Apparently, disrupting Ottawa’s Pride parade isn’t an act of intolerance—it’s “justice,” at least according to The Ottawa Citizen’s latest guest columnist published on September 3.
Fae Johnstone defended anti-Israel extremists who hijacked a celebration of LGBTQ+ rights, all while conveniently ignoring that Hamas – whose cause they’re effectively advancing – murders homosexuals. Instead of standing for human rights, Johnstone has managed to stand with the very forces that want to erase them.
In response, HRC Executive Director Mike Fegelman was given an opportunity to rebut this column on September 9, pointing out that words fail to convey the absurdity in blocking an LGBTQ+ parade in order to demonize Israel, a country with its own such parades and one known as the gay haven of the Middle East.
Fegelman: Protesters who stopped Pride parade weren’t defending anyone’s rights
In this column, Fae Johnstone, an LGBTQ+ activist, said that the recent blocking of the Ottawa Pride parade by pro-Palestinian supporters was “the right thing to do” because of the “urgency” of the “death, famine and violence in Gaza that merits incessant outcry by any who believe in justice and human rights.”
This argument is fallacious on a number of levels.
Firstly, it takes it as a given that the ends justify the means, that anybody who believes in “justice and human rights” (at least in their own eyes) has a right to bully others and hijack their events because one believes themselves to be morally righteous enough to do so.
Secondly, and no less importantly, by blocking Ottawa’s Pride Parade on behalf of Gaza, Johnstone and their ilk are doing absolutely nothing to advance the cause of “justice and human rights,” but in fact are actively doing their part to obstruct it.
The current war in Gaza was started by — and perpetuated by — Hamas, the genocidal Islamic terrorist group inside Gaza (and elsewhere in the Palestinian territories). It is a homophobic, misogynistic, antisemitic and anti-Western movement that seeks the mass murder of Jews, and murders anyone who dares to speak out against it.
Words fail to convey the absurdity in blocking an LGBTQ+ parade in order to demonize Israel, a country with its own such parades and one known as the gay haven of the Middle East, defending itself against a terrorist group that actively murders homosexuals. Yet Johnstone appears entirely oblivious to this reality.
That there is suffering inside Gaza is not in dispute. But rather than point the finger at Hamas for starting and continuing a needless war, Johnstone and others who blocked the parade in Ottawa have pinned the blame exclusively on Israel. In so doing, this group has not only failed to advance any cause remotely resembling justice and human rights, but has actively stood with a medieval death cult that is diametrically opposed to the very values the author claims to hold dear.
Bullying members of Ottawa’s LGBTQ+ community will not achieve advancement for them, nor for Gazans, but only benefits their enemies, and anyone concerned with progressive causes should steer clear of such knee-jerk extremism.
Mike Fegelman is Executive Director of HonestReporting Canada, a non-profit organization monitoring Canadian media coverage of Israel.
