Poetry and drawing. What could be more innocent?

The Times Colonist’s January 25 article entitled: “Pro-Palestine marches in downtown Victoria paused during Gaza ceasefire,” reported that a vigil was held to memorialize the “Palestinian children who were killed in the war.”

In the article, reporter Michael John Lo wrote that “people attending the vigil on Saturday were asked to write poems and draw… ‘We need to play our role as Canadian citizens to end Canada’s complicity in apartheid and genocide [and] in war crimes,’” he said, quoting organizer Anas Al Salah.

However, Lo provided no context in his article as to who Al-Saleh is.

Lo could have mentioned that at a May, 2024 demonstration in Victoria, Al-Saleh made several statements. He denied Israel’s right to exist, saying that there had been “76 years of ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the erection of an illegal unjust apartheid system across occupied Palestine.” This statement is an unambiguous denial of Israel’s very right to exist, referring to the country’s independence in 1948.

In his May rally, Al-Saleh compared Israel to the Nazis, an explicit antisemitic act according to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).

At another demonstration two days later, Al-Saleh called Anthony Blinken, “The US Secretary of Genocide,” falsely parroting the genocide slander against Israel, and continued to deny the October 7th atrocities, including the mass rapes, saying, “What the Israeli propaganda has disseminated in the beginning of the October 7th operation, they disseminated lies about rapes…”

He glorified Hamas’s attacks on Israeli soldiers, saying, “It makes me feel very proud when I see young warriors in Gaza running up to a tank and delivering the demolition charges to the back doors of the Marava tanks”, he also justified taking them as captives, declaring that “they have the right to good treatment of course once they are imprisoned. That’s on the record for Hamas that’s what they have been doing for all the hostages to the best of their ability.”

The six starved Israeli hostages murdered with multiple gunshot wounds after living in a terror tunnel with insufficient air likely disagreed. Likewise Amit Soussana, a freed hostage subjected to sexual abuse in captivity, as well as being beaten while trussed and bound to a stick and while held upside down, might have something to say about that.

Al-Saleh’s ravings know no bounds, criticizing, in another march in November, those “with poppies on their shirts” saying they were supporting Holocaust survivors who had turned into “victimizers.”

Lo neglected to ask Al-Saleh any probing questions. Lack of inquiry seems to be a Times Colonist theme in covering anti-Israel protests, as demonstrated in their October 8, 2024 article by Canadian Press reporter Roxanne Egan-Elliott, Al-Saleh once again sought to erase Israel’s historical right to exist.

The Times Colonist has published these articles ignoring extremist rhetoric exhibited by prominent organizers of anti-Israel demonstrations in Victoria. It’s time that the newspaper disclose the true face of the anti-Israel movement, and show the public what they are truly facing.