Security was extremely tight Sunday as tens of thousands of members of the Jewish community and several allies took to the streets of Toronto for the annual Walk with Israel.
Some 50,000 people — several wrapped in the Israeli flag, others carrying Israeli and Canadian flags along with pictures of the hostages still in Gaza and most dressed in the blue-and-white Israeli colours — danced, marched and sang their way along the five-kilometre Bathurst St. route.
The walk raised $1.2 million.
It will go to help Israelis rebuild their lives following the atrocities of Oct. 7 and to support the victims of terror.
Toronto councillors James Pasternak, MPP Robin Martin and MPs Kevin Vuong and Ya’ara Saks were spotted marching.
TDSB trustee Weidong Pei marched with a contingent. Jewish trustees Shelley Laskin and Rachel Chernos Lin were MIA.
Conspicuous in her absence was Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, who also refused to attend the Israeli Independence Day flag-raising on May 14, claiming it would be “divisive” due to the now eight-month Israeli-Hamas conflict.
Several marchers Sunday agreed Chow has made it clear that she does not represent the 200,000 members of Toronto’s Jewish community and has enabled the horrible antisemitism in this city.
Police on horseback, on bikes and on foot and officers from not just Toronto but Durham, York, Hamilton and Niagara lined the route and kept the hateful pro-Palestinian protesters contained to a very small area.
Barricades blocked every cross street along the route and special barricades were set up at Wilson and Shepard to prevent cars from driving through those major intersections.
Despite threats from anti-Israel protesters on social media to instigate Jews on the walk and to take their pictures for some sort of “list,” the police did an excellent job of containing the protesters.
The only heated confrontations occurred at the corners of Bathurst and Shepard and Bathurst and Wilson where about 200 protesters — many of their faces covered in keffiyehs — shouted at the marchers and played the sounds of flushing toilets.
