The Parkdale Eight: Requiem for An Action

In October of 2025, 35 people broke into the local constituency office of Canadian Member of Parliament Karim Bardeesy. The goal of the office invasion was purportedly to force the government of Canada to officially sanction Israel, end all sales of armaments to the country, and demand the immediate release of two Canadians who had been brought to Israel after their Greta Thunberg-led flotilla was intercepted by Israeli forces.

So, a simple enough office invasion for Gaza, one assumes. There have been many of these so-called “protests” over the last two years. I only registered this event when the brief mentions of it in the media highlighted a few names I recognized. I decided to spend a bit of time digging deeper. When I did, I found myself increasingly perplexed. Look closer and you’ll see mixed messages, bad timing, and an overall incoherence that makes me wonder if I, and most who report on or otherwise comment on these protests, are somehow missing the point.

Let’s begin with the basics of the action. Protestors show up to this office in West Toronto on a weekday morning and storm in. Bardeesy, who represents the Parkdale-High Park riding of the city, is not there. The lone staffer who is there quite understandably becomes scared. She runs to a back room and calls the police. The police come and tell the invaders -- or activists or demonstrators or agitators or whatever it is they were trying to be that day -- to leave. Eight refuse and are arrested.

Meet the Parkdale Eight: Faisal Ibrahim, 39; Chloe Tse, 24; Matthew J. Goodings, 59; Francois Villeneuve, 48; Atia A. Haq, 38; Susan Goldstein, 67; Alexander Vesuna, 30; and Michael DeForge, 38, all of Toronto. They were charged with counts of forcible entry, unlawful assembly, mischief, and obstructing a peace officer.

So far so simple. Do-gooders-for-Gaza stage a Sixties style sit-in and change the world. Well, not quite. For starters, there’s the strange choice of target, Liberal MP Bardeesy’s constituency office. With his ringlets of gray hair and professorial glasses, Bardeesy looks like what he is – a think-tanky, dyed-in-the-wool, leftie. Bardessy is

former faculty at Toronto Metropolitan University, identifies as an Arab-Canadian, favours a total arms embargo of Israel and has gone on record with the claim that “Israel has been committing unacceptable atrocities” in Gaza. (No call to free the hostages though, whom Hamas was still holding in its tunnels when he made that statement.) Bardeesy also happens to be a member of the very government that rewarded Hamas for starting a horrible war by “recognizing” the “country” of Palestine. So you’d think the Parkdale Eight would see him as, if not an ally, then at least someone they wouldn’t want to aggressively antagonize. Generally, activists choose protest targets they strongly disagree with. In this case, Bardeesy and the Parkdale Eight are in lockstep. They share ideology and fantastical rendering of events in the Middle East. So what gives?

On timing, well, it’s also quite odd. There’s the ceasefire, so a little late for sanctions and embargoes. The members of the second Greta “aid” flotilla, meanwhile, were flown to Turkey quickly after being taken into custody. They were practically back in their comfortable homes when the Parkdale Eight moved in. Demanding the government press for something that was literally already underway seems a bit of a waste of limited protest-goodwill.

To the outside observer, the office invasion seems totally incoherent – ill timed, unplanned, pointlessly divisive. And yet it happened. It went forward. The Eight dug in and got themselves arrested. Why? What aren’t we seeing in this picture?

Above is a photo posted on Instagram. It was taken in the midst of the October Office Occupation. As you can see, in the background is a large red flag centering a depiction of what we’ll assume is meant to be a pre-contact Indigenous warrior. It seems to have been hastily duct-taped onto a wall. Also in the picture, there’s a keffiyeh draped woman with a cell phone -- texting or taking a selfie. There’s also a woman wearing a t-shirt. Look carefully and you can make out the t-shirt’s slogan: “Jews Say Stop Arming Israel”. The woman in this t-shirt seems to be holding a microphone as if about to make some kind of speech.

It’s an interesting tableau. Let’s look closer at the large flag of the warrior. Why that flag instead of the Palestinian flag or some effigy of Netanyahu or Donald Trump? Is the banner meant to inspire the Parkdale Eight crowd to be more warrior-like? It’s unclear. But clearly having the flag up and visible is a crucial part of the group’s overall ideology.

Now to the woman in the t-shirt holding the mic. What’s with the microphone? There’s no one there. No audience has gathered, waiting to hear her speak truth to power. Is it a prop for effect? Were they expecting a larger crowd? Again, hard to say. The t-shirt, of course, is easier to interpret. Presumably each action must feature a token “as-a-Jew” to give cover against accusations that the far left’s obsession with Israel has more to do with latent Jew-hate as it does to do with helping Gazans. The as-a-Jew must let people know that she is the token Jew, present and accounted for. Thus, the shirt. But the shirt’s message is interesting on its own – “JEWS SAY!” A thundering pronouncement speaking, apparently, for all the people of Sarah and Abraham. Not “This Jew says” or “Some Jews say.” Mic woman protestor speaks for all, whether we fellow Jews like it or not.

Can the t-shirt and the as-a-Jew woman possibly give us a bit more insight into the warrior flag? I’m guessing there is no Indigenous activist present. That is why the flag is necessary. It functions for the group as a kind of visual land acknowledgement. Paired with the ubiquitous kaffiyeh and the t-shirt, what seem to be mixed messages merge into a single plotline: Self-hate. These “protesters” do not like who they are. They seek to reject their backgrounds. They want to abdicate their supposed “privilege.” This means, essentially, destroy the West and return power to its heroic forbearers, the worthiest of which in this context are the Indigenous of “Turtle Island” and their compatriots in Gaza.

What we construe as incoherence they see as a powerful truth-telling, a parallel reality in which the worst countries in the world include the colonizing white supremacist hellholes of Canada and Israel. We see an attack on their ally’s office, they see an illegitimate government that refuses to cede power. The government – a colonizing entity of evil – can in fact never be an ally. This is not the realpolitik we typically understand to be at the heart of democracy. Let’s negotiate. Let’s try to understand each other. Let’s cut a deal. For the Parkdale Eight, there can never be a deal. The point is not to raise awareness or push the cause forward. The mic, the t-shirt, the flag, the keffiyeh, the refusal to leave. It’s not incoherent, it’s exactly what they believe. The point is the choreographed sound and fury.

The flag, the keffiyeh, the t-shirt. The father the son and the holy ghost. Think of it as a kind of repackaged trinity. The “action” confuses because its fundamental underpinning is not political, but religious. The Eight believe in or at least pay homage to a mythical pre-contact Indigenous identity that existed in Gaza and Canada before the Jews/whites/capitalists came and ruined everything. Once there was a perfect world, but it was ruined by the “oppressor.”

Thus, the two other symbols in the tautological tableau. First the as-a-Jew who represents rejection of Western faith. This is a recanting of the entire edifice of morality as set out first in the Old Testament, underpinning of all the subsequent legal codes that allowed for the development of our current pluralistic and prosperous societies.

The there is the keffiyeh. A confusing symbol for ultra left agitators to employ, at least to us outside observers. Isn’t the keffiyeh the symbol of the demand to give over the entire Middle East to exclusively Muslim ethnostates? When we see it, we think of the NAZI-loving Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. We think Yasir Arafat, Yahya Al-Sinwar. We think of people who believe that it is their holy mission to kill gays, Jews, Christians, adulterers, and pretty much anyone who opposes the establishment of Islamic Caliphates. Hardly a progressive simple.

So why would a group of people, most of whom are white, all of whom are ardent supporters of LGBTQ, minority, and women’s rights, none of whom adhere to the Islamic faith, embrace a symbol that completely rejects everything they purport to believe in? (In essence, this is the gays-for-Gaza/chickens-for-KFC paradox.) The answer is that the Parkdale Eight group does not see the keffiyeh as symbol of Islamic fundamentalism and never-ending holy war. To them it is a symbol of an even holier war—the war against themselves, the war against putrid and corrupt whiteness. They wrap the keffiyeh around themselves to somehow absorb the purity, the indigeneity. This is the way forward, they proclaim. Globalize the intifada and depose the West. It is their ultimate symbol of self-repudiation and sacrifice.

I would like to be able to say that their imagined “indigenous” world of Gaza and their fantastical intifada for social justice exist in an alternate reality outside our own. In terms of the symbols and language they employ and the choices the make, they are certainly more like a fringe cult/religious movement than serious political actors. Furthermore, many, if not most, of the people who have fallen into this ideology do not understand what they are protesting for, what they are against, and what the symbols they religiously display are meant to represent.

Nevertheless, this “movement” continues to attract adherents and considerable sympathy. There is ample evidence that Parkdale Eight-like actions have influenced institutions and political decisions in Canada and all over the Western world. This has led to fear and confusion and a rending of the social fabric such that we have not seen in our lifetime. Our leaders seem unable or unwilling to confront what is a widespread, ahistorical, call for societal self-immolation in the name of “justice.” Partly, they are silent out of bewilderment: they simply do not how to characterize or talk about a “movement” that is as totalizing as it is nonsensical. Look again at the swirl of flags and big feelings: it is the Rorschach of protests—some see a trigger warning, others a smoking gun. Facts, precedent, evidence—none of this can be used to either understand, appease or combat a quasi religious “movement” that acts entirely outside of standards, legitimate political discourse and dissent.