Making his way through the pro-Palestinian demonstration at Portal Park yesterday (December 29), Adam Carroll, the western regional director of the Canada-Israel Committee, was shocked. He described the scene as “messed up” and “bizarre”.

“I’ve probably gone to more anti-Israel protests than most anti-Israel protesters, because I go to them for my job just to keep tabs on what’s happening,” Carroll told the Straight in a cellphone interview today (December 30), from the site of yesterday’s protest. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to one as radical and as vicious as the one I went to yesterday. There was a bile in the air that I’d never, never seen before. There’s always been “Free, free Palestine” and some of the more benign chants, but “Viva, viva intifada”, you know, and those sorts of armed resistance calls, no. Those are new. For me, anyway. And hearing individuals chanting ”˜We are all Hamas’ and things along those lines was a bit unsettling.”

In the past, Carroll said, pro-Palestinian events were predictably stuffed with “aging hipsters and hippie-types”, such as Hanna Kawas of the Canada Palestine Association and Stephen Aberle of Jews for a Just Peace—both of whom were present yesterday. But Carroll noted that yesterday’s event was largely led by a younger, more radical crowd of folks in their 20s and 30s. That was true of both the pro-Palestinian demonstration, and the handful of pro-Israel demonstrators on the other side of West Hastings Street.

The handful of pro-Israelis, Carroll said, did not represent the larger Jewish community of Vancouver.

“Certainly if you’re trying to convince someone of your opinion, you don’t necessarily want to show up across the street from the protest of the exact opposite of what you believe,” he said. “You’re not going to be convincing too many people in that crowd of what your perspectives are. And that’s not how we as an organized Jewish community go about our advocacy. But I think that there’s some frustration and some passion that’s there, and that’s what we saw yesterday on a very, very small level. I mean, these are high school students.”

Carroll said he hopes yesterday’s radicalism on both sides can be explained by a quick gut reaction to the bombings, that it did not represent a growing extremism in either community.

“But that said, there were a lot of elements that I saw yesterday that I haven’t seen at any other protest in terms of the language, in terms of the organizations that were involved.”

But is a new sense of passion and engagement in Vancouver such a bad thing?

Carroll said he knows that when Canadians visit Israel and Palestine, they can often fall in love with the visceral excitement of living so close to disaster.

“Unfortunately the vibrancy and joie de vive that come from living in that area comes with a price I’m not willing to pay,” Carroll said. “That’s the risk of death at a moment’s notice. That’s suicide bombs, rocket attacks, any number of things that can happen there that—thank goodness—are not, at least at the moment, a reality for people in Vancouver. And yes, when faced with those sorts of circumstances, it definitely brings out a spirit of life that you have to see it to believe it. I don’t know too many Israelis with big savings accounts...because you can’t bring it with you. It’s just a totally different way of living in the world. Coming from here where the hardest decision in a day is what to have for lunch, it definitely comes as a bit of a shock and really exciting kind of thing that you only get while you’re there.”

There is a pro-Israel event in the planning, Carroll confirmed. It will likely be held January 8, and may resemble another “solidarity” event that happened during the 2006 Lebanon War: a subdued community event at a synagogue, with some speakers, a satellite feed from Israel, politicians, and officials.

“Perhaps future protests could indicate a change in tone, but I hope not,” Carroll said. “Because I don’t think that’s what Canada’s about. I’m literally standing across the street from where it was. It’s just a very peaceful park, just like the rest of the city, and what we saw yesterday in that exact location didn’t feel like Vancouver.”