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May 22, 2021 - Rebel News
41:18
Rebel Assaulted in Montreal, Media Bias on Israel and Hamas

David Menzies and Mocha Bezergan detail Rebel News’ chief videographer’s assault in Montreal by pro-Hamas protesters, who denied involvement despite clear evidence, while police failed to act. Ezra Levant exposes 1,500 Canadian journalists’ open letter siding with Hamas, ignoring its anti-Semitic charter and terrorist acts like seizing Gaza in 2007 after Israel’s 2005 withdrawal. Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square permits pro-Hamas rallies—blocking traffic, spreading hate—while banning peaceful anti-lockdown protesters, revealing a double standard under Mayor Tory and Trudeau’s leadership, where ideological bias trumps free speech and democratic values. [Automatically generated summary]

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Rebel Roundup: Ladies' Best Commentaries 00:02:04
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Welcome to Rebel Roundup, ladies and gentlemen, and the rest of you, in which we look back at some of the very best commentaries of the week by your favorite Rebels.
I'm your host, David Menzies.
Well, our chief videographer, Mocha Bezergan, went to Montreal last weekend, and thanks to clashes between pro-Israel and pro-Hamas demonstrators, this Canadian city looked like a municipality somewhere in the Middle East.
It was shameful and disturbing, and Mocha, who himself was physically assaulted, shall have plenty of details to share.
Mocha's Assault 00:15:18
This Justin, the media party, is so emboldened these days on the propaganda front that it doesn't even care about openly declaring its bias.
At least when it comes to the latest violence occurring in the Middle East, Ezra Levant will join me to talk about an open letter making the rounds in which Canadian journalists proclaim that they are choosing the side of Hamas rather than Israel when it comes to their news coverage.
And letters, we get your letters, we get them every minute of every day.
And you had plenty to say about the protesting double standards we witnessed in Toronto last weekend, namely anti-lockdown protesters who want the Canadian economy to open up so that Canadians can get back to work.
Well, they're banned from Nathan Phillips Square.
But if one is pro-Hamas and spouting hate speech, well, Mayor John Torrey, he'll roll out the red carpet for those sort of people.
Those are your rebels.
Now let's round them up.
Hello ladies and gentlemen, I'm Chief Videographer at Rebel News.
My name is Mocha Bezergan.
I was in Montreal this last weekend where crazy things happened.
There were two major protests.
One was a pro-Palestine protest and the other one was pro-Israel protest.
The pro-Palestinian protest took place on Saturday, same square where the very next day a pro-Israeli protest took place.
And this time, pro-Palestinian counter-protesters showed up and things got a little ugly.
The streets were filled with tear gas and pepper spray.
I got punched in the face.
Pedestrians who had nothing to do with the protest got affected.
A couple people got arrested.
Traffic was halted.
Take a look at this crazy footage.
Officer here.
Yeah.
I'm here.
I'm recording.
He punched me.
Look.
I can't really see this.
Don't lie, brother.
Look.
He was protecting himself.
I saw him.
I'm not revolutionist.
He's not protecting me.
I'll tell you something.
I'll tell you something.
They came with the knife.
They're there with knives.
Look, they're here with knives.
You know what?
They're dirty.
That's him right here running.
And then he comes up to me and that punches me.
Where is he?
That's not him.
That's not even him.
Bro, don't lie.
He punched me in the face.
Wow, I know that footage might look like it was shot somewhere in the Middle East, but that was indeed the scene last weekend in Montreal when pro-Hamas and pro-Israel supporters clashed.
throwing fists and projectiles as the Montreal police lobbed tear gask canisters.
It was a shameful and disturbing scene.
And what was the deal with the thug who sucker punched our chief videographer?
And that would be Mocha.
Well, joining me now is the target of the attack, Mocha Bezarigan himself.
So Mocha, you don't have a dog in this race.
I'm talking about the ongoing tensions between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government.
You're just in Montreal playing witness as a journalist to the protests that were occurring.
What was the motivation for you getting sucker punched in the first place?
Well, that's what I'm trying to find an answer to.
After the punch, I went after the attacker and I asked him, why did you punch me?
Why did you punch me?
And it was more of a like, to me, it was like some, you know, some kid came in and I said, no, And I ran away.
I was under shock of that because I'm like, what just happened and why did it happen?
I'm trying to make sense of it.
And he wouldn't look me in the eye.
He would keep walking away.
And he started denying that it was him.
His friends would try to push me away.
So because I can't communicate with him, I escalated to the people who were basically kind of organizing the protest, like showing the way where to go, what to do.
I said, hey, are you guys in a position of authority?
Something like, you know, somebody punched me and they just pushed me around.
I mean, sorry, pushed me away from them.
So, you know, nobody is helping me.
So I went to the police this time.
Luckily, we were passing through a police officer and I said, officer, this person with this hat punched me.
And he called him over.
And he watched the video.
In my video, it's not clear who punched me.
So the police said, I can't really see.
Plus, the guy who punched me was like, oh, what?
I didn't, you know, said something in French.
And his lying friends, his low character friends, they said, oh, it was in self-defense.
The other one said, oh, Arabs are playing dirty.
They have knives.
The other ones, you know, so they basically lied.
And.
Well, Mocha, in their defense, it's so easy to mistake a cell phone for a knife.
They almost look identical.
But, you know, what you're saying, Mocha, reminds me of the old chestnut about the Watergate scandal.
It wasn't so much the crime, it was the cover-up.
And that's what I think is almost as bad or even worse than the physical assault.
It's that that individual and his friends start making these preposterous lies that you've just checked off.
And what I don't like about this is that I don't know where you are politically in terms of the conflict, and maybe it's not here nor there, but I'm about as pro-Israel as you can get.
These were the pro-Israel demonstrators.
And it makes a mockery of why people are pro-Israel.
I look at Israel as a nation, you know, an island in a sea of intolerance and hatred, surrounded by countries that want to wipe them off the map.
One of the reasons I love Israel is it is a democracy.
It does have freedoms.
And for them to act physically, not just to another protester, but to someone who's a member of the media, that brings the very foundation of why I love Israel into disrepute when I see somebody acting in violence.
Well, it's only these particular protesters.
To me, both sides were very acting like elementary children, trying to steal each other's flags and cheering for it.
I asked myself, what am I doing here?
And I went there as a third party, with clear conscience to just report what's going to happen, whatever happens.
and that's what I did, but I didn't expect, I did.
I was more afraid of getting punched by a Palestinian protester than I was afraid of getting punched by an Israeli protester.
It was very unexpected for me.
But it happened.
And it showed me that you never let your guard down.
No, you're quite right.
And the fact that the police were so lame, here's an actual real crime committed with video evidence, for goodness sakes, Mocha.
And it was kind of like more than a month ago when we were in Montreal covering what began as a peaceful demonstration against the curfew.
And then those blockheads from Antifa showed up and started smashing the windows of small businesses, which was absolutely despicable.
But we were in a dicey situation because the Antifa types, the black bloc types, those anarchists that are in Montreal, they would like nothing more than to harm us.
I'm absolutely sure about it.
Yet, we can't go to the police either because they despise us.
It reminds me of the tagline from the movie Aliens versus Predator.
No matter which side wins, we lose.
So that was kind of the dilemma I think you were in because you didn't have a lot of friends on the ground.
Yeah, I only had Yankee, which after the event we met up, and he tried to arrange, we looked for the guy and he tried to arrange an apology from him, but he was very uncooperative.
So I started yelling at him, you punched me, why did you punch me?
And everyone paid attention that time.
And they forced me and him to come together to shake hands.
But he kind of apologized, but it wasn't genuine.
He was like, oh, you know, he's laughing, speaking in French, doesn't even know English probably.
I don't know.
Unbelievable.
And so he was like, you know, if you didn't commit the crime, then why are you apologizing?
If you're apologizing, then you did commit the crime.
Why are you lying?
And they gaslighted me.
They said, no, it's not even him.
It's not even him.
And you know, I know who punched me.
Of course I do.
I saw it's on camera, multiple angles.
Well, I hope now, I hope that he will feel the extent of the law, the power of the law in his bones.
And if not the laws and the criminal law, Volcha, because of the man we work for, Ezra Levant, who does not bend the knee, maybe this is a matter for the civil courts.
Maybe there's going to be a lawsuit against this person.
Because this cannot be tolerated.
This cannot, we can't turn a blind eye to this.
One last question.
In the bigger picture of things, and I think this is another example.
You remember two summers ago we were in Kingston.
I had a bottle thrown off my head by an antiphotype.
Myself, other reporters, we've all been the victims of physical assaults.
And it's what I'm trying to understand is the entitlement of these people that they think they can get physical.
And I think it comes down to, when you look at the left, there is a saying where they say, it's okay to punch a Nazi.
And the definition of a Nazi isn't somebody hell-bent on world conquest and carrying out a genocide.
A Nazi to them is someone who disagrees with their opinion.
How in the world, in a democracy where there should be free ideas debated, where we should have the ability to say, let's agree to disagree without throwing fists.
How do we get to this point, Mocha, where suddenly there are those who feel that if you have a different opinion than I do, it's fair game.
I'm going to punch you in the face.
I don't know how we got here, but it's a very deluded mindset, I think, to think that you can just punch people because they disagree with you.
You can just imagine them as the Nazi or as whatever you hate.
And people just need to calm down and approach each individual as an individual and start conversations instead of throwing fists and punches.
100%.
Well, I'm glad you're relatively okay.
And I know you're going back to Montreal.
So please always be aware of your surroundings.
Although I would have been in the same position.
I never would have expected an attack from that person.
And speaking of that person, check your mailbox in the days and weeks ahead.
You might be getting some kind of lawyer's letter in the mail.
You're not going to get away with that.
You're not going to get away with punching an innocent person in the face just for the egregious practice of journalism.
And if the Montreal police aren't going to do anything either, that's okay.
We have some excellent lawyers.
Keep it here.
more of Rebel Roundup to Tom right after this.
Well, in any battle between a liberal democracy and a terrorist group or a dictatorship, I know whose side I'm on.
That's why I rooted for Hong Kong against Communist China while I still love little Taiwan.
I'm not ethnically related to the Taiwanese or the Hong Kongese in any way.
I just know the good guys from the bad guys.
I feel the same way about Israel.
I have a special connection and affection as a Jew, but I think I would certainly like to think that even if I were not Jewish and even if I had never visited the place, I would still stand up for Israel against the Hamas terrorist group, an explicitly anti-Semitic organization that can best be understood as a modern reincarnation of the Nazi Party.
If you read their charter, you can see they explicitly want to kill not just Israelis, but Jews.
They don't want to have some sort of rapprochement or new deal with Israel.
They want to utterly destroy it and exterminate it.
It is language reminiscent of Hitler's Mein Kampf.
That's my view.
And I hate to see the violence and that war pop up here in Canada and some of the violent protests we saw throughout the country on the weekend.
Of course, it's a minor point to note that police certainly didn't enforce anti-gathering lockdown laws, mask laws, social distancing laws against those folks.
Meanwhile, they were locking down churches and arresting pastors.
But one of the most interesting things that probably escaped much notice because it's behind the scenes is an open letter to Canadian newsrooms on covering Israel-Palestine.
And this has been signed by more than 1,500 reporters or those who want to be reporters.
And just in the very title there, you know where they're coming from because the battle is between the Hamas terrorist group and Israel, but it's immediately being recast as a battle between Israel and Palestine.
Let me just read a few lines from this open letter to you.
The Middle East is complicated.
Open Letter on Gaza Cleansing 00:05:29
We need to hear both sides.
Everyone has a lot of emotions about this.
These are just some of the excuses news editors have provided to Canadian journalists trying to cover the escalating violence against Palestinians.
Oh, is that what we're talking about?
Is that the only violence to talk about?
And we have to lose that nuance, according to this letter, and we have to embrace the truth of one side, the Hamas side, that accuses Israel of, quote, ethnic cleansing.
This letter goes on to demand that media in Canada be advocates for Hamas.
And it's signed by reporters who work for the Globe and Mail, CTV, Global News, the Toronto Star, CBC, and many others.
Well, there you have it, folks.
The media party is so emboldened these days on the propaganda front that it doesn't even care about openly declaring its bias, at least when it comes to the latest violence occurring in the Middle East.
And so it is that there are no shades of gray regarding the conflict.
It's all black and white with Israel in the role of the villain, given that it is supposedly pursuing ethnic cleansing, and with the Palestinians in the role of victims of genocide.
Oh, come on, give me a break.
But as the old chestnut goes, in war, truth is the first casualty.
Yet now that we have taxpayer-funded reporters stating how they have no intention absolutely of telling the other side of the story, the question arises, why?
And here to answer that query is Rebel News Commander Ezra Levant.
Ezra, how did we get here?
Yeah, I looked through this list.
Like, you can actually find this list.
It's a document that people can add their names to continuously.
There are an enormous number of people from the CBC, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, institutions like that that claim to be neutral, but these are reporters who are saying, I'm not neutral.
Israel's the bad guy.
They're doing ethnic cleansing.
There was actually ethnic cleansing in Gaza, but it's probably not what these reporters, most of whom know nothing about the region, would say.
And that ethnic cleansing came in the form of the forced evacuation of Jewish residents of Gaza.
The Gaza Strip is a very dense, I'll call it a municipality, that abuts Egypt.
And it was overwhelmingly Muslim, but there were, I don't know, 1% of the population were Jews.
And they were in agriculture and they had little towns there.
It was very hard for Israel to protect them because they were constantly subject to terrorist attacks.
And as an unrequited act of peacemaking, Israel said, all right, we're going to actually remove the last Jews of Gaza.
And the Jews said, no, we don't want to go.
the israeli army went into gaza and forcibly removed every last jew from their farms and greenhouses hamas took over smashed everything and just instead of greenhouses turned it into so there was a lot of things that happened wrong then It was wrong to think that this unilateral step would appease Hamas.
Hamas is not a regular political organization that we would think of in the West that is looking for peace.
Their constitution, it actually tracks the Nazi parties in some way.
They explicitly call for the annihilation of Israel.
They explicitly call for the killing of all Jews anywhere.
So it's not just get the Jews out of Israel, we're happy.
And so when Israel gave up this part of the Gaza Strip, actually yanked out all the remaining Jews, took out all the soldiers.
There's not a single Jew in Gaza, neither soldier nor resident.
Israel at the time was very foolish to think this would somehow create peace in return.
In fact, all it did was convince Hamas, oh, let's just keep doing more of whatever we were doing.
So that's the only ethnic cleansing I can think of that's happened in the Gaza Strip, is those last Jews were removed.
In fact, Avi Yamini, his family member, he's part of a large family.
One of his family members lived in the Gaza Strip and was one of those Jews that was removed.
He's got a very touching video about that on our channel.
So anyway, that's a little anecdote about ethnic cleansing.
The only ethnic cleansing in Gaza is the Jews were cleansed out.
But back to your question about the media.
It's quite interesting to see these journalists out themselves, first of all, as know-nothings, but second of all, as propagandists.
And the question is, how can they continue to work as news producers, editors, at places like the Globe and Mail and the CBC, once they've basically said, we will not tell the Israeli side of the story.
We do not acknowledge that there's a terrorist war here, and we will state that Israel is an apartheid ethnic cleanser.
How can people who sign that be allowed to continue in non-partisan jobs in a newspaper or media company?
What I mean by that is, if you're an opinion columnist and you have a very strong opinion, okay, that's your job.
But if your job is to be a neutral editor, producer, presenter, you can't say that and then say, oh, just kidding, now pretend I'm neutral.
Rex Murphy Controversy 00:09:27
But really, didn't it just prove what we already all knew about the media?
And Ezra, I want to touch on that.
It was ever thus in the world of media, especially in the printed press.
You had the op-ed section, those were the opinions, the editorials, and then you had the front page, which was supposed to be unbiased, reaching out to both sides, you know, not having a horse in this race.
I have seen in the last, I think it's been accelerated indeed in the last five years, the op-ed pages have drifted over to the front page.
And in a way, Ezra, I think the signatories of that open letter, they've actually done us a favor.
We've long accused them of being biased, of hiding their bias.
Now they're saying, you know what?
Yeah, we are biased.
Here's the deal.
Yeah, and, you know, how did this happen?
And this whole phenomenon of signing these open letters and signing these open lists, that feels fairly recent.
I mean, I know it's happened in the past, but it's so much easier with online sharing documents.
People sign their names to things.
I'm reminded of a few months back when the National Post itself, purportedly one of the most conservative newspapers in Canada, had a similar online letter naming, shaming, and condemning their own lead columnist, Rex Murphy.
And instead of firing everyone who signed that letter, the National Post, to their disgraceful discredit, actually had like a staff meeting, struggle session where they all took turns denouncing Rex Murphy, who wasn't there, by the way.
He refused to dignify the whole presentation.
But National Post management hosted this town hall, they called it.
So what started out as the madness of universities, well, if you're crazy when you're 20 and no one says, you're crazy.
And then if you're hired by, why would the National Post hire anyone from Crazy Town Ryerson or Crazy Town Carlton Journalism School?
Like if you were literally, if you, you know, there's a saying in politics, personnel is policy.
Who you hire is a reflection of your mindset.
Of course it is.
And if the National Post and these other organizations hire the kookiest, wokest, craziest, cancel culture, nutbar left-wing radicals, why wouldn't they think that's going to slowly take over their own institutions?
So the craziness from the campuses a decade ago are now the craziness in institutions today.
Academia is completely gone.
Media is largely gone.
And shame on, and I'm mentioning the National Post, actually I don't even recall if I saw a National Post signatory on this latest list.
I think they were told not to based on the Rex Murphy struggle session.
But that's everywhere.
Now, I think of our own place.
We hire people here at Rebel News.
And there are some positions at Rebel News that are not editorial.
There's an accounting position.
There's tech-side positions.
And so there are some places where it doesn't actually matter at all what your editorial view is because you're not doing that stuff.
But really, if you're working at Rebel News, you should share the worldview of Rebel News.
And what's incredible to me is that so-called conservative institutions, so-called conservative media, hired people who despise them, who hate them.
If you're joining the National Post and you hate Rex Murphy and you hate Conrad Black, why are you joining them?
I know why to change them.
And to think those guys are in their 70s and 80s, I'm in my 20s.
I'm going to extirpate them from National Post and turn it into the Toronto Star.
That's what's going on.
And, you know, it is baffling.
I would say today's National Post, to use the old GM ad tagline for Oldsmobile, this ain't your father's National Post.
But one last exit question, Ezra.
In the big picture, we go back to 1948, the establishment of Israel.
If you were a classical liberal, this was a great thing.
This was renowned.
It was a democracy.
It was an island of tolerance in a sea of broiling hatred.
And how did the left change its view that this, just three years after the end of the Holocaust, that Israel was something to, it was something that was revolting to them.
And you look at, and when I say that, I look at some of the signage.
In London, Ontario, for goodness sakes, the pro-Hamas demonstrators, some of them had swastikas displaying that in public, projecting that on Israel.
I can't think of anything more offensive than that.
How do we get from there to here?
Yeah, well, just one quick thing.
I haven't seen the left-wing anti-hate groups in this country go after swastikas being flown from the pro-Hamas types.
They keep on saying that the greatest threat to Jews is from the far right.
Okay, could be.
I haven't seen evidence of that.
I suppose I'm keeping an open mind.
But here you have actual people parading through the streets of Canada with Nazi flags, swastikas, and the anti-hate groups.
Well, that's our narrative is it's old white guys who are doing that, not Muslim migrants.
But as to Israel, in 1948, there was a few things there.
I think it was started sort of in a socialist way.
First of all, I think it was in the shadow of the Holocaust.
There was sort of an international consensus that something had to be done about the Jews.
This is the Jewish homeland.
They were just six million killed in Europe.
This is perhaps a solution.
And remember, most of the world's, I mean, the Soviet Union, America, the main allies had just finished fighting Hitler and had seen the true evil.
So the memory of the Holocaust was fresher.
It wasn't denied or trivialized.
It is today.
Secondly, Israel was a socialist enterprise.
The concept of a kibbutz was actually a kind of voluntary communism.
People would live communally.
And I think that even the Soviet side, the leftist side, said, oh, well, maybe this Jewish homeland will be friendly to socialism.
And indeed it was for a while.
And finally, I think there's something in Western minds that sympathizes with underdogs.
And of course, the Jews had just been bloodied and decimated by the Holocaust.
And Israel was a small, weak country surrounded by big Arab countries.
So even in the West, people were sympathetic with Israel.
It survived its Independence Day war.
It survived the war of 1956.
But that love or that honeymoon with Israel only lasted two decades.
Because in 1967, when five or six Arab armies were preparing to attack it, Israel made a preemptive strike, knocked out various air forces in the regions, had some successful tank battles, and suddenly the underdog became the top dog.
And Israel conquered the Sinai.
And all of a sudden, this little country that was being picked on, picked on, picked on, it showed the world it could not only defend itself, but it knocked out, sort of in a David and Goliath biblical way, all these huge Arab armies.
And so I think the world, the liberals of the world, the leftist progressives of the world said, hmm, Israel's not the underdog anymore.
Now they're the bully, even though there's still one country surrounded by dozens of Arab countries, a small country surrounded by hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims.
And so I think that the West said, you're no longer the underdog.
We like Jews when they're bent and bleeding.
You were too victorious.
We're going to switch our allegiances to your enemies now.
And it's the same mental problem that throughout the Cold War, there was this large segment of the progressive left that hated the West and rooted for the Soviets.
Saw that, I remember Nolton Nash of the CBC way back in the day, pure pro, like always had the Soviet pundits on.
And I thought, what is he doing?
The free speech that Nolton Nash enjoys in Canada is because of our freedom.
And he would always have, I forget the name of the guy, he would always have some well-spoken, you know, fluent in English Soviet spin doctrine.
I think you're treating this propaganda liar as a truth teller.
Why, why, why?
Because he hated the West.
He wanted to undo the West.
And first it was supporting the Soviets, then it was supporting the jihadists.
I mean, there is a part of the left that will always take the enemy's side against ourselves.
And Israel is a proxy for the West in that region.
Anyway, that's too long an answer to your question.
But we have to stand by freedom and democracy.
The same way I would feel if Taiwan were attacked by communist China, God forbid.
That plucky little democracy outnumbered 10 to 1, 40 to 1.
We have to stand with Taiwan.
In Israel, I feel the same way.
Plus, I have a personal connection.
I'm Jewish, so I have a sympathy in Israel for that regard.
But I think even if I weren't Jewish, just like I would root for the democracy of Taiwan, and it broke my heart when Hong Kong was conquered.
That's how I feel towards Israel, too.
100%.
Great analysis.
It's hard to believe there was a useful idiot working at CBC that Nolton Nash or used to.
Double Standard Protesters 00:08:45
And you know, folks, there you got it.
I mean, and to go back to this open letter signed by these journalists, I mean, I went to the Ryerson School of Journalism in the early 80s before Ryerson became this woke madhouse that it is today.
And I can tell you when it came to covering hard news, you know, there were three basic tenets.
Basically, you reached out for the other side of the story, you strove for accuracy, and you kept personal bias out of it.
It's just the five W's.
All these signatories of that open letter, they would have failed J School back in the early 80s.
Keep it here for more of Rebel Roundup right after this.
David Menzies for Rebel News here in Toronto.
Well, folks, I'm just outside Nathan Phillips Square.
You know, it's one of the no man's lands for anti-lockdown protesters to go to.
But if you're a pro-Hamas protester, oh, well, Mayor Tory has the red carpet rolled out for the people here advocating their special brand of anti-Semitism.
And it's not just Nathan Phillips Square, folks.
It is Bay Street itself.
Cars have illegally blocked the Bay Street here.
We've seen cars going down the wrong way of a one-way street.
We see cars revving their engines unnecessarily.
You know, if the police came here, I would imagine they could fill their quota for one month in one hour.
But you know what?
Not a cop to be seen here on Bay Street.
And that's kind of funny, isn't it?
Do you remember last summer how, folks, we came down here to cover a protest, an illegal protest, by the way, because it broke 11 sections of the Trespass Act.
And that was by the rank and file of a group called Afro-Indigenous Rising.
They were breaking 11 sections of the Trespass Act, including starting fires, camping overnight, urinating, defecating in the public square, and nothing was done about that for three whole weeks.
But when we went down to cover this disgrace, we were threatened with being charged with trespassing.
Here, check it out.
Yesterday, I went to Nathan Phelps Square.
It has been commandeered by a group that's primarily composed of indigenous and black people.
And evidently, we're not allowed to be on the square.
It is like the Antifa autonomous city in Seattle, but it's even amped up a little more because it's right where the seat of government is here in the municipality of Toronto, Toronto City Hall.
We were told by police that if we didn't exit the square, we would be arrested and charged with trespass, and yet they're turning a blind eye to the squatters.
Not only that, folks, the city is aiding and enabling them by putting up port-a-potties for their comfort.
So, isn't that amazing?
And again, to bring it back to the question du jour, how is it that an anti-lockdown protest, a peaceful anti-lockdown protest, is not allowed on Nathan Phillips Square or Young Dundas Square.
But this, I don't know what this protest is trying to say.
Well, actually, I do, but it would be impolite to speak my mind.
In any event, it is a double standard.
And we're going to try to find out why it is that people advocating for violence and death, because that's what's happening here, folks.
People advocating for violence and death are completely tolerated and accommodated.
And peaceful protesters that just want the economy to reopen, resume life as Canadians in Canada, circa 2019, why they are ticketed and worse, even arrested and put in jail.
So let's see what reaction we can get.
Also, there really is no sense in me interviewing the pro-Hamas demonstrators here.
These are the same people that congregate for the odious Al-Quds Day rally, typically in late June.
They actually print off pictures of me on pages telling people not to speak with me.
I swear I'm not making this up.
Check out the video footage.
How do you explain marching with the very people who despise you, who would want you killed?
And of course, hey, hi guys.
Sorry you're not playing.
Oh, there you're training them young.
As I say in the marketing business, get them young, get them forever.
Yeah, so they're not in a mood to talk to me.
I wonder why.
Maybe it's because I'm not asking the kind of softball questions CBC reporters do.
In any event, let's wander into the square and see if we can have authorities explain why there is such a glaring and odious and egregious double standard when it comes to freedom of protest.
I'm just wondering, I'm trying to get clarity in terms of the rules of protesting, how anti-lockdown protests, people waving Canadian...
I have no comment on this guy.
You have no comment?
No, no.
But why is there a double standard?
Can you please answer me that?
Sir, I can't comment at this time.
You can't comment?
Okay, he can't comment.
I'm just wondering, last summer we came here to cover the Afro-Indigenous rising illegal occupation of the square.
We were threatened with being charged with trespassing by you and the police.
I am wondering why were we not allowed to practice journalism in the square, and yet this protest is occurring in the square right now where, and some of these people are advocating very nasty things indeed.
Why is that?
Okay, I just want to stop you right there.
Unfortunately, I cannot comment on that because I don't know what happened with you or in that incident.
The best person to contact is Prior Strategic Communications with the City of Police.
Oh, that would be Bruce Hawkins, he, him.
And Bruce Hawkins, he, him.
And in case we mistake Bruce Hawkins for a she, her or a Z-Zer folks, he was actually part of a spying mission on us coming to Nathan Phillips Square to cover the protests.
So I don't think he's going to give us an answer.
He was, Like I said, spying on our activities.
So again, I just wonder why journalists can't practice journalism on Nathan Phillips Square, and yet you can have basically people advocating hate speech gathering here.
Again, I'm unable to comment to that, okay?
Well, that was the disgraceful scene in downtown Toronto last Saturday, and the message is clear, isn't it?
In Mayor John Torrey's Hogtown: all protests are equal.
But some protests, well, they're more equal than others.
Translation: anti-lockdown demonstrators are verboten in Nathan Phillips Square, but a pro-Hamas demonstration, well, diversity is our strength, I guess.
In any event, you had plenty to say about this odious double standard when it comes to freedom of speech and assembly.
Jürgen Reichelt writes, Yet they are arresting peaceful pastors and treat them like animals.
Torrey and Trudeau destroying Canada as we know and love it.
Hey, maybe you are on to something, Jürgen.
Perhaps if these peaceful pastors wrap themselves in the flag of the Palestinian Authority and serve up a sermon full of anti-Semitism, they shall be left alone.
Johnny Lawrence writes, Guess COVID magically disappeared for this protest.
Yes, Johnny, we've been told from day one the decisions made by our politicians and bureaucrats and public health officials are based on science.
I wonder if they meant to say political science, because that's not science at all.
John T-20 Minutes Mercier writes, quote, those are my principles.
If you don't like them, I have others, end quote, as noted by Groucho Marx.
Gee, John, I thought you were perhaps quoting any number of politicians in Canada these days, from Premiers Ford and Kenny to Mayor Torrey and Prime Minister Trudeau.
Horrible leaders who believe that principles like gender these days is fluid.
And Brent Baker writes, I have police officer friends in the United States that I sent this to, and they're absolutely disgusted.
Brent's Disgusted Police Officers 00:00:12
Well, Brent, those are my kind of police officers.
Well, that wraps up another edition of Rebel Roundup.
Thanks so much for joining us.
See you next week.
And hey, folks, never forget, without risk, there can be no glory.
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