefing note was just a stalling tactic. The officials who ran Pride played games with the media, saying one thing until their funding was in the bank, and then, unable to stand up to the bullying from the QuAIA contingent, doing the exact opposite.
It was no surprise that QuAIA doubled down on their hate messaging in the Pride Parade that year, with support from the Canadian Auto Workers union and the city’s outside workers, CUPE 416. Denise and I marched with Kulanu that day, braving searing heat as we danced and sang Israeli songs along the Yonge Street parade route. Some 500 members of Toronto’s Jewish community and a few community leaders joined us that year. It was an excellent turnout – but securing support from Jewish community leaders would be an uphill battle, and their participation would be hit and miss, with key (and well-funded) Jewish groups like the Canadian Jewish Congress (and its successor the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs) and the Canadian Jewish Political Action Committee (CJPAC) more often than not MIA at crucial points in our fight.
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By the spring of 2013, we were all growing weary of the never-ending saga of QuAIA. Throughout this whole sad episode, I realized that those of us fighting for the underdog – Israel – were also underdogs, even though it should not have been that way. The tremendous hypocrisy of everyone who was either closely allied with the QuAIA movement or had turned a blind eye to its hateful message incensed me.
That hypocrisy came out loud and clear in early May 2014, when a cast of QuAIA enablers spoke to the Empire Club about the impending WorldPride event in late June. I nearly choked as Kevin Beaulieu (the then-CEO of Pride), told the mostly gay and lesbian crowd and the requisite Pride supporters that the 2014 WorldPride event in Toronto would be the fourth that has occurred around the world as “part of a global movement” of LGBT folks seeking a strong identity. And where have the other three been held? Rome, London, and Jerusalem, Israel. Yes, WorldPride was held in Jerusalem in 2006. Beaulieu, forced to mention Jerusalem, tried to whisper it. But I heard him.
Excerpted and adapted from Underdog: Confessions of a Right-Wing Gay Jewish Muckraker. Copyright © 2016 Sue-Ann Levy. Published by Signal, an imprint of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company. Reproduced by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.