The Calgary Police Service (CPS) said it has charged one man in relation to a hate-motivated incident over the weekend at a downtown pro-Palestine protest. On Sunday around 2 p.m., two groups of protestors gathered at the Calgary Municipal Building to show support for Palestine and Israel amid the conflict in the Middle East. After consultation with the CPS hate crime coordinator, the man has been charged with causing a disturbance, and hate motivation has been applied to the charge. Ahead of the protest, CPS said its Diversity Resource Team and its Public Safety Unit met with members of the two groups involved in the protest to ensure the safety of the participants, the public, and police officers and to discuss some of the language and signage observed at past protests. During the protest, it said a man took to the stage to speak to the large crowd in attendance. He proceeded to use an antisemitic phrase while encouraging the crowd to follow along. Calgary resident Wesam Cooley, 32, will next appear in court on December 12. "I expect he will defend himself on the basis that there is nothing hateful about calling for freedom and equality for Palestinians from the Gaza Sea to the River Jordan," said Liberty Law LLP lawyer Zachary Al-Khatib in a Thursday statement."It is unfortunate that a Calgary police officer acted as he did in this situation."Al-Khatib said he hopes it "was a mistake flowing from a misunderstanding and will be corrected soon." No matter people's stance on the conflict, he said people should want a society where political speech is not criminalized.Police acknowledged hate speech is complex, and several contextual factors must be considered before charges can be laid. It will work with the Alberta Crown Prosecution Service to review any potential hate crimes at the protests to determine if those thresholds have been met. CPS pledged to police behaviours, not beliefs.Justice for Palestinians said CPS charged Cooley, despite having built a relationship with its community liaison and the officers attending the protests. “This incident is an outrageous silencing of Palestinians and their supporters and a brazen attempt to criminalize these protests,” said Mount Royal University sociology professor Muhannad Ayyash. “The Calgary police continuously tell us that they ‘police behaviour and not beliefs,' but they are apparently policing beliefs here since Mr. [Wesam] Khaled was not disturbing the peace throughout the rally in any of his behaviours.”.On Sunday around 5 p.m., Justice for Palestinians said CPS officers surrounded Cooley while he was waiting with his family for a train home. It added Cooley was arrested, handcuffed and led down the platform through a gauntlet of officers and into a police van. His mother, father and other witnesses demanded to know the charges. They were told he was causing a disturbance. Justice for Palestinians has video of the rally that shows there was no hate speech, and he said during the rally they were against all forms of racism, including antisemitism. It learned he was accused of making offensive antisemitic comments for uttering the pro-Palestinian slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” It pointed out many people are trying to portray its protests as antisemitic, violent and hateful. There is a concerted effort by Canadian politicians at all levels of government to demonize these protests and label them as hate marches, since they are challenging Canada’s official position on the Israel-Palestine conflict. It underscored his arrest occurred as an ambush rather than one for an observable offence. To its knowledge, there is no legislation or bylaws criminalizing protest speech calling for justice and liberation of an oppressed population undergoing genocide by an oppressive state. Moreover, Ayyash said the pro-Palestinian slogan has been misinterpreted in Canada. As Palestinian-American writer Yousef Munayyer put it in the Guardian, the slogan is a way to express a desire for a state where Palestinians “can live in their homeland as free and equal citizens, neither dominated by others nor dominating them.” “Furthermore, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe raised similar hopes about the chant ‘from the river to the sea,’ calling it an alternative to the ongoing Israeli settler colonial occupation of Palestine: ‘A delionized, liberated and democratic Palestine from the river to the sea; a Palestine that will welcome back the refugees and build a society that does not discriminate on the basis of culture, religion or ethnicity,” said Ayyash. Around 450 people gathered to demonstrate for a free Palestine in Calgary on October 14. READ MORE: WATCH: About 450 people attend pro-Palestine protest in Calgary“We do believe Palestine must be free,” said protest organizer Mahmoud Mourra. “Free free Palestine.”
