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TOP STORY
A who’s who of vocal Canadian anti-Israel activists are now begging Ottawa for help after their planned solidarity march through Egypt was interdicted by local authorities.
Over the weekend, reports emerged that the Global March to Gaza — a foreign-organized demonstration setting out from Cairo — had been swiftly met with arrests, detentions and passport confiscations by Egyptian security officials.
This included an estimated 40 Canadians.
Among them was Toronto-based comedian Nour Hadidi. In
, Hadidi said “we were stopped at a checkpoint, they took our passports, they have detained us.” She added, “they have put us in a barrier like animals.”
Hadidi then followed up with an appeal for supporters to petition Canada’s Egyptian embassy for help. “As a Canadian citizen, I am reminding you of your duty to act when Candian (sic) are in danger in Egypt,” read the suggested text.
The official Instagram account for Canadian participants in the Global March for Gaza complained of “harrowing” treatment for its members.
The account quoted an unnamed “member of the Canadian delegation” who alleged that participants were forced onto waiting vans after refusing to board them voluntarily. “They eventually dragged us up violently into vans. They treated my black Muslim sisters horribly especially,”
.
The account is in line with other activists reporting rough treatment from Egyptian authorities.
In one
, German organizer Melanie Schweizer described activists being allegedly “pushed” and “dragged” onto deportation buses. “They have beaten people; I have seen one woman that was beaten in her face in front of me,” shealleged.
Egypt also detained Yipeng Ge, an Ottawa physician prominent in the anti-Israel community who as recently as January was describing Canada on social media as a white supremacist “settler colonial state” that
In a Friday post to his X account, Ge said he and other activists had been detained at a checkpoint between Cairo and Ismailia, a city on the western bank of the Suez Canal. “Some have been waiting for hours. Some people have been told to get their passports back, they have to get on a bus to the airport to be deported,”
.
An update on #GlobalMarchToGaza – myself and many others including Canadians are being held up at a checkpoint between Cairo and Ismailia. Everyone’s passport has been taken. We have been told that no one is allowed to cross this checkpoint unless if they are Egyptian. People are… pic.twitter.com/OGk6zU3WU7
— Yipeng Ge 葛义朋 (@yipengGe) June 13, 2025
On Monday, Ge posted letters of support from two NDP MPS, Leah Gazan and Alexandre Boulerice. In an appeal to Egypt’s ambassador to Canada, Ahmed Hafaz, Gazan not only asked for the Canadian activists to be released, but to be allowed to
continue their march through the Sinai peninsula
right up to the Egyptian border with Gaza.
The Global March to Gaza was intended in part as a critique of Egyptian government policy. Egypt maintains a heavily fortified border with Gaza, and activists were open about their intention to pressure Egypt into opening it. On the Global March to Gaza’s official website,
that if Egypt were to foil the march, it “would create unprecedented pressure and severely damage the country’s image.”
Egypt’s foreign ministry, by contrast, issued a statement in advance of the march warning that Egypt retained “the right to take all necessary measures to preserve its national security, including the regulation of the entry and movement of individuals within its territory, especially in sensitive border areas.”
Thus far, the Canadian government has seemed content to allow Egypt to carry out the deportations without interruption. As of Sunday, activists had already begun arriving back in Canada following their detention in Egypt.
This
included University of New Brunswick professor
Jeff Houlahan, who last summer was issued a notice of trespass by the University of New Brunswick in relation to his participation in a “Free Gaza” encampment on
. Houlahan says that the university eventually withdrew the notice of trespass after his union filed a grievance.
“Several people had their phones taken then returned,” said Houlahan. “We suspected they have installed new SIM cards with spyware.”
Prior to the march, Global Affairs Canada issued a travel advisory specifically telling Canadians to avoid the area being targeted by activists.
“Avoid all travel to northern Sinai due to terrorist activity and ongoing military operations by the Egyptian Armed Forces,”
. In a statement to CBC, Global Affairs reiterated that “
Canadians who choose to travel to the region do so at their own risk.”
Canadian participation in the march was coordinated in part by Tatiana Harker, a member of the anti-Israel group Palestine Vivra Montreal. On Friday, Harker told CBC “our government is completely ignoring us” and that detained activists were being left in the heat for “two to three hours.”
On Sunday, Palestine Vivra Montreal was urging supporters to
to press for the release of any Global March for Gaza participants being “repressed” by Egypt.
The message was a sharp contrast from earlier this year, when Palestine Vivra Montreal had endorsed a campaign to harass Canadian MPs at their constituency offices. In March, Palestine Vivra’s official Instagram account
“Chase your MPs campaign” with the slogan, “If we don’t get no justice, they don’t get no peace.”
Palestinian Youth Movement, one of Canada’s most active organizers of anti-Israel blockades and protests, was also urging supporters to petition the Canadian government for help.
In a Sunday “
,” they provided contact information for Canada’s Egyptian embassy and for Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand.
That would be the same Anand who only a few weeks ago had her offices targeted by Palestinian Youth Movement picketers
of complicity in genocide.
In April, PYM protestors also attempted to
forcibly obstruct a fundraiser
featuring Anand, declaring “they do not get to fundraise to run their campaigns in peace during this election period.”
IN OTHER NEWS
At the core of Canada-India tensions is the belief by New Delhi that Canada is a haven for violent Khalistani extremists, a fear that stretches all the way back to the 1980s, when B.C.-based Khalistani terrorists perpetrated the Air India bombing. This perception probably wasn’t helped by the fact that
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was scheduled to touch down in Alberta for the G7 soon after Calgary was hit by Khalistani rallies featuring violent imagery.
On Monday, a rally in Downtown Calgary featured Khalistan flags and
placards with Modi’s head framed in the crosshairs of a gun
. Independent journalist Mocha Bezirgan
a convoy of vehicles flying Khalistani flags, who spoke of the convoy’s goals to “kill Modi politics” and “ambush Modi.”
G7: Khalistanis Across North America Meet in Calgary to Ambush and Kill India’s PM’s Politics
“Yes, I am ready to kill Modi politics, [to] ambush Modi,” said Manjinder Singh, leading the convoy from Gurdwara Dashmesh in Calgary.
“[He] is an enemy of Canada, this Hindu terrorist… pic.twitter.com/cDCav4tLh2
— Mocha Bezirgan 🇨🇦 (@BezirganMocha) June 16, 2025
An unidentified private pilot may have narrowly cheated death
after
to the G7 summit and was targeted by “final warning” flares fired from RCAF CF-18s … the last step before being shot down.
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Clarification:
This article was revised to clarify that University of New Brunswick professor, Jeff Houlahan, did not ignore an eviction order issued by a court.
