Sound Judgement Lacking

"Many of the students are immigrants or first-generation Canadians who have lived or spent extended time in the Middle East and South Asia. Many are Muslim. A large number are racialized women, who have experienced oppression and marginalization."

"More than one student recounted experiencing or witnessing incidents of sexualized violence in the past."

"The lawyers who fuelled the backlash against the students displayed the same kind of response for which they have criticized the students: using insensitive and harsh words, rushing to judgement, and not acknowledging opposing viewpoints."

J. Michael MacDonald, retired Nova Scotia judge

Toronto Metropolitan University. Photo by Ernest Doroszuk/Toronto Sun/Postmedia

"What lunatic goes around shooting up schools? That is just unacceptable."

"These guys need to be caught, they need to be punished, they need to be thrown in jail. And I have zero tolerance for this anywhere in Ontario."

"It does not matter what race, what creed, what religion you are from, I would say the exact same thing if it was another community as well. Enough is enough. You are bringing problems from everywhere else in the world, bringing it to Ontario and going after other Canadians."

"That's unacceptable. I have an idea: before you plan on moving to Canada, do not come if you're going to terrorize neighbourhoods like this. It's simple as that. You want to be a resident of Ontario? You get along with everyone."

Ontario Premier Doug Ford

Ontario Premier Doug Ford (centre) delivers remarks while flanked by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (left) and Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, during a news conference in Toronto on May 30, 2024. (Arlyn McAdorey/The Canadian Press)

Two different versions of response to Palestinians and their sympathizers in the Province of Ontario; one a judge asked to investigate the actions of law students at Toronto Metropolitan University Lincoln Alexander School of Law, the other the elected premier of the province expressing his opinion of the latest shooting at a Jewish parochial school. Following on the mass slaughter in southern Israel of Jewish civilians by the Hamas terrorist group, Palestinians and their followers assembled protests against Israel, denigrating the Jewish state and blaming Jews for all that has gone wrong in the Middle East.

 

72 law students at the university's school of law circulated a petition claiming "Israel was not even a country", just "the brand of a settler colony busy ethnically cleansing Palestine since 1948". Anyone, declared the petition, that denied Israel commits genocide made themselves complicit in their violence. The invasion of southern Israel by Hamas was, according to the petition, Israel's fault, not Hamas's. All loss of life in Gaza was Israel's responsibility. The petition signatories "supported all forms of Palestinian resistance and efforts toward liberation".

 

Canada, the petition added, was itself a "settler colony", "the architect of apartheid". The law school's neutral position in not outright condemning Israel set it up in the petition of upholding racism and Islamophobia for its position. In response, Jewish and non-Jewish lawyers publicly questioned whether any of the 72 signatories could conceivably be expected to follow objective neutral paths to administering justice as future lawyers in Ontario. 

 

The university tasked former judge Michael MacDonald to investigate the charges brought against the students by  a group of lawyers. The university itself had condemned the petition its students had launched, refusing to support its contentions. Which itself raised the ire of the students. The former judge chose to accept student claims that they were misunderstood; "all forms of resistance" did not, in their petition, include the Hamas atrocities of October 7. 

 

When interviewing the students as part of his investigation, none would inform him despite his pointed questioning, who it was the petition had been drafted by, yet he chose to believe that the students were innocent of the claims of antisemitism and lack of judgement brought against them by Jewish lawyers. Mr. MacDonald believed the students' anger at what they alleged to be Israel's "ongoing war crimes" in Gaza, and what they claimed to be a disproportionate response by Israel to the October 7 attack exonerated them.

 

Despite that what they spoke of as a disproportionate response hadn't occurred, since the Israeli ground operations within Gaza took place after the circulation of the students' petition. "The death toll in Gaza has been staggering, disproportionate in comparison to other recent armed conflicts", his report stated, despite at that point and thereafter the death toll was relatively low; certainly not to be compared with Syria, Darfur, Yemen, Ukraine and other war zones. In referring to Hamas Mr. MacDonald spoke of "militants", not "terrorists" despite their being listed as such by both the federal and Ontario governments. 

The investigator extended personal empathy toward the perspective of the students since, as he commented: "some described living in active war zones, experiencing colonialism and oppression". Taking no note of the fact that Gaza had been unilaterally cleared by Israel of all Jewish occupants in 2005, leaving it free and clear for Palestinians themselves to make an effort on their own behalf to prepare for an eventual state by building the necessary civil infrastructure. 

 

Instead, a terrorist group built all the war bastions it felt was required through an extensive tunnel system to store weaponry and attack Israel in a lethal guerrilla warfare strategy costing lives on both sides.