Supporters stand in front of the pro-Palestinian protest encampment on McGill University campus, in Montreal, on June 17.Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press
Hundreds gathered in Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall this week to watch a debate that would be impossible to hold on your average Canadian university campus these days. The four debaters – two on each side – argued passionately and persuasively over whether anti-Zionism constitutes antisemitism.
Unlike on most campuses, where Jewish students now feel unsafe, the audience at Monday’s Munk Debate was stacked with pro-Israel sympathizers. Before the debate, fully 61 per cent agreed that opposition to a Jewish state is a form of antisemitism. After the debate, fully two-thirds agreed.
Regardless of where you stand, the debate showed that there is still room for respectful discussion between conscientious adults on one of the most polarizing issues of our polarized times. Unfortunately, that is not the case on most campuses.
The pro-Palestinian encampments that continue unchecked on several Canadian campuses are hardly shining examples of free and open discussion. Likening them to this generation’s Vietnam or anti-apartheid protests is a stretch. Too many of their participants have demonstrated a disturbing willingness to ignore or tolerate terrorism and antisemitism in the name of “resistance” to an “oppressor” state.
“Zionism exists at every level of the Canadian government and our institutions, and we are here to fight Zionism wherever it is,” one speaker at the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on the McGill University campus in Montreal told fellow protesters in early May. The same speaker called McGill “an institution that funds the genocide of the Palestinian people.”
On Tuesday, as the occupation entered its eighth week, McGill president Deep Saini withdrew an offer of amnesty for students participating in the encampment that included a commitment by the university to review its investments in weapons manufacturers. The McGill chapter of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) had dismissed the offer as “laughable” and called for an “immediate reallocation of funds from unethical companies to ethical ones.”
Lest you get the impression that the McGill protesters are just peaceniks in keffiyehs, consider the “revolutionary” youth summer program that the McGill chapter of SPHR launched this week at the encampment. An Instagram post touting the program included a 1970 photo of Palestinian Liberation Organization fighters, most with their faces covered and two of whom are holding assault rifles.
“We pledge to educate the youth of Montreal and redefine McGill’s ‘elite’ instutional [sic] legacy by transformining [sic] its space into one of revolutionary education,” the post said. “The daily schedule will include physical activity, Arabic language instruction, cultural crafts, political discussions, historical and revolutionary lessons.”
According to B’nai Brith Canada, SPHR-McGill’s original sign-up sheet referred to a class on the Axis of Resistance – the Iran-led, anti-Israel alliance that includes Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which are on Canada’s list of designated terrorist entities, and Yemen’s Houthi rebel group, which could soon be on it. The current sign-up sheet refers to this Friday’s session as being on “Present-day resistance.”
“Is McGill going to allow its campus to be used to brainwash youths into thinking that terrorism is acceptable?” B’nai Brith’s Quebec director Henry Topas asked.
Suffice it to say, the aim of these “classes” does not appear to be educational. The curriculum seems to have been designed by militants so steeped in anti-Israel ideology that they are unable to see anything wrong with posting an image of armed PLO fighters to promote their classes.
“It should go without saying that imagery evoking violence is not a tool of peaceful expression or assembly,” Mr. Saini said this week. “This worrying escalation is emblematic of the tensions on campuses across North America, where we have seen many incidents that go well beyond what universities are equipped to manage on their own.”
Mr. Saini has taken heat for not taking more forceful action to dismantle the encampment, which is a blight on the McGill campus and Montreal’s downtown. McGill has twice applied for an emergency court injunction to end the encampment and was both times denied. And Montreal police have refused to intervene without a court order.
A spokesperson for the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal did say it has opened an investigation into SPHR-McGill’s post – though he added it could not be considered hate speech because it does not target a specific group. “It’s clear that when we look at it, it’s in very bad taste,” he said. “It’s the kind of thing that makes the population insecure.”
Montreal MP Anthony Housefather was less indulgent, saying on X: “This is incitement. This is glorification of violence. This is hate.”
Whatever it is, it has no place on any Canadian university campus.