Everything went according to plan (arrived a bit late due to high winds impacting traveling eastbound), this includes the initial loop through the intersection. I moved to the sidewalk since police didn't want me blocking the walkway they formed (no big deal really).
00:18She was saved by the healthcare workers at El Shifa Hospital in Neza
00:26Who refused to leave their patients
00:31His survival was nothing short of a miracle
00:37We will never act and we will never unsee or unfeel the horrors we are witnessing
00:42Gaza lit up the world in truth and in bravery
00:45May Palestine and its resistance always remain our compass
00:53Free Palestine
00:56For Palestine is organizing this event
00:58With the support of comrades from Palestinian youth movement
01:02Jews say no to genocide
01:04Toronto Indigenous harm reduction
01:06Glia International
01:08Paramedics for Palestine
01:10Occupational Therapists for Palestine
01:12Jewish Faculty Network Toronto
01:14Rehab for Palestine
01:16Many, many more community advocates and supporters
01:19We hold Israel accountable
01:23We hold Israel accountable for the safety of the flotilla activists
01:27Canada has a duty to condemn Israel's aggressions on international waters
01:33And to activate Canadian embassy and consular officials
01:37To immediately secure the release of the flotilla activists
01:40To date, the Canadian government has failed to sanction Israel
01:46Shame!
01:47Shame!
01:48And enact a two-way embargo
01:51Shame!
01:52Shame!
01:53Shame!
01:54Which has emboldened Israel to continue its aggression
01:58To continue its genocide and war crimes
02:02Shame!
02:03Shame!
02:04Shame!
02:05Cumplicity!
02:06Absolute complicity!
02:07Absolute complicity!
02:08We will now hear from Burr
02:12Who is a spokesperson on behalf of Jews saying no to genocide
02:20Free, free Palestine
02:22A lazy excuse wrapped in a neat little bow
02:26Hurt people hurt people
02:29It supposedly explains the abused becoming the abuser
02:34The traumatized carrying trauma like a torch
02:37Passing the flame
02:39Violence as a cycle
02:41We say it like a spell
02:43Like it explains the blood on our hands
02:46Like it erases accountability
02:48Like it makes the screams less deafening
02:52But what it doesn't do
02:54What it never does
02:55Is hold the first of the hurt people accountable
02:59I like you have been watching Gaza burn for 24 months
03:06Since the bomb started falling
03:11Since the screams started drowning out the silence
03:15And I see it now clearer than ever before
03:18My people, Jews and so called Israelis alike
03:24Descendants of fear
03:26We are a hurt people
03:29The Holocaust etched terror into our DNA
03:33Wrote never again on the back of our eyelids
03:35And yet here we stand hurt people
03:39Hurting people
03:41Not just oppressing
03:43Not just denying
03:45Erasing
03:46Annihilating
03:47Genociding
03:48With our heads
03:49Held
03:50High
03:51We are obliterating
03:53Families
03:54Villages
03:55Children
03:56And I for one
03:57Am so
03:58Deeply ashamed
03:59Ashamed
04:01Ashamed of what my people have done
04:04And enraged
04:05And what we continue to do
04:06There are no words
04:09No words for 1948
04:12No words for the bulldozed villages
04:15The uprooted olive trees
04:17The exiled
04:18The executed
04:19The rubbled
04:20The erased
04:21No words for the Nakba then
04:24And no words for the Nakba now
04:27Because it is still happening
04:29Cease fires be damned
04:31The horror unfolds
04:33Minute by minute
04:34And the world keeps watching
04:37So yes
04:38Hurt people
04:39Hurt people
04:40But hurt people
04:41Have absolutely no right to hurt people
04:46None
04:47Zero
04:48Not in the name of fear
04:49Not in the name of trauma
04:51Not in the name of survival
04:53We said never again
04:55But what we obviously meant was never again for us
04:59And in doing so
05:01We betrayed the very real meaning of survival
05:05We have failed
05:07We have failed to clean our own house
05:10Failed to confront what's been done in our name
05:13Failed to rise to the moral weight of our history
05:16We hid behind fear
05:18We called genocide defense
05:21We quoted our trauma while funding our cruelty
05:25And Canada
05:27You're no innocent bystander either
05:29You arm this
05:31You fund this
05:32You sign deals
05:33One general state of state with another
05:35And call it diplomacy
05:37You offer concern while children starve in the rubble
05:41And now
05:42As Israel kidnaps humanitarians
05:45You say nothing
05:47Nothing
05:48So let me tell you about one of them
05:54Our comrade
05:55Ms. Gwasan Agnew
05:56An indigenous woman from Tkaronto
06:02A warrior who put her body on the line
06:05To bring food and medicine to a people being starved by design
06:10Israel seized her ship in international waters
06:15They took her
06:17Detained her
06:18Declined her
06:19Clean water of dignity
06:21Of freedom
06:22And still
06:23She did not
06:25Glitch
06:26Before she left
06:28She told us what we needed to hear
06:31Shut
06:32Shut
06:33It
06:34Down
06:35Longer
06:36Enough
06:37And now she comes home tomorrow
06:39And we owe her more than applause
06:42We owe her action
06:44And we owe her courage in return
06:47Because Ms. Gwasan knows something we keep forgetting
06:51That courage isn't comfort
06:54That love means risk
06:56That fear is not an excuse to do nothing
06:59She crossed the line between silence and action
07:03She traversed the fear
07:05She became the light in the dark
07:08And as she comes home
07:10Three other Canadians remain in Israeli detention
07:14Her fate uncertain
07:18Our government silent
07:20She
07:22Bring
07:23Bring them home
07:24Bring
07:25Every Palestinian political prisoner home
07:29Every mother
07:31Every child
07:32Every soul
07:33Held under brutal administrative detention
07:36Because no one is free
07:38Until they are free
07:40Ms. Gwasan's courage
07:42Puts our cowardice to shame
07:44Her body carried more truth
07:46Than a thousand statements
07:47Like the one I'm making
07:49Could ever
07:50She is the model
07:52She is the reminder
07:53She is the mirror
07:55Hurt people
07:56Hurt people
07:57But heal people
07:58Heal people
07:59Heal people
08:00And healing begins when we stop
08:03And healing begins when we stop
08:10And healing begins when we stop looking away
08:13When we break the silence
08:14When we shut it down
08:16We owe Palestinians more than words
08:19We owe them justice
08:21We owe them their lives
08:23We owe them their land
08:25We owe them reparations
08:28We owe them everything we stole
08:31The cycle can break here
08:34The silence can end here
08:36The mending can begin here
08:38We can no longer destroy to heal
08:41We just need to stop
08:43Free Palestine
08:45Free
08:46Every square inch of Palestine
08:49From the Jordan River
08:51To the Mediterranean Sea
08:53Rest assured
08:54Palestine
08:55Is almost free
08:56And until that day
08:58We shut it down
09:00Every which way
09:02If we don't get it
09:05If we don't get it
09:07God
09:08Do not get no peace
09:12To Palestine
09:13Free
09:14Free
09:15Never give the city
09:16Curse of freedom
09:17Polonizer
09:18We don't need them
09:19We don't want them
09:20We don't want them
09:21and for his people and for justice time after time for the past two years
09:33while having to witness the murder of his own family members and friends.
09:45Thank you for being here everyone.
09:48My name is Basil Daoud.
09:51I am happy to be with you today.
09:53I am angry that we need to be here at all.
09:56But most of all I'm just tired.
10:01They say a ceasefire is now in effect.
10:05And for my family's sake I will take it.
10:10For the hundred cousins that I have lost it is already too late.
10:15My mother is from the Faruana family, native to Gaza and with roots in Palestine dating back way before the Nakba.
10:29My family in Palestine has endured generations of occupation, of displacement, of violence by a colonial power built on their land
10:42and justified by the world's selective memory.
10:47Shame!
10:47Shame!
10:47The same empires that once divided and exploited others now turn their gaze away from genocide and occupation,
10:58pretending that they don't see what they have created.
11:02Shame!
11:03Shame!
11:04My family has lived under invasion, under occupation, under siege for longer than my mother has been alive.
11:15Shame!
11:16Shame!
11:16And for the last two years they have simply been massacred, tortured and displaced numerous times.
11:27Shame!
11:28Shame!
11:29One hundred and one members of the Faruana family are confirmed dead.
11:39Shame!
11:40Shame!
11:42The last two I got word of an hour ago.
11:48And those are the only, the direct deaths from bombing and from shooting.
11:55There were doctors among them.
11:57There were children among them.
11:59There were babies among them, but all of them were humans, worthy of life.
12:06All of them had names.
12:14Many of them were killed together in their homes.
12:17Entire branches of our family tree cut down at once.
12:21Shame!
12:23Shame!
12:23It is not much consolation that they did not perish alone, but I'll take what I can get.
12:31And I don't know how many Faruanas remain.
12:36I don't know how many are starving.
12:39Remember, Israel is starving them.
12:40I don't know how many are sick because Israel deliberately destroyed their access to health care.
12:54You might have heard this statistic before, but it's worth repeating.
13:00Israel has targeted every hospital in Gaza.
13:06Every hospital in Gaza.
13:09They have targeted the health workers that work tirelessly to save and to heal them.
13:23Around them, all their homes, all the schools, all the communities, the land that carried our culture, our memories, our history.
13:35All of it, all of it, Robel.
13:39Shame!
13:40Shame!
13:40Shame!
13:41Shame!
13:44Ms. Watson, Sadie, Nikita, Devony, Huraam and Nima do not know my family, but they did know that there are people suffering.
13:57And as health workers and just plain human beings, that was enough.
14:02they had to help in any way that they could especially since their own
14:09government was doing the exact opposite for the simplest act a human can perform
14:19the human urge to help we are not hailing these six as heroes our health
14:29institutions are not putting up statues of them right now are not immortalizing
14:35them as healers or protectors as their profession and their nation claim to
14:41honor instead they were thrown in prison
14:47three of them remain there to this moment taken by a foreign power with no
14:56right to seize humanitarians and no right to seize anyone in international
15:01waters
15:04it is not enough for Israel to be a destroyer of lives and of hospitals it also insists on
15:13being a thief of humanity itself
15:18the Farwana graveyard is in ruins I have seen it myself it is not just the
15:26humanity that frightens the state the ghosts scare them
15:32so it is not the genocide and war machine that has butchered my family that I appeal
15:40to Israel has shown all my life and my mother's that it cares nothing for the
15:48rules of decency and humanity let alone the rules of international law I was asked
15:57not to talk to a certain entity around us and I won't but I do have one question
16:03where are our elbows our elbows are down where are our elbows so never mind them to
16:14I speak instead to you to fellow humans on behalf of the six who risked
16:22everything to bring medicine to people they have never met on behalf of
16:28Palestinians who love life more than they hate anyone as much as you want to tell
16:33yourselves they do and all they want to do is live free on their land
16:41I speak to you for every child that just wants to play to grow to learn I ask you to act in
16:52their honor you are the only ones I trust now our friends are still imprisoned by a
17:01state that cages children and clearly only collective pressure us only we will bring
17:09them home
17:12our resistance must continue our resistance will continue Arab resistance Jewish
17:23resistance Sunni Shiite Hindu Arishnabi all our resistance human resistance must
17:34continue to our fellow health workers not to lend them languish in cells for showing the
17:50best of what humanity can be so take action because history is watching and one day it will
18:00ask where you stood when Gaza starved and when healers were jailed for caring let your answer be
18:09one that you can live with no justice it is not lost on us that the same colonial systems that
18:20continue to oppress indigenous communities here on Turtle Island are the exact same systems
18:27that are fueling the genocide in Palestine
18:30while they defund indigenous communities here they fund billions of dollars 150 billion dollars to be exact on the military and billions more on AI
18:42on the military and billions more on AI
18:49while they target and attempt to silence land defenders and water protectors here on Turtle Island
18:54they stay silent through land theft and illegal settlements in Palestine
18:59as healthcare workers our demands today are clear we demand that Israel immediately release
19:08all abducted flotilla activists and Palestinians in Israeli prisons
19:14we demand that Canada sanction Israel complete complete sanctions on Israel and enact a two-way complete arms embargo now
19:26yes
19:29and we firmly demand an end to the ongoing illegal siege massacres and genocide in Gaza
19:36genocide yes stop the genocide
19:39let us raise our voices for justice and liberation from Turtle Island to Palestine
19:47thank you all for coming today please join us as we chant and drum together to conclude our rally
19:58free powers
20:00there was just somebody in the audience who wanted us to read this from the Holy Quran in honor of all the children and everybody who's been killed by Israel
20:10thank you
20:13um so this is what this is the reading that's been requested
20:17and say not of those who are slain in the way of Allah they are dead
20:22no they are living though you perceive it not
20:25be sure we shall test you with something of fear and hunger
20:29some loss in goods or lives or the fruit of your toil
20:34but give glad tidings to those who patiently persevere
20:42no diplomatic ties with an apartheid state
20:49a state committing occupation and genocide
20:53we will be here day after day
20:55for our Palestinian brothers and sisters
20:57and for Palestine in solidarity as they fight for their liberation
21:12and so we are going to lead together strong today
21:16apparently the police police police are going to be here
21:20and so we are going to lead together strong today
21:23and so we are going to lead together strong today
21:25apparently the police brought their horses to come and take a look
21:30so that's a great use of our tax dollars when we are in a health care crisis
21:39shame
21:41what a shame
21:46what a shame
21:48disgusting
21:49our government spending millions and millions of dollars to criminalize us for protesting a genocide
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