Joel Goldenberg – The Suburban LJI Reporter

Some 5,000 Montrealers poured into the downtown area Sunday, near the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization’s headquarters, to support Israel and to demand the release of 239 people being held hostage in Gaza by the terrorist group Hamas.

The kidnappings took place amidst the Oct. 7 attack during which the terrorists brutally killed more than 1,400 people, and injured thousands more — men and women, children, babies and soldiers. The largest single day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

Sunday’s event was organized by Federation CJA in partnership with dozens of organizations. Participants held pictures of hostages and the hashtags #BringThemHome and #BringThemBack and chanted “Am Yisrael Chai!” Many people wept.

Numerous speakers were on hand, including Israeli Consul General Paul Hirschson.

“1943 — we’ve been there before!” the Consul-General said. “We’re not going there again! They chose the wrong generation of our people to do this to! They will regret what they chose to do! Your support is critical. We’ll need you today and the long weeks ahead. The more you’re out in public, standing your ground, the more secure you will be!”

Human rights lawyer, and former federal Justice Minister and Mount Royal MP Irwin Cotler, who was also the Canadian government’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, electrified the thousands.

“Oct. 7 was the worst day in Jewish history since the Holocaust, with horrors too terrible to be believed, but not too terrible to have happened! The hostages remain a looking glass into Hamas’s mass atrocities, remembrance and reminder of their war crimes, crimes against humanity, and standing incitement to genocide! Let there be no mistake about it! The immediate and unconditional return of the hostages, which includes children, toddlers, the elderly, disabled and Holocaust survivors amongst them, is a humanitarian imperative of the first order!

Cotler added that “all state parties are obliged — it’s not a matter of choice — to secure the immediate release of the hostages as a fundamental international responsibility! Bring them home! Bring them home!”

Rabbi Reuben Poupko of Côte St. Luc’s Beth Israel Beth Aaron Synagogue pointed out that the event was taking place near a UN building.

“You all heard the Secretary General of the UN, he said there’s a context to what happened on Oct. 7! He’s right! There is a context! The context is that from the moment they began to organize themselves, Hamas has preached one thing — the murder of every Jewish man, woman and child in the world! When children in Gaza take a math class, the lesson is, ‘if you have seven Jews and you kill four of them, how many do you have left!’ That’s the context! They preach hate!”

Mount Royal MP Anthony Housefather told the large crowd that he has been communicating in recent weeks with the family members of hostages.

“They don’t know if their family member is alive or dead. They don’t know what condition they’re in, if they’re being tortured. These people are civilians! They were never trained to go into Gaza, in enemy territory. These people are scared every day for the fate of their loved ones. I try to give them reassurance, but I have no control over that reassurance. It’s something so disturbing, so profoundly scary, and if it’s scary for us, just imagine what it’s like for the families and the loved ones of these hostages, including two Canadians believed to be hostages. Bring them home!”

Former Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre asked where the current Mayor, Valérie Plante, was.

“Today, like the great former rabbi of Jerusalem said, ‘I don’t speak because I have the power to speak, I speak because I don’t have the power to remain silent!’ Coderre said. “I want to offer my thoughts and prayers to the people of Israel! There is no room for compromise. Israel has a right to exist and defend themselves, period, end of story!”

Other speakers included D’Arcy McGee MNA Elisabeth Prass, Gail Adelson-Marcovitz of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu on behalf of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and Patrick Essiminy of Federation CJA. n