The 'Well-Meaning' Admirers of Hamas at University of Toronto Encampment

"[University of Toronto did not have sufficient proof to show that the encampment was violent or antisemitic]."

"Apart from the initial appropriation of Front Campus and the continued exclusion of others from it, I find that the encampment is peaceful."

"[The student protesters are merely] young idealists fighting for what they in good faith perceive to be an important human rights issue."

"I also accept that acts of intimidation and assault have been directed against Jewish passersby and encampment members at Front Campus. There is no evidence, however, to suggest that any of the named [protesters] or any other encampment members were in any way involved in those acts."

"[U of T provided sufficient proof in arguing that] the university has suffered irreparable harm because of the protesters’ continued appropriation of Front Campus and their exclusion of others from Front Campus."

"[Despite the cause], protesters do not have the right to take property from its owner and put it into the hands ‘of an ad hoc, self-appointed, albeit well-meaning, group of individuals’."

Ontario Superior Court Judge Markus Koehnen

After two months at King’s College Circle, protesters ordered to leave. KAISA KASEKAMP/THEVARSITY

The University of Toronto's request for an injunction to authorize enforcement by police in respect of the demand by the university that the anti-Israel campus encampment be removed was granted by Judge Markus Koehnen. Who in his judgement averred that he saw no antisemitism on the part of the 'well-meaning' protesters. 

 He was moved to grant the injunction request solely on the basis of encroachment on private property. The encampment's purpose was to deride and degrade and demonize Israel for its conflict in Gaza, and signage identifying the Jewish State and Zionism and Jews in general amounting to gross antisemitism somehow failed to gain the attention of the Judge.

Justice Koehnen had sympathy for the conscience-driven U. of T. encampment protesters represented by a coalition of anti-Israel and leftist, and union groups and non-student, non-faculty outsiders whose organizational skills, posters, promotion and recruitment of supporters of Palestinians. Groups representing the terrorist Hamas governing Gaza had a prominent but unacknowledged place in the hierarchy of the involved groups, ostensibly a student-led protest. 

As far as Justice Koehnen was concerned, their presence on campus occupying a private area and refusing entry to non-supporters of their anti-Zionist crusade, Jewish students and faculty members represented a legitimate exercise of constitutional rights in freedom of expression.

The Judge saw fit to launch himself into an expression of  keen international knowledge referring to the October 7 Hamas invasion of Israel as though upholding the encampment's contention that it was merely a response to the Jewish State's 'occupation', bypassing irrelevant details such as violation of an existing ceasefire and relying on his version of reality by implying moral relativism between a terrorist group that indulged in a savage bloodbath of mostly  civilians and a nation determined to protect its own against sadistic butchery. 

 

He iterated UN claims parroting the Hamas health ministry of the number of women and children the Israel Defense Forces set about to slaughter in a 'genocide' deplored by the encampment. That Hamas committed an unjustifiable act of war against Israel was a non-starter for the Judge. And why he would even review these events in his judgement is a mystery whose purpose is known only to himself.

 

And although the encampment personnel harassed, threatened, insulted and deterred Jewish students and faculty, no signs of antisemitism were present, according to the Judge.

 

All the signs at the encampment appeared there for a purpose; to declare that Zionism is racism; that Israel is an apartheid state; that the Jewish State was engaged in committing genocide against Palestinians; that Israel is not acting in self defence. All fodder for the hatred that emanates throughout academic institutions after years of infiltration of Islamist ideology inculcating the slanderous view of Jews as interlopers, white imperialists, colonialists occupying their own ancestral land, claimed by Palestinians as theirs, and theirs alone.

Organizers from the pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Toronto’s downtown campus say they will regroup before deciding whether to comply with an injunction ordering them to clear the camp by 6 p.m. on Wednesday. Toronto police have the authority to arrest protestors if they do not disband the camp. CBC