In the early evening of Friday, May 17th, 2024, I visited the Student Encampment for Palestine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. As a faculty member at Mohawk College and Vice President of the Mohawk faculty union, OPSEU Local 240, I wanted to show my solidarity with the students and my support for their demands.
I arrived at the extensive, well-organized student camp just as a Shabbat dinner service was being conducted by local rabbi David Mivasair. There was a tightly-packed group of people present, including a large contingent of Jewish students and community members. Despite the crowd, the camp was peaceful and orderly. In stark contrast to the hotbed of antisemitic hatred that some Israeli defenders have described, the camp was a living, breathing example of Muslims, Jews, Christians, and others coming together to affirm peace, justice, and human rights. My visit was an incredibly inspiring experience, and one that gave me hope that a peaceful future for Palestine was possible.
On Saturday, June 1st, I visited the Student Encampment for Palestine at the downtown campus of the University of Toronto. This was a much larger camp, but just as well-organized as the McMaster encampment. As I walked through the camp, I saw children playing soccer and flying kites, while students, faculty, and community members strolled and conversed throughout. I had an excellent chat with a U of T faculty member (in a neat coincidence an anthropologist, like me), and heard of the growing number of professors who are rallying to the students’ support. On the day before, U of T faculty had hosted a press conference in front of the camp, warning the University administration that “if they come for the students, they’ll have to go through us first”. Just a few days earlier, leaders from some of Ontario’s largest public sector unions – CUPE and OPSEU – had announced the same thing. Workers would act as “human shields” should an attempt be made to clear the students through force.
The Worst of All Possible Crimes
The student encampments for Palestine have emerged in response to a humanitarian crisis of nightmarish proportions. Since October 7, 2023 the world watched in horror as any kind of proportional response to the Hamas Al Aqsa Flood attacks instead gave way to a coordinated campaign to completely crush the 2.3 million civilians living in Gaza. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) and Israeli politicians were clear in several statements – the Palestinians in Gaza needed to be annihilated – either blown to pieces, starved to death, or ethnically cleansed into the Egyptian Sinai.
As of my writing this article, the IDF have been assaulting the refugee population in Rafah already made homeless by the complete destruction of Gaza City. According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, 36,050 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, 2023, and 81,026 have been injured. An incredible 192 United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA) workers have also been killed by Israel, and 179 UNWRA facilities have been attacked.
The Role of the West
With the military and financial backing of the United States, Israel has been fully unleashed on the population of Gaza. To date the U.S. has blocked every attempt to negotiate a ceasefire at the United Nations, while simultaneously feeding Israel billions of dollars in armaments to aid in the mass murder of Palestinians. Finally, in late December of 2023, South Africa filed a case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – accusing the Israelis of doing what the great majority of the world’s population already understood – committing genocide against the Palestinians.
Few understand the colonial origins of the Zionist project or the over 700,000 indigenous Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed at Israel’s founding. Few understand the illegal and brutal military occupation under which Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have lived ever since.
In the United States, Canada, and a handful of other Western European countries, governments, corporate media and most societal institutions have done their utmost to block the inhuman reality of Israel’s assault on Gaza. They have worked overtime to smear and discredit Palestinians and their supporters and to convince everyone that criticism of the apartheid, genocidal Israeli state is, in fact, just antisemitism. The West has denied the unfolding genocide, undermined the ICJ, and attacked the Lebanese, Syrian, Iranian, and Yemeni militias attempting to resist the IDF militarily. Western governments have also cracked down on pro-Palestinian resistance at home, with countries like the U.K., France, and Germany enacting draconian laws that criminalized protest and free speech.
In the West, this work of whitewashing Israeli crimes and demonizing Israeli critics has for decades suppressed understanding and action concerning the conflict in Palestine. Few understand the colonial origins of the Zionist project or the over 700,000 indigenous Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed at Israel’s founding. Few understand the illegal and brutal military occupation under which Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have lived ever since. Few understand the relentless Israeli project of turning Gaza into the world’s largest open-air prison, of stealing Palestinian land, and of making Palestinian lives all but unlivable.
Resistance in Canada
In Canada, despite legal suppression and relentless media demonization, resistance to genocide sprang up after October 7 in cities country wide. Massive marches kept the conflict on the news and in debates on the floor of Parliament. A large and growing number of Jews have participated in this resistance, giving lie to the idea that supporting Palestinian human rights or criticizing Israel makes one an anti-Semite. However, as the conflict dragged on for months, as the Palestinian death toll rose, and as Israel crossed every moral and legal red line with impunity, it became clear that more substantive resistance was needed.
The Palestinian genocide has revealed that support for the Israeli apartheid regime is baked into the very institutional fabric of North America. The Zionist lobby has a powerful impact on electoral politics in Canada and the United States. Pro-Israel sentiments are also enshrined in our media corporations and our educational institutions. The suppression of critical discourse concerning Israel-Palestine has been particularly effective in Canadian post-secondary institutions. At colleges and universities country-wide, pro-Palestinian student groups have been suppressed and pro-Palestinian faculty have been targeted with false accusations of antisemitism and coordinated campaigns to discipline or fire them. Academic freedom, freedom of speech and freedom of dissent have all been seriously undermined by these Zionist attacks.
Ending the Genocide
Halting the Palestinian genocide and envisioning a just resolution to their decades-long oppression will require dismantling the institutional support for Zionism that keeps Canadians either silent or complicit. This involves several tasks.
First, the movement for Palestinian human rights must fully and finally refute the notion that criticizing the government of Israel is synonymous with hating that state’s population or, more absurdly, about hating Jewish people everywhere. People of good faith and good conscience must continue to speak out and to fight back against attempts at censorship and intimidation. At the same time, we must continue to condemn the real instances of antisemitism in our country and to fight the far-right organizations that fuel them.
the social, economic, and political ties between Canadian institutions and the state of Israel must be severed. Just as it was with the South African apartheid regime, a campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel is critical.
Second, the origins and realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict need to become widely known, and Canadians need to understand the horrendous historic crime that has been committed against the Palestinian people. This requires more demonstrations, more teach-ins, and more mainstream and independent media coverage. We must fight to create spaces in which open, honest, and critical dialogue about Israel and Palestine can take place.
Finally, the social, economic, and political ties between Canadian institutions and the state of Israel must be severed. Just as it was with the South African apartheid regime, a campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel is critical. This includes pressing Canada for an arms embargo against Israel and pressuring other key institutions to cut ties.
These are difficult goals to achieve. However, the student encampments that have sprung up across colleges and universities in the United States and Canada are helping to accomplish all of them. The wide participation of Jewish students and community members is the best antidote to false accusations of antisemitism. The encampments are spaces in which education and discussion about the conflict is continuously present, and in which community members can learn about the history of Palestine. Finally, the core demands of the encampments are that Canadian post-secondary institutions divest from economic ties to Israel and boycott academic ties.
The importance of the student encampments is not lost on Zionist defenders of genocide. This is why the camps have been attacked by counter-protestors, infiltrated by disruptors, and demonized by administrators and by the media. However, despite these assaults, the students, faculty, and community supporters of the camps remain committed. Their perserverence is a vital and inspiring example of resistance against the Palestinian genocide, and an affirmation of values that should be at the very core of our society – human rights, international law, freedom of speech, and freedom of dissent. For this reason, all Canadians should join the U of T faculty and the public sector unions when they say – “if they come for the students, they’ll have to come through us first!”
