The fifth-annual Kitchener Palestine Festival drew large crowds on Sunday in spite of attempts by Conservative MPs to shut down the event. The event drew organizations from across the province to set up booths, exhibits, and to perform in Carl Zehr Square.
In emails sent to her mailing list, Conservative MP Kelly DeRidder (Kitchener Centre) charged the event with “spreading division and hate here in Canada and dragging conflicts from other countries into our neighbourhoods”.
DeRidder also co-signed a letter written by MP Roman Baber (York Centre), petitioning the mayor and police chief of Kitchener to shut down the festival.
“I would like to say on record that MP DeRidder is a coward,” says Shatha Mahmoud, one of the event’s organizers. “To MP DeRidder, if you have anything to say about us in our event and you would like to smear us, at least say it us first before you try to do a failed pathetic online campaign.”
“She needs an education,” added Hugh Doherty of the group Irish4Palestine.
Demonstrative art on the streets
Despite the smear campaign, the festival went forward as planned. “It’s just been flooding with people, which is incredible, and it has grown every single year, which I think is just a testament to how Palestine is viewed in Kitchener-Waterloo and how it’s become an issue that every single person has taken up as their own,” said Mahmoud.
Attendees braved the heat and summer sun and were greeted by booths lined with Palestinian flags, keffiyehs, food, and clothes. Organizers and artists spared no effort setting up their exhibits: a mock tank with the words “END CANADIAN COMPLICITY” and “UNTIL LIBERATION,” and a hole-ridden car to represent the 355 bullets the IDF fired at five-year-old Hind Rajab in January of 2024.
“For exhibits this year, we chose to focus on a few primary exhibits that we thought were kind of a reflection of what was happening back home,” explains Mahmoud. “With the execution law that passed, and the increased repression we’ve been seeing across the West Bank and, of course, the torture camps in Gaza we decided to focus on prison—so we built a prisoners exhibit where you go into an isolation cell which is the primary form of torture that Palestinian prisoners are subjected to.”
The event also hosted exhibits on scholasticide—the deliberate destruction of education infrastructure and educators—and on local complicity.
“The Arms Embargo Now Coalition just released the next [campaign] which is Elbit out of Canada,” says Mahmoud. “We have mapped out all of the weapons facilities here in Kitchener-Waterloo that are manufacturing either components for the F-35 fighter jet or are supplying [Israeli arms manufacturer] Elbit with different things for the supply chain.”
Mahmoud sees a clear relationship between the war on Palestine and cost-of-living issues facing Canadians:
“The interests of the elite, the interests of those in control are not for us. Living conditions have deteriorated, people can barely get by… and yet we have these never-ending wars that are fuelled by these imperialist powers with Canada very happily cosigning.”
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