Separate pro-Kurdish and pro-Palestinian rallies in Toronto’s Dundas Square led to conflict between the two groups on Saturday, according to attendees.
While protesters on one side of the street shouted “Free Free Palestine! Free Free Gaza!” into megaphones, those across the way held signs reading “Save the Yezidis Kurds and Christians in Sinjar” and “Support Kurdish forces against ISIS.” But tensions soon developed, say some on the Kurdish side.
“The pro-Palestinian rally was clearly staged to drown out the Kurds,” Tarek Fatah, a Pakistani-born Canadian writer and activist, tells The Times of Israel. “I witnessed a number of Arab Canadians who tried to mingle discreetly with the Kurds and rouse anti-American slogans while posing as if they were Kurds.”
“It was surreal and appeared the pro-Hamas crowd felt the Kurds were stealing away the spotlight and that they were engineered to tho this by some hidden Israeli hand.”
Fatah also says the pro-Palestinian side accused the Kurds of working for Zionists and for America.
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