Major politicians are lying about a pro-Palestine protest. Here's the truth

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]I sometimes wonder if politicians think that we're all stupid. Because right now, major politicians from both the government and the official opposition are lying to us like they think we're idiots. And it's especially disturbing because their lie is now being used to crack down on protests against genocide.

[00:00:17]Over the last few days, politicians including Liberal cabinet minister Anthony Solomon and Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre shared this video from Rebel News that shows what they described as a display of a Jewish person in effigy. They all described it like that. An effigy of a Jew being hanged is how Pierre Poilievre put it.

[00:00:37]Roman Baber, a Conservative MP, said they're hanging an effigy of a Jew in Montreal now. Liberal MP Anthony Housefather described it as hanging an image of a Jew with a kippah in effigy.

[00:00:47]And he said that he actually reached out to the police to get them to look into it. Now, on its face, that sounds quite disturbing. Hanging a representation of a Jewish person from a noose and parading it through the streets of Montreal. Only that's absolutely not what happened here. In fact, the truth tells another story all together, and it's one that makes the outcry itself offensively obtuse. Or worse, you could see it as an intentional lie to crack down on pro-Palestine protests because look at what's happening now. See, Rebel News posted footage that showed the effigy from a very careful angle. One that obscured key identifying details of who the activists were portraying. In reality, the effigies that you see in this video actually portrayed two political figures. Far-right Israeli cabinet minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and US President Donald Trump. In other angles, you can actually see that the protesters had a third effigy there. One showing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Here's another clearer shot of that same effigy of Ben-Gvir which Montreal for Palestine, the organizers of this protest shared. And when you see it from this angle, it's so obvious. I mean, he has his characteristic noose that Ben Gvir frequently wears on his lapel. More on that in a moment. But let's talk for a second about what exactly makes this ludicrous outcry from elected politicians so egregious. These effigies were used as a symbol at a protest against Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza. Despite the so-called ceasefire in Gaza, at least 906 Palestinians have been killed since the deal took effect in October. Just this week, as Eid celebrations began in the Gaza Strip, Israeli fighter jets launched air strikes on a residential building killing seven people including three women and a child. Something that the politicians crying over a stuffed figure at a protest won't speak out about at all. In Lebanon, Israel has been bombing residential areas, roads, and civilian infrastructure displacing 1.6 million people and killing at least 3,213 people while wounding 9,737 others. In Iran, the Iranian Red Crescent has confirmed Israeli and US strikes hit 67,414 civilian sites including 498 schools and 236 health facilities.

[00:03:06]Meanwhile, Ben Gvir, the guy with a noose on his lapel, celebrated with champagne recently after Israeli parliament passed a law making death by hanging the default punishment for Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis. Those courts, by the way, have a 96% conviction rate. Ben Gvir also personally participated in the abuse of international activists who attempted to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza posting imagery of the flotilla participants in stress positions and being beaten on Twitter. This is what the protesters were opposing with those effigies. They were protesting war criminals, two of whom happen to be Jewish. They were not protesting Jewish people who just happen to be war criminals. It's honestly enough to make you feel totally gaslit.

[00:03:50]Cuz here's the thing, right? Like if we as a society want to reject effigies as a legitimate form of protest, despite their several hundred year history, that's one thing. But we haven't done that. In Toronto a few months back, pro-Israel, pro-monarchist protesters supporting the strikes on Iran carried an effigy that depicted the Ayatollah hanging from a noose. There was no outcry about this, and nobody claimed that this was the hanging of a Muslim man, and therefore a vile act of Islamophobia. Three years ago, when someone opposing Putin's war on Ukraine strung up an effigy of the Russian president in Toronto, there was no institutional outcry, either. And certainly no one claimed that this was an anti-Orthodox Christian hate crime.

[00:04:30]But when it's Palestinians who are protesting the men directly responsible for the mass slaughter of their families, the abuse of activists trying to bring aid to starving children, the raising of their hometowns, and the mass illegal annexation of their lands, they face sweeping condemnation that they're engaged in anti-Semitism. Palestinians, apparently, must tolerate the worst horrors imaginable without access to the same symbolic acts of protest that hundreds of years of protesters have used before them. What the [ __ ] are we doing here? I reached out to Ze'ev Saltiel of Independent Jewish Voices Montreal. He told me, quote, "The outrage coming from politicians regarding the effigies of Itamar Ben-Gvir, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Donald Trump, when they were silent following the state of Israel's legalization of the death penalty by noose in a law that will almost exclusively be applied to Palestinians, shows us the deeply ingrained and systemic anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab hate, not just in Montreal, but across all of so-called Canada. Attempting to spin what is a clear critique of government officials complicit in genocide, including the noose pin on the Ben-Gvir effigy, into anti-Semitism dilutes the very real anti-Semitism that exists in the world.

[00:05:43]If these officials want to claim to be representatives of democracy, they need to welcome criticism. And that's kind of the thing, right? When people who are otherwise political opponents all agree on a demonstrable lie to falsely vilify protesters, they inadvertently expose a truth. That the protesters are exposing an institutionally supported source of what should be a national shame. Because the horrors that are being protested, the reason that these specific men are being hung in effigy. It's the same thing that we're complicit in. We won't actually sanction the Israeli government, and we won't close weapons loopholes. We know in our core right from wrong, and we know that this is wrong. The protesters are forcing Canada's institutions to confront this reality, which is why they seem to be so desperate to discredit them. Because if Canada acknowledges the truth being exposed, we'd actually have to [ __ ] do something about it. Can't have that, can we? So instead we vilify and criminalize protest. What do you think of all this?