'Hamas is going to win': Protesters support 'resistance' in Victoria - exclusive

Protesters expressed support for Hamas at a Saturday protest in the western Canadian city of Victoria, part of an increasing trend of radicalism according to a resident who has been documenting local anti-Israel activism.

“Hamas is going to win,” one woman said gleefully in a video taken by Carly Crowe next to the British Columbia Parliament House.

Another protester told her that “Hamas is a resistance group” and explained that Israeli Jews are from Eastern Europe and Poland.

During the speeches in front of the parliament one woman called Zionists “thieves”. The same activist had told Crowe in April in response to a sign about rapes during October 7 that “Jewish woman are too ugly to be raped, but maybe with a condom.”

At the Saturday protest, an anti-Israel activist and adjunct history professor at a local university claimed that the charge of antisemitism was being used to conceal crimes in Gaza.

Anti-Zionist chants and rhetoric 

“Probably the most antisemitic behind the scenes manipulators are the Zionists,” claimed the speaker, explain that Israelis were willing to sacrifice individual Jews for dreams of power, influence, and land.

The speaker asserted that “many” of the Jews killed in the “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood Campaign” were killed by the army.

Crowe told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that in the months that she had observed the protests, she had seen signs proclaiming that “Zionists control the West,” and “Dear Zionists, God has a nice piece of land waiting for you in hell.”

The young activist felt that she had to start documenting the protest because she felt many Canadians, and Victorians in particular, were “very naive as to how extreme these protesters really are.”