TORONTO \u2014 Toronto police say they arrested two counter-protesters at Saturday’s Al-Quds Day demonstration, which saw thousands of people rally in support of Palestine outside the U.S. Consulate as some counter-protesters carried the flags of Israel and pre-revolution Iran. <\/p>\n
Police allege a 56-year-old man swung his arms and fists at a protester who was holding a flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran, causing the flagpole to break and strike the victim in the head. <\/p>\n
Police say the Toronto man was arrested and charged with mischief and assault.<\/p>\n
Toronto police allege a second counter-protester spat on a victim who was wearing an Islamic Republic flag and ripped the flag from their back. <\/p>\n
Police allege the counter-protester was observed wearing Islamic Republic flags on the soles of his shoes and also lit an Islamic Republic flag on fire.<\/p>\n
Police say they charged the 39-year-old Toronto man with assault, criminal harassment, theft, possession of property obtained by crime and public incitement of hatred. <\/p>\n
Toronto police say the two incidents were unrelated but the investigations are both being treated as suspected hate-motivated offences. <\/p>\n
Less than an hour before the afternoon rally began outside the U.S. Consulate in downtown, a court dismissed the 11th hour request by Premier Doug Ford’s government for an injunction against it, calling the rally a “breeding ground for hate and antisemitism.”<\/p>\n
Ford’s allegations were swiftly condemned by civil liberty groups, with organizers calling the injunction request an attempt to silence Palestinian solidarity and criticism of Israel.<\/p>\n
During Saturday’s court hearing, lawyers for the province acknowledged there was no evidence the rallies had ever resulted in criminal charges against demonstrators.<\/p>\n
Al-Quds, taken from the Arabic word for Jerusalem, has been a magnet for controversy in part because it was popularized in Iran after the 1979 revolution. <\/p>\n
Al-Quds Day rallies also took place across the world Saturday amid a major attack on Iran from the U.S. and Israel, which has seen Iran retaliate with airstrikes of its own against Israel and neighbouring Arab Gulf states. <\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 15, 2026.<\/p>\n
— With files from The Associated Press<\/p>\n
The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2014 Toronto police say they arrested two counter-protesters at Saturday’s Al-Quds Day demonstration, which saw thousands of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[49,48,3302],"class_list":["post-538394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}