Roughly 40 protesters outside Folklorama’s Israel pavilion held Palestinian flags and handmade signs reading “This is genocide” and “Winnipeg forever stands with Gaza” Wednesday.
The peaceful protest, the latest in a series dating back 10 years, outside the Asper Jewish Community Campus on Doncaster Street sought to inform pavilion-goers about the conflict between Isreal and Hamas and its impact on civilian life, an organizer said.
“Our goal here is to educate the people going into the Israeli pavilion that probably wouldn’t know about it,” said Ramsey Zeid, president of the Canadian Palestinian Association of Manitoba Wednesday night. “These are average Winnipeggers going into Folklorama, thinking that this is just a normal, everyday pavilion but maybe not knowing that they are killing innocent Palestinians every day, that they’re stealing their heritage, their culture, their food.”
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Hussein Choker (above) and other protesters for Palestine demonstrate across the street from the Israel Folklorama pavilion at the Asper Jewish Community Campus Wednesday.
Zeid said the turnout is smaller than they’ve had in some years, adding it’s smaller because “people are tired, people are worn down” from protesting for the last 10 months. Tensions between the cultural groups have been heightened as war continues in the Middle Eastern states.
Zeid added it’s important to continue protesting. If they stop, it sends a message that what Israel is doing to Palestinian people is okay, he added.
The Israel pavilion was aware of the pro-Palestinian protest scheduled to happen Wednesday and Thursday evening, said Jeff Lieberman Wednesday afternoon. After the gathering began the chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg said there were fewer people in the rally than he had anticipated.
“Everybody has a right to protest peacefully and that’s what they were doing,” Lieberman said on the phone. “We knew it would be a little bit larger than normal and we expected that it would be peaceful, and it is.”
Lieberman said in anticipation of the bigger rally, the pavilion worked with police and Folklorama like they do every year to create a security plan. The security presence this year was larger, he added, as multiple marked and unmarked police vehicles parked nearby or drove the streets.
The protesters have never been violent, Lieberman said. In previous years, there have generally been 10 or fewer members in the rallies.
NIC ADAM / FREE PRESS
Protesters for Palestine demonstrate across the street from the Israel Folklorama pavilion at the Asper Jewish Community Campus Wednesday.
There was no disruption to those trying to get into the show.
jura.mcilraith@freepress.mb.ca