About 40 people from Manitoba Friends of Standing Together (MFoST) and other Palestinian supporters gathered on June 5, 2025 at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights to mourn the deaths of innocent Gazans. Hadas [Emet] Eviatar of Manitoba Friends of Standing Together claims on Facebook that 70 people attended. I do not think there could have been more than 50 people at most. They were met at their gathering place in front of the Gandhi statue by close to an equal number of pro-Israel supporters already positioned there to hold a counter vigil for the deaths of Israeli innocents, and they chose to move to the group entrance of the museum.
The pro-Israel supporters were organized by an entirely grassroots group of individuals and included members of organizations such as Friends of Israel, the Blue and White Coalition, Israelis in Winnipeg, other Jews, and non-Jewish allies.
The pro-Palestinian group MFoST is a chapter of the Israeli-Palestinian non-profit Standing Together. This group is described by Sharon Chisvin in a Winnipeg Free Press article on Nov 2, 2024 as a “grassroots, progressive, bi-national, anti-occupation movement intent on mobilizing the Jewish and Palestinian communities of Israel-Palestine in the pursuit of peaceful co-existence, equality, and social, economic and environmental justice for all.” Members of MFoST are committed to bringing Jews and Palestinians together, believing that “by standing together, advocating together, and raising their voices together, they can create a plausible alternative to the current reality and political and military morass in which Israel and Palestine have long been mired”
However, as a very perceptive friend pointedly noted, “It is interesting that some Jews will mourn the death of their enemies’ innocents but not show up for the weekly ‘Bring Them Home’ rallies in support of the families of 1200 slaughtered Israeli innocents and the hostages.”
Both vigils were peaceful and respectful. The MFoST members held posters and photos of Palestinian children killed in Gaza, and the pro-Israel members held posters and photos of Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 massacre by 6000 Hamas terrorists with Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups and Gazan civilians.
The only potentially inflammatory moment was when a very vocal and proudly self-avowed Holocaust denier came by and spewed his hate and lies, hoping to provoke members of the pro-Israel group. When a pro-Israel supporter tried to give him an informational pamphlet on the October 7 massacre as he walked by, he said, “You don’t want to talk with me” because he had a relative who was a Holocaust denier and had been awarded a medal for his a-historical stance. A pro-Israel supporter replied, “Well, you probably don't think like that,” not believing this was possible. He said he did and started to explain why with more outlandish lies. When the pro-Israel supporter calmly replied, “You're right. We don't want to talk to you,” he wandered off toward the pro-Palestinian group. Later, he started up with other pro-Israel supporters, claiming that Germans were the real victims of the Holocaust, that it was Zionists who murdered 6 million Jews, and that there were no concentration camps or gas chambers, that the Jews had all died of typhus. As he left, his final irrational hate-fueled salvo was to accuse the Israelis of “letting October 7 happen,” a more current case of Holocaust denial meant to hurt and wound those present. Their response was to wave him away with, “Have a good evening.”
This incident reveals the very real danger that threatens Western societies, especially since October 7. The toxic ignorance, malevolent misinformation, and wilful anti-Israel bias driving the West’s obsession with the Gaza war has ignited an explosion of unprecedented antisemitism, allowing such hateful individuals to re-surface. The Jew hatred that was unacceptable after the Holocaust is now becoming normalized. And the consequences are clear in the recent murder of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky in Washington, DC and the fire-bombing of Jews attending a similar rally for the Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado. And in the wildly irrational and insane beliefs such as those expressed by this deluded and deranged individual.
Of course, every human being with a beating heart mourns the loss of all innocent lives, including Palestinians, and longs for peace between Israelis and their Palestinian neighbours. None more so than the Israeli peaceniks living in the Gaza envelope. They were committed to the very goals of MFoST, who hosted the “Silent Vigil for the Innocents of Gaza.” They, too, sought peace and co-existence, but for this, they were targeted, murdered, mutilated, tortured, burned alive, raped, and taken hostage.
No sane humane person criticizes sympathy for the innocents of Gaza, but the utter lack of empathy for the victims of the worst assault on Jews since the Holocaust and the world’s turn against the victims and toward the perpetrators within less than a day of the October 7, 2023 massacre defies all comprehension. The original crime was swiftly forgotten as the victims were almost immediately perceived as aggressive oppressors and the murderous perpetrators as victims. The ongoing international pressure on Israel to stop the war before winning it amounts to a call for its annihilation, for leaving Hamas in control of Gaza ensures the repetition of October 7 “again and again,” as Hamas leaders have continually promised.
So, gathering to mourn the death of innocent Gazan children without the acknowledgement that those tragic deaths rest on Hamas, who started the war and who exploit their own people as “necessary sacrifices” for their genocidal aims, is a further distortion of the truth.
