Anti-Israel campus protests spread across the US border to Canada, Mexico
Still further afield, an encampment springs up at University of Sydney; Sciences Po University in Paris is closed after students occupied buildings
The anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian protests that erupted on college and university campuses across the United States in recent weeks have spread beyond the country’s borders and into neighboring Canada and Mexico, as well as further afield, with students in Australia and France setting up encampments of their own in recent days.
Students at top Canadian universities including the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and Montreal’s McGill University had all established protest encampments as of Thursday, calling for their places of study to divest from Israeli universities and businesses that support the Israeli offensive against Hamas in Gaza.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault said on Thursday that the encampment at McGill University should be dismantled, and while the school had requested police intervention, law enforcement had not stepped in to clear the encampment and said in a statement Thursday evening it was monitoring the situation.
“We want the camp to be dismantled. We trust the police, let them do their job,” a spokesperson for Legault said.
There was also a pro-Israel counter-protest in Montreal on Thursday, although the two sides were kept separate by a line of police and no skirmishes occurred.
The CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster, reported that the pro-Israel protesters set up screens facing the pro-Palestinian encampment and played video footage of interviews with released Hamas hostages.
On Thursday morning, students at the University of Toronto set up an encampment in a fenced-off grassy space at the school’s downtown campus where some 100 protesters gathered with dozens of tents.
According to a statement from organizers, the encampment will stay until the university discloses its investments, divests from any companies that “sustain Israeli apartheid, occupation and illegal settlement of Palestine” and ends partnerships with some Israeli academic institutions.
Israel rejects any allegations of apartheid, saying its own Arab citizens enjoy equal rights and that it granted limited autonomy to the Palestinian Authority at the height of the peace process in the 1990s and withdrew all its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005.
A university spokesperson told Reuters it was “in dialogue with the protesters” and that, as of midday Thursday, the encampment was “not disruptive to normal university activities.”
University of Toronto graduate student and encampment spokesperson Sara Rasikh told Reuters they will remain until their demands are met.
“If public disruption is the only way to get our voice heard, then we are willing to do that,” she said.
As in the US, some Jewish groups have accused protesters of antisemitism, a charge which organizers deny, although protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks or displaying signs bearing antisemitic slogans.
McGill. This, apparently, is what higher education now does to you. pic.twitter.com/t2wos9HclU
— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) May 2, 2024
Asked to comment on the encampments, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office pointed to a statement he made on Tuesday, saying: “Universities are places of learning, they’re places for freedom of expression … but that only works if people feel safe on campus. Right now … Jewish students do not feel safe. That’s not right.”
The protests which began at New York’s Columbia University and rapidly spread came about in response to Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza.
War erupted on October 7 when the Palestinian terror group Hamas led a massive cross-border attack on Israel, slaughtering some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seizing 253 hostages, 129 of whom remain captive, not all of them alive.
Vowing to stamp out Hamas and topple its regime in Gaza, Israel launched a military campaign that also aims to free the hostages, and which the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says has killed at least 34,400 Palestinians. The figures cannot be independently verified and include some 13,000 Hamas gunmen Israel says it has killed in battle. Israel also says it killed some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
On the other side of the US’s southern border, dozens of pro-Palestinian students from Mexico’s largest university camped out at a newly established encampment.
Mounting flags and chanting “Long live free Palestine,” the protesters set up tents in front of the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s (UNAM) head office in Mexico City.
The students called on the Mexican government to break diplomatic and commercial ties with Israel.
“We are here to support Palestine, the people who are in Palestine, and the student camps in the United States,” said Valentino Pino, a 19-year-old philosophy student.
Jimena Rosas, 21, said she hoped the protest would have a domino effect and spread to other universities in the country.
“Once people see that UNAM is beginning to mobilize, other universities should start as well,” she said.
Some 10,000 miles away from New York’s Columbia University, students at Australia’s University of Sydney rallied on Friday, demanding that the university, one of Australia’s top institutes of higher education, divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Unlike in the US, where police have forcibly removed scores of pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters at several colleges, protest sites in Australia have been peaceful with scant police presence, and the university’s vice-chancellor Mark Scott told local media on Thursday that the encampment could stay on campus in part because it was absent the violence seen in the US.
Standing in the chanting crowd of more than 300 with his two-year-old son on his shoulders, Matt, 39, said he came to show it was not just students angry at Israel’s actions in Gaza.
“Once you understand what is going on you have a responsibility to try and get involved and raise awareness and show solidarity,” he told Reuters, declining to give his last name.
Several hundred meters away from the protest and separated by lines of security guards, hundreds gathered under Australian and Israeli flags to hear speakers discuss the lack of safety felt by Jewish students and faculty amid the campus protests.
“There’s no space for anybody else, walking through campus chanting ‘Intifada’ and ‘from the river to the sea’ it does something, it’s scary,” said Sarah, an academic who declined to give her name for fear of repercussions.
In contrast to the lack of animosity between University of Sydney faculty and protesters, France’s Sciences Po University in Paris announced that it would be closed on Friday after a debate between the institute’s leadership and students on the war in Gaza failed to ease tensions, prompting protesters to occupy it overnight.
The elite political sciences university this week became the center of a wave of protests at several schools in France over the war and academic ties with Israel, although not on the same scale as seen in the United States.
A group of around 70 students were occupying Sciences Po’s main buildings in central Paris on Friday morning after having spent the night there. Jack, one of the protesters, told Reuters in a text message, adding: “By the way, the negotiations with leadership are making no progress.”
Sciences Po’s director on Thursday rejected demands by protesters to review the schools’ relations with Israeli universities, prompting protesters to continue their movement with at least one person entering a hunger strike, according to a student speaking on behalf of the protesters.
