Underdog (24 page)

The firefighters dined out for months and months on that success, claiming the one person in the media who hated firefighters had been silenced. Not that I hated them. They even cooked up a story saying that the reason I was so hard on them (and had an alleged soft spot for paramedics) was because my partner (Denise) was a paramedic. Not that she is. That myth circulated for a couple of years. It didn't dawn on them at the time that my criticism was all based in fact. The number of fires they fought per year was down to less than 10 per cent and the medical calls they'd taken on to reinvent themselves were up to almost 60 per cent of their responses. The tiered-response approach – meaning that police, ambulance, and fire all showed up to many 911 calls – was and is no longer affordable. In many cities in the U.S., the fire and ambulance services are combined. Yet here in Toronto we were still building separate stations for each service (sometimes on the same corner) and enriching the firefighter contracts, often to the exclusion of the paramedics. It made, and continues to make, no sense to me.

I wasn't silenced, however – to the firefighters' chagrin. In the summer of 2011, after Rob Ford came to power and the fire department was busy trying to counter a consultants'
report that recommended the paramedics and fire be amalgamated, I wrote a column that had them fired up for days. As I ventured by the Yorkville fire hall around ten o'clock on a Saturday evening, I noticed a couple of beefy firefighters posing for a picture with a bunch of beauties in skin-tight, glittery dresses – during what turned out to be a bachelorette party. I wrote about that, daring to suggest that perhaps they're not so under-resourced after all if they have time to pose for pretty pictures. The nasty e-mails flooded in for days. After all, how dare I criticize those fire gods! I was accused of being jealous, of being a home-wrecker (by a wife whose husband had posed for the picture), of hating firefighters and having no empathy for the terribly difficult work they do, of being married to a paramedic (that was said over and over again), and many other offences too obscene to repeat. When a firefighter dug up a photo of me posing in a fire truck at a street party during my 2009 election campaign – one of those pictures I didn't remember taking and have since regretted – I was accused of being opportunistic for days and days. Evidently, it didn't strike them as ironic that they seemed to have a lot of time on their hands to find my picture and to send me attack e-mails, thus reinforcing what I'd been trying to say.

In addition to continuing to insist that Denise is a paramedic (I repeat, she isn't), the firefighters are convinced that I hate them and they have perpetuated that lie for years. It doesn't matter that I have no reason to hate them and have said so repeatedly. I simply loathe the way the fire gods manipulate public sentiment to get what they want in the way of unaffordable pay increases when common sense (and the facts) should dictate that they be forced to cut back like every other city department has (except for the police, the other sacred cow).
I hate the way politicians so easily cower in the face of their demands, more concerned about support and votes than balancing the books. I'm also not too fond of the way they've tried to gag and intimidate me for merely stating what is fact, and how they expect reporters only to write puff pieces about the latest five-alarm fire they battled (heroically, of course) on a cold night. I recognize that firefighting can be a dangerous job. But they get paid handsomely for it and only work seven days a month (on twenty-four-hour shifts). There is forever a long list of people who want to do the job if they don't.

NOT ONLY DO I WORK
for “that tabloid” that seems to constantly fire up the masses – and not only have I loved every minute of my twenty-six years digging up the dirt – but evidently my loyalty is purchased at a bargain-basement price. My Lib-left detractors were still dining out years later, on a one-sided story penned by my then
Toronto Star
colleague Robyn Doolittle when she first came to the paper's City Hall bureau in 2010. She wrote that Rob Ford, then a councillor, donated one thousand dollars to my campaign for MPP a year earlier. To this day, I believe she deliberately did not get a comment from me so she could leave the implication out there that the donation bought my loyalty. After all the favours I saw being exchanged, the kickbacks quietly handed to certain downtown councillors by developers, and the public money spent by councillors on junkets to far-flung lands, I regularly joked after the story appeared that I sure went cheaply. But let's look at the reality of what occurred and how absolutely ludicrous the contentions were. During the thirty-five days of my by-election campaign, I was completely consumed with
cramming as much canvassing and as many media interviews and speaking engagements into my fourteen-hour days as humanly possible. I had no idea who had contributed to my campaign until long after it was over, when I sat down to write my thank-you notes. And when the mayoralty campaign got into full swing a few months later, I made it quite clear that I supported Rocco Rossi for mayor. That continued well into the campaign until it became obvious that Mr. Rossi's message wasn't resonating and the only hope of cleaning up the waste at City Hall was to support Rob Ford's fiscal agenda. But my detractors have never let the real facts get in the way of their consistent efforts to discredit me.

What my critics should realize by now – whether it be those politicians whose feet I hold to the fire or those who read my writing – is that I don't run with the pack. I have a commonsensical view of the world and am not seduced by fuzzy-wuzzy words of hope or change, or as one of my good friends calls it, “social speak.” I'm talking about platitudes that make lazy, pampered voters feel warm and happy but actually mean nothing and don't address the real issues of debt, corruption, or the absolutely immoral way many politicians and their union friends operate these days. I see politicians and bureaucrats for who they are. I am not interested in being friends with them, or the firefighters, or the union heads, or the cops, or the bloggers. I am not there to mouth whatever they feed to me. I am interested in championing the interests of those betrayed or treated unfairly by the system. I have a passion for social justice and am obsessive about tax money being used wisely. I keep on hoping my crusading might just embarrass the odd public service or
politician into doing what's right. I am doing my job, hopefully the way it should be done. I am a reporter, not a repeater. If that makes me a “complainer about everyone and everything,” as a Liberal attack piece contended during my 2009 campaign for MPP, perhaps that's because the truth really does hurt.

If ever there was a tale of political correctness gone mad, of bureaucrats and politicians succumbing to the intimidation and bullying of a very vocal and hateful minority, it was the campaign to fight Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) from marching in Toronto's Pride Parade. Six years and many difficult uphill battles later, the Israel haters finally called it a day in the spring of 2015, after being virtually sidelined in the World Pride Parade in Toronto in 2014. Left almost to the end of the line in the five-hour parade, QuAIA's motley group of no more than a dozen anti-Israel protesters found that many of the spectators were already leaving for home by the time they started to wend their way along the parade route. They'd run out of steam and had become ridiculous and irrelevant, viciously attacking the only gay-friendly liberal democracy in the Middle East. It was just deserts for a group that had absolutely no business being in
the parade in the first place. Fuelled by John Greyson and other gay filmmakers – who used this cause largely as an attempt to promote themselves and their government-subsidized commercially unsuccessful “niche” films – the presence of this group managed to polarize the gay community and put an unpleasant taint for years on what is supposed to be a celebration of gay rights and freedoms in Toronto.

In many ways, the presence of this radical, fringe group in the parade, and the inability of Pride's leaders to deal with it, caused Pride Toronto to lose its way. With QuAIA participating, the parade organizers couldn't consider the event mainstream or strictly educational, even though a long list of advertisers cozied up to them, knowing full well that the gay community had money to spend. But nor could it be deemed political as long as there was a conspicuous absence of any group marching against countries where gays are either thrown in jail, brutally murdered, or against the many instances of intolerance south of the border.

Only Israel was singled out for the entire six years, which led all of us fighting this cause to conclude that this was simply an exercise in Israel-bashing. It's not that Israel hasn't forever been the underdog. Tiny Israel, a mere twenty-two thousand square kilometres from north to south and east to west, with an estimated 2014 population of eight million people, is a miracle born from the desert, sandwiched between countries that can all be considered vicious enemies. Never mind talk of peace or a two-state solution. The Jewish homeland will never survive in a truly peaceful state as long as most of the Arab countries that surround it really want to
see it annihilated, bombed into the sea. The entire landscape has changed in recent years, with a number of extremist factions – ISIS, the Iranian nuclear program, Hamas, Hezbollah, and a corrupt PLO – within a hair's breadth of Israel's borders.

When Denise and I arrived in Israel in late August 2014, two days after a truce had been declared in the fifty-day conflict with Hamas in Gaza – during which even the Tel Aviv airport was targeted and some southern towns encountered a constant barrage of up to one hundred Hamas rockets per day – we were surprised by the resilience of the Israeli people. Tel Aviv's beaches, cafés, shops, and buses were teeming with people, and the Israelis we spoke with told us resoundingly that they just wanted to live in peace. Still, they felt very much alone and battle-weary. While they believed that Prime Minister Stephen Harper had their backs, no one could say one nice thing about President Barack Obama, who, like the mainstream media, couldn't seem to grasp the concept that Israel had every right to protect itself from the rockets – which were all launched at civilian areas – with its state-of-the-art Iron Dome technology. And as we would soon learn from a very outspoken Arab journalist living in Jerusalem, the mainstream and international media embedded in Gaza – CNN, the BBC, and even Canada's own TV broadcasters – were all under the gun of Hamas and were being told to report the party line or risk being thrown out. “They did Israel a great injustice,” said the journalist, a stringer with the
Jerusalem Post
and a variety of North American and European news outlets.

The one-sided media coverage of any and all conflicts between Israel and its Arab neighbours is a given. The persistent ganging up on Israel by the United Nations and a variety of European countries is nothing new. But the disturbing
thing is the rise in anti-Semitism masquerading as concern for the Palestinians and the completely false claims that Israel is an apartheid state similar to what once existed in South Africa. Neo-Nazis are less to be feared by Jews these days than the fringe left, who've become useful idiots for the Arab contingent. They first made their presence known on university campuses across Canada ten or so years ago with Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), and I've watched that movement grow, enabled and fuelled by weak-kneed university presidents and senior university officials who use the “freedom of speech and discourse” card as the reason not to clamp down on this veiled attack on the Jewish state and the Jews.

That very same excuse became the mantra of the weak-willed bureaucrats at City Hall, who were easily intimidated by QuAIA and their supporters. These same bureaucrats, while forever horrified by the idea that tolerance and inclusivity might not be extended to other visible minorities, especially Muslims, seemed to feel that somehow it was perfectly fine to delegitimize Israel and the Jews. Is it any wonder that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement – a far more egregious campaign started in 2005 by pro-Palestinian groups to attack and isolate Israel – has gathered steam globally? Once the door was opened with Israeli Apartheid Week, and universities turned a blind eye to the ramifications of this week's events, the Israel haters were emboldened. One sad part of this is the pressure that has been successfully applied by BDS activists to musicians and other artists and to university lecturers, urging them not to fulfill concerts or other engagements in Israel. If artists don't back down, they continue to be intimidated and ridiculed. In a
Toronto Life
article in 2014, Mr. Greyson announced quite proudly, after
nearly losing his life in an Egyptian jail the year before, that he intended to have a QuAIA float in Toronto's Pride Parade that would mock actress Scarlett Johansson for daring to stand up to the pressure exerted on her to quit her role as ambassador for the West Bank company SodaStream, which, ironically, employed 950 Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. (Mr. Greyson never followed through with that float, but his arrogance and his ignorance were still shocking.) The Palestinians working at SodaStream made the same wages and got the same benefits as Israelis – and took home nearly five times the income any Palestinian could earn in Ramallah. SodaStream officials would not admit that pressure from the BDS movement was a factor, but they decided to consolidate operations at a new plant in the south of Israel and phased out the West Bank factory at the end of 2015, putting five hundred Palestinians out of work.

As much as many of those associated with the Israeli apartheid and BDS movements will repeatedly deny they are anti-Semites, there is usually no other way to describe them. That goes as well for the Jews who, for some reason – whether out of a need to belong, or guilt, or the fact that they really loathe being Jewish – have become part of these movements. I've come to call them “useful idiots” or “Judiots” for the left and for Islamic terrorists everywhere.

It was in spring 2009 – as we were busily putting together our wedding celebrations – that Denise and I first heard about QuAIA marching in Toronto's Pride Parade. At that point, we had already travelled together as a couple to Israel twice and found ourselves sharing a passionate commitment to and protectiveness toward our Jewish homeland. Denise has family living just outside Tel Aviv, and her parents are well known in
Toronto for championing and donating extensively to a wide variety of Israeli causes. We knew little about QuAIA in the summer of 2009, but we agreed to march in the parade with a Jewish and pro-Israel LGBT group called Kulanu (Hebrew for “all of us”) that was very passionately run by Justine Apple. For Ms. Apple, who was used to helming mostly social activities and events tied to the Jewish holidays, this step into a heated political arena was perhaps a baptism by fire. But she handled all of it adeptly. Although both Denise and I had never before considered marching in the parade, we wanted to be part of a strong pro-Israel presence to offset the lies we felt were being perpetuated by the fringe group of anti-Israel protesters. It was at that parade that Toronto lawyer Martin Gladstone documented on video the activities of QuAIA and the placards they carried not only stigmatizing Israel but displaying distinct neo-Nazi overtones. Little did I know that day what a journey Martin, his partner Frank Caruso, Denise, and I would take in endeavouring to stand up for Israel, and what a bond would be created between the four of us.

It was a few months after the 2009 Pride Parade that I was introduced to Martin through Carol Pasternak, whom I'd first met while attending her support group shortly after I'd come out in 2006. Carol found out about QuAIA when her cousin sent her a newspaper clipping and she offered to investigate. She met Martin through another gay woman, and before she knew it, she was “totally immersed in the battle” and even appeared in his movie. Carol knew very little about Israel's history or the conflict, but started reading and talking and watching. She says she picked up the ball to pay a debt to her Jewish ancestors who had suffered so much and fought so hard against anti-Semitism. Martin and Frank first
noticed – to their horror – the presence of the QuAIA group in the 2008 Dyke March, in which Carol and her partner, Audrey Kouyoumdjian, always marched. While watching from the sidelines, they spotted two lesbians carrying a homemade sign that read “End Israeli Aparthied,” followed by a ragtag assortment of dykes behind them sporting signs with similar messages. At the time, Martin was so incredulous about what he saw he thought it was a joke – they couldn't even spell the word
apartheid,
never mind understand what it meant. But the next day, at the Pride Parade, the couple saw a larger group of anti-Israel activists – which included skinheads proudly marching with T-shirts emblazoned with crossed-out swastikas. The crossed-out swastikas suggested to Martin that these white supremacists were implying that Israel was akin to Nazi Germany for what it was allegedly doing to the Palestinians and should be banned. But most importantly, here was a group using the venue of a publicly funded march and parade to spread a noxious message that had absolutely nothing to do with the celebration of gay rights. Martin thought at the time that the parade had been hijacked by a hate group whose singular demonization of Israel felt anti-Semitic. Their anti-apartheid message made absolutely no sense to him whatsoever. In 1977, he had studied the politics of South Africa at York University and knew about the hundreds of laws that segregated blacks and whites – on beaches, in hospitals, on buses – and the laws that did not allow intermarriage between the two races. He also knew there was no apartheid system in Israel. Arabs and Jews share hospitals and every other public venue. Arabs vote for members of the Israeli parliament. No one is denied access to services based on race. Martin could not believe that Israel was being
singled out when there are seventy-two countries where gays and lesbians can be thrown in jail, tortured, or executed simply for being homosexual.

A year later, on June 25, 2009, Martin bought a video camera and got a few quick lessons on how to use it so he could film the QuAIA contingent in the parade a few days later. On that Sunday, he stood in the rain and filmed everything himself. His lack of experience in filmmaking was moot. He was determined to create a film to show councillors and funders what was happening to the city's gay pride celebration. He wanted to educate and sensitize them to the hate that had infiltrated the parade. Martin hoped if they could see the QuAIA contingent for themselves – spreading their lies in a public forum subsidized with public money – the politicians would push for more accountability from Pride's organizers. He was to learn, as we all did, that he was giving city councillors, provincial funders, and the large corporate donors far too much credit. Since I was occupied with running for the Tories in August and Denise and I went on our real honeymoon to France in October, it wasn't really until Martin hosted a screening of his film at Christmas time that we all jumped into the fray – Denise and I, Carol, a woman by the name of Andrea Spindel, who was not gay but was a strong advocate for Israel, and of course, Martin's partner, Frank. Denise and I could not believe what a professional job Martin had done, even writing and performing the theme music himself. After the screening, we all decided that we had to get involved in our advocacy work as early as possible, and needed to target, in particular, all of the candidates running for mayor that next year. And so our grassroots campaign began with a vengeance. I was determined to help in any way I could, by building awareness of
QuAIA in my column and by directing Martin and others to any councillors and mayoralty candidates who could advocate for better accountability in the parade.

I still remember the first time Martin showed his video at City Hall, to Jewish councillor Mike Feldman and his executive assistant. The video was long because it was detailed, containing footage from the 2009 parade – the two hundred QuAIA marchers carrying signs condemning Israel, wearing shirts displaying swastikas, and chanting, “Fist by fist, blow by blow, apartheid state has got to go.” Mr. Feldman, even though he planned not to run again in 2010, became a tremendous help in promoting the film and our efforts to other councillors. The momentum started to build. In February 2010, then PC MPP Peter Shurman brought a private member's motion before the Ontario legislature, condemning the use of the term
Israeli apartheid.
As he said that day, the term is as close to hate speech as anyone can get, and the “inflammatory and racist” term has no place in our hate-free political environment in Ontario and in Canada. In March, I wrote what would be the first of many columns fighting what I came to regard as a rising anti-Israel, anti-Semitic cancer.