For a while there, it was looking grim for Pride Toronto. But after a marathon Executive Committee session filled with rancour and political theatre, the festival’s funding seems secure for at least another year.
In an extraordinary bureaucratic twist, Pride’s fate came down to a debate not over the merits of the event itself, which brings the city millions of dollars every year, but over the parade participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid and Mideast politics itself.
QuAIA, in a supremely dextrous move, pledged two months ago not to participate in Pride this year, but that didn’t end the matter. The question was referred to the city manager, who tabled a report Tuesday concluding that the term “Israeli apartheid” does not violate Toronto’s anti-discrimination policy.
In the end, after the grandstanding and the huffing and puffing, the committee unanimously endorsed the report.
For nearly eight hours, a parade of speakers representing Jewish and pro-Palestinian groups went before the committee, and the meeting quickly descended into the type of unproductive and toxic quarrel familiar to undergrad students. Israel was characterized alternately as the only democracy in the Middle East and the region’s most repressive occupying power. The spectre of the Holocaust was raised again and again, and the names of Goebbels, Desmond Tutu, Ahmadinejad and Martin Luther King were tossed about like confetti.
If there’s anything more depressing than an interminable debate over Israel and Palestine, it’s an interminable debate over Israel and Palestine with potentially lethal consequences for an overwhelmingly positive event like Pride. For a while, it appeared the gay fest would be derailed unless City Hall could come to agreement over the nature of the state of Israel.
Some on the committee seemed to encourage the hijacking of Pride’s future by the Israel-Palestine issue. Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti – who insisted that QuAIA’s no-show promise was not good enough and demanded that Pride commit to turfing the group if it made an appearance – egged on Israel’s defenders. He forfeited his own speaking time so they could describe the virtues of the Jewish state, and hammered QuAIA’s supporters, asking questions like “What is the status of gay rights in the countries surrounding Israel?”
Councillor James Pasternak also joined in, asking one speaker, “How many Palestinian lives are saved in Israeli hospitals each year?” The speaker didn’t know, of course, but it’s probably a lot.
At one point, Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday begged speakers and councillors to stick with the matter at hand, but to no avail. “The report before us is dealing with the city manager’s opinion on a matter. We’re far, far away from that report,” he said. “It’s an absolute shame that this forum has been used in this way.”
For his part, Mammoliti gave the packed committee room every indication that he was going to reject the city manager’s report. “The more this discussion goes on, the more I feel like I’ve been doing the right thing,” he said at one point to loud applause from the pro-Israel contingent.
But hours later, he endorsed the city manger’s determination that “Israeli apartheid” was not discriminatory. Then, minutes after voting for the report, Mammoliti unaccountably declared that he completely disagreed with it. “I personally feel that ‘Israeli apartheid’ is a very dangerous statement and is discriminatory. QuAIA better stay away. This councillor will defend the Jewish community, and I will do it in an aggressive way.”
Still, Pride co-chair Francisco Alvarez somewhat generously lauded the dust-up. “In the end it was a really good debate. We’re pleased that we’re not going to be singled out.”‘
To Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, the whole affair seemed a set-up job by Mammoliti. “Why we’re not talking about the city’s anti-discrimination policy, and whether or not Pride is in compliance I have no idea.”
Pride Toronto stuck to its position that it could not guarantee that QuAIA would not appear at Pride events, referring to its complaints process set up to deal with any element of the festivities that some might find offensive. Alvarez did confirm that QuAIA has not registered to march in the parade.
Tim McCaskell of QuAIA, missing an opportunity to douse the flames by reaffirming the org’s planned absence, instead screened a four-minute video about the importance of keeping Pride political. Still, he welcomed the meeting’s final decision.
“With the city manager’s report, we won the right to march in the parade,” he said. Explaining QuAIA’s tactical retreat, he said, “It would have been a hollow victory if there were no parade to march in.”
The decision now goes to council as part of a broader report on events funding, but the executive says Pride cash will be withheld until after the event to ensure that QuAIA keeps its word.
