Monday, October 7, a group of pro-Palestinian activists from McGill and Concordia invite students to “flood” their campuses. “We will commemorate the historic breach of the colonial border wall and a year of heroic Palestinian resistance,” the announcement said.
It’s not a bad joke. To mark the anniversary of the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, the group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) found nothing better than to commemorate the “historical breach” into which they were plunged. Hamas terrorists to kidnap grandmothers and massacre children in their pajamas.
To discredit a cause, it’s hard to do better.
In these days of great tension, words are important. However, the SPHR chooses its own very poorly. On Instagram, he calls on students to “flood” the campuses of McGill and Concordia one year to the day after the launch of Operation al-Aqsa Flood. The terrorists then infiltrated Israel in vans, boats and paragliders. They had killed 1,163 people. Civilians, mostly.
IMAGE FROM SPHR MCGILL’S INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT
Announcement from Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights
The photo used in the background of the SPHR announcement shows Palestinians celebrating on an Israeli military jeep seized by terrorists on this day of rage and destruction.
After that, we will wonder why Jewish students feel threatened in the corridors of their own university…
As October 7 approaches, campuses are on edge, my colleague Léa Carrier reported Thursday1. McGill University has hired additional security guards; the rector himself must be escorted in his travels. On Monday, the majority of courses will be given online.
Tensions are also brewing in the streets of Montreal. The SPVM is preparing “for any eventuality” and anticipates excesses during the numerous demonstrations planned over the coming days.
On Saturday, however, it was peacefully that thousands of people marched through the city center to demand a ceasefire in Gaza.
One of the groups organizing this demonstration, the Palestinian Youth Movement, decided to cancel another, scheduled for October 7, “in order not to divide the streets”. The group wants to continue fighting “without compromising the integrity” of its cause. Wise decision, which honors this organization.
Unfortunately, not everyone is so wise.
During the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, five young people were apprehended in possession of incendiary objects near two synagogues, in Côte-Saint-Luc and Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.
A few days earlier, around fifteen windows in a building at Concordia University had been smashed. Businesses had been vandalized. A Molotov cocktail was fired at police officers.
Nothing justifies such violence.
We can understand the anger. People have every right to take to the streets to demand an end to a war that has transformed the Gaza Strip into a field of ruins. They did it often, in fact.
Most of the time it goes well. Fortunately, moreover, because it is not by breaking windows in downtown Montreal that we will improve the fate of the Palestinian people. Nor by threatening the president of McGill University. Even less by celebrating the October 7 massacre.
That’s not how we’re going to rally people.
On the contrary, the dark morons who commit these violent actions – a minority, of course, but a vocal minority – considerably weaken the cause they claim to defend with all their heart.
When I visited the pro-Palestinian encampment on the McGill campus in March, the atmosphere was good-natured2. I hadn’t seen any hotheads advocating terrorism; only young idealists demanding an immediate ceasefire.
I also met Scott Weinstein, a Jewish peace activist who is saddened by the fact that anti-Semitism is increasingly being used to censor any criticism of the State of Israel.
Let’s be clear: it is not anti-Semitic to demonstrate against the murderous policies of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. It would be terribly unfair to present all pro-Palestinian demonstrators as useful idiots of Hamas.
Still, we cannot deny the feeling of insecurity among Jewish students, some of whom are called “Zionazis” – a contraction of the words Zionist (zionist, in English) and Nazi – on the campuses of McGill and Concordia, according to the testimonies collected by my colleague.
It is too easy to pretend that we are not anti-Semitic, only anti-Zionist. Too convenient to play casually on ambiguities.
When the demonstrators chant: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” “, they may pretend that it is a simple call for equal rights, they must know that, for many Jews, it is nothing more and nothing less a call to eradicate State of Israel.
When they chant “Intifada!” “, they should know that this word reminds many of the bloody campaign of suicide bombings carried out 20 years ago in cafes and buses in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Words matter. While the climate is more tense than ever, it is important to choose them with the greatest care. Before chanting needlessly hurtful, threatening or divisive slogans, protesters should ask themselves what they really want to achieve.
If there is peace in Gaza, shouting “Fuck the Zionists” in the streets of Montreal is not the best way to achieve it. On the contrary, it will only bury the voices of those who have been calling for an end to a devastating war for the Palestinians for a year now.
1. Read the file “Campuses on edge as October 7 approaches”
2. Read the column “This is not a terrorist camp”