What’s Really Happening Inside the Gaza Encampment Protests?

“May the fourth be with you,” I joked to the pro-Palestinian protester to my left as we set up our tents at the University of Toronto downtown campus on a warm sunny spring day last weekend. 

I, of course, was on an undercover assignment for GWU!, while my camping neighbor and sixth year student studying Poli-Sci was skipping his assignments altogether. 

My post was King’s College Circle at the U of T. My job was to report on the Little Gaza Encampment at the progressive captured university from behind the frontlines of woke.

GWU!s Based Commander JJ McRoberts had arranged for my flight from the home office in Boca Raton to cover the growing Palestinian anti-war protests in Canada. After a turbulent connecting flight where an Indigenous man flew into an Air Rage after being separated from his feathered hat I could tell this country was actually more dangerous than Americans think.

Why me? Simple. I’m young. I’m Black. And yet, my story is more than my age and skin tone. Educated at UCLA where I was the editor of the school newspaper, an eye opening two year CNN internship taught me how the mainstream narrative operates and how to break it.  

But enough about me.

OCCUPY WOKE STREET

While I had anticipated there would be a lot of passionate railing against genocide, it appeared this crowd didn’t seem to care very much about the Middle East. In fact, the encampment was more performative activism than any actual display of fighting for a repressed minority in an apartheid state. 

Truth be told, I had a pretty good time! We ate pizza, suntanned, played Frisbee, and even watched the NHL hockey playoffs! 

“Hey,” I exclaimed late Saturday night over beers and za with my newly converted Muslim allies, “the only peace I need is another piece of this delicious pie.”

Posing as a Marxist Feminist Black Studies student I had quickly made friends with a few ‘folx’ who seemed to recognize me from class. (I didn’t say we all look the same, they thought it.). As a visible minority myself, I could see that there were very few actual students of Palestinian background. Most of my fellow ‘rebels’ weren’t even students, but, rather, knock off Greta Thunberg white suburban anarchists or government handout lowlifes who were looking for a free place with electricity and wifi to camp for the week. Whether it was the Indigenous, BLT+ crowd, or a bunch of purple haired pro-choice activists it was clear that nobody really understood very much about Palestine. 

The ‘students’ had fenced the area in, with strict rules that only ‘students’ could come into what they had dubbed ‘Little Gaza’, unless you were Indigenous in which case you could do whatever you wanted. 

There were more than 50 tents that eventually swelled to double that dotting the otherwise beautiful campus landscape. An eyesore if you ask me. Students had decorated the fencing with anti-semitic phrases and messages about colonizers who stole the land we were camping on, like 300 years ago …. but who’s counting? Honestly, thinking about those innocents being slaughtered in the Middle East and then these Trustafarians camping out in solidarity, made me feel nauseous. 

POW, WOW!

Which leads me to ‘Indigenous Corner’, which appeared to have its own tribal rules. They had decorated their camp area with a combination of blue tarps and professionally designed Every Child Matters signs and Turtle Island propaganda, printed at Staples. The talking stick leaned up against a rusty metal fence enabled very little discussion of the complex geo-politics of the Middle East around the campfire. Unless you count conspiracy theories being shouted at actual students and random people passing by outside the fenced-off area that there were murdered kids buried underneath every school house in Canada. 

As most of the protesters were soulless pasty white girls and effeminate soyboys wearing kefyiahs, I tried to ask what was the purpose of Little Gaza. Unfortunately I was fed a regurgitated slop of stories from trans-rights to BLT+ to BLM/IBS to Diagolon (an insane conspiracy theory spun by Prime Minister Wacko Trudeau that satirical podcast ‘The RageCast’ was going to overthrow the government and start a White ethnostate stretching diagonally from Florida to Alaska. Okay, eh.—ed). 

The one great thing though, food wise, was that each night we were delivered free pizza from an assortment of pro-Zionists corporations like 241 Pizza (Now there’s a two pizza solution anyone can support!—ed). On Saturday, we streamed the hockey game and all sighed when the Leafs lost, “I’m sure the Bruins are sending weapons to Tel Aviv,” I muttered to my new masked brothers and sisters. 

UNITED WE STAND, UNLESS WE’RE TIRED

Speaking of brothers and sisters, CUPE union president Fred Hahn and other past-their-protest-prime leftist leaders showed up to give their support. While most headed back to their multi-million dollar homes after a few photo ops, Fred stayed and looked for a place he could pitch his tent for a wild night with some college boys. That lefty sure had a solid on for solidarity!!!

After some prompting from my perturbed editor that I wasn’t taking my assignment seriously, I nervously tried to take some photos of Indigenous corner to prove it wasn’t a corner. Hey, I might have failed Grade 10 Math, but I know there can’t be a corner in a circle. As soon as I covertly unpacked and assembled my totally normal looking Nikon D6 DSLR camera with a 400mm telephoto lens I was accosted by a sixty-year-old Indian who questioned why I was there. 

“For the same reason as you,” I sputtered, instantly realizing I wasn’t sure why she was there or even if she knew. There were so many causes at this ‘anti-war’ protest that it was difficult to figure out what the hell these people were protesting. Could it be the free but slow wifi speed in their new summer homes? Good luck evicting them U of T!

On what turned out to be the final morning of my stay at Little Gaza Bed and Breakfast, I followed a shaggy looking group of They/Thems to the U of T Athletic Center. On humanitarian grounds, the university had permitted us to use the showers … as well as the hot tub and tanning bed. However, when I returned to Little Gaza B&B I was not allowed back in. Apparently a background check of my Reddit account had shown the freedom fighters that I was an undercover reporter for theGWU.net. 

For some reason the stocky 50-plus-year-old Islamic lesbians who forcibly exiled me didn’t believe GWU! stood for Gaza World United. I was forever separated from my new family and exiled from what I had grown to think of as my rightful, ancestral, sacred homeland.