‘Bigger than a camp’: why student protests in Gaza strike a chord | Israel’s war against Gaza News

Montreal Canada – Sitting on a bench in the heart of McGill University’s campus, Farrah says she and her fellow students want their school to listen.

Less than a week ago, students from McGill and other Montreal universities set up dozens of tents on the McGill campus to denounce Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip and demand that their universities divest from any companies complicit in the abuses. Israelis.

They are part of a growing student protest movement that attracted international attention last month following demonstrations in the United States last month. The movement shows few signs of slowing and is making international headlines as Israel’s offensive in Gaza progresses.

“Campuses all over Montreal have come together for this,” Farrah, who asked to use a pseudonym for fear of retaliation, told Al Jazeera.

About 75 tents have been pitched in a field just steps from the university’s front gate in downtown Montreal, Canada’s second-largest city, and a steady stream of supporters arrived throughout the day with supplies and words of encouragement.

“They are financing the genocide,” reads a sign taped to the fence around the camp, which has been covered with Palestinian flags and large banners. “We will not rest until they are undone,” reads another.

“We may be just a group of people, but we understand that we have support and we are in a movement that is all over the world. “We’re not the only ones fighting for what’s right,” Farrah, 21, said. “These camps are everywhere.”

Very visible

Like those in the United States, the McGill camp has struck a chord, both among students and members of the broader community who support the protesters, and among politicians and pro-Israel groups who have vehemently denounced them.

Some supporters say the camps have provoked such strong reactions because they highlight stark inconsistencies: governments that claim to promote human rights but provide unwavering support for Israel; universities that claim to promote freedom of expression but send police to break up peaceful protests; Right-wing politicians who denounce liberal “safe space” policies, but now argue that pro-Israel students feel unsafe.

The student protests have “exposed many of the contradictions in political discourse in the United States and, by extension, in Canada as well,” said Barry Eidlin, an associate professor of sociology at McGill University.

“This hits very close to home for people and (there is) this kind of hypocrisy between what our governments say they stand for in terms of democracy, human rights, freedom – and the kind of actions they support” in Gaza, he said. Al Jazeera.

The camps are also highly visible, forcing people to pay attention both to the protesters’ demands and to the situation in Gaza, where the United Nations’ top court has said Palestinians face a risk of genocide.

“We wouldn’t have started this camp if we didn’t know it was going to have an impact,” said Sasha Robson, a McGill student and member of the university chapter of Independent Jewish Voices, a Jewish group that supports Palestinian rights.

“And I think the reason it’s having such an impact is because we are inescapably visible and present. We have a space on this campus that makes our demand and presence inevitable,” Robson told Al Jazeera.

‘We don’t want our voices to be heard’

But as in the United States, McGill’s camp and others that have sprung up elsewhere in Canada since Saturday have received fierce backlash from pro-Israel groups and politicians.

Just hours after the Montreal camp was established, federal lawmaker Anthony Housefather, one of the most pro-Israel voices in the Canadian parliament, urged the university administration to disperse the protest.

“I call on the McGill administration publicly, as I have done privately, to ensure that this camp is removed, in accordance with its own rules, as we must ensure that other students feel safe accessing to campus.” The father of the house said in a video posted on social networks.

McGill president Deep Saini said in an email to students and staff on Tuesday that the university had “requested assistance” from Montreal police in removing the encampment.

“Having to resort to police authority is a heartbreaking decision for any university president. It is by no means a decision I make lightly or quickly. However, in the current circumstances I considered it necessary,” Saini wrote.

On Wednesday, a Quebec judge rejected a separate request for an injunction filed this week on behalf of two McGill students seeking to have the camp removed.

“The balance of inconvenience tips on the side of the protesters, whose freedom of expression and peaceful assembly would be significantly affected” by the precautionary measure, the decision reads. The plaintiffs’ arguments, the judge added, “refer more to subjective fears and discomfort than to precise and serious fears for their safety.”

Protesters have rejected accusations that their encampment poses a security threat and have noted that it does not block access to the McGill campus or any buildings.

The students have also denied allegations made by the university earlier this week that participants in the protest used “anti-Semitic language” and displayed “intimidating behavior.”

“We understand the importance of having student support on campus, which is why we chose this location. He is in a place that has no classes. There are no entrances to the library. It doesn’t interfere with any hallways or anything like that,” said Farrah, the 21-year-old McGill student.

Instead, he said the reaction to the camp reflects the limits that Israel supporters in Canada want to place on support for the Palestinians.

“I think anything, regardless of whether it’s a camp, a peaceful protest, a children’s story book, anything to do with Palestine will strike a chord with Zionist groups,” he told Al Jazeera. “They just don’t want our voices to be heard.”

Youth-led change

Eidlin, the McGill professor, echoed this assertion, saying the camps have sparked “a feeling of despair” among pro-Israel groups in the United States and Canada because “they know they’ve lost the narrative.”

“No physical alteration occurs; “It is simply the fact that they are making this public statement about the need to end the genocide in Gaza and denouncing the complicity of universities in the genocide that is generating this enormous reaction,” he said.

A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 33 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 said they sympathized more with Palestinians than with Israelis, much more than older generations. Only 16 percent of Americans under 30 said they supported the U.S. government providing more military aid to Israel in its war in Gaza.

“Among young people, this is the problem, and we’ve seen it spread like wildfire,” Eidlin added.

Michelle Hartman, a McGill professor who supports the camp, also said the protests have generated backlash because having so many students from diverse backgrounds speaking out against the Israeli war in Gaza represents a threat to the political status quo.

“People who try to defend (that) and defend the occupation and the genocide will find it threatening because young people are speaking out,” Hartman told Al Jazeera of the wave of protests in the United States, Canada and other countries.

“It’s really being part of a global movement, and they’re very aware of it, and I think that’s what scares politicians here.”

A member of the activist group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights-McGill, who asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisals, shared a similar sentiment.

“Why is this so disturbing? Surely it’s the numbers,” the student said. “But you also see that a barrier of fear that our political class and our administrations have been trying to instigate within the community at large… (is) breaking down.”

The dire situation in Gaza, where a possible Israeli ground military offensive against the southern city of Rafah has sparked fears of more bloodshed and devastation, has pushed students to take a stand, they told Al Jazeera.

“All this is for Palestine and Gaza. “As the death toll rises and the humanitarian crisis rises and threats of a ground invasion in Rafah loom, this is something that has been driving the student body, and that is why the students are not afraid,” the student said. .

“It’s much more than just a camp.”