Crowd: Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest. Disclose divest, we will not stop, we will not rest.
Text: This week, students from Montreal’s universities set up a protest encampment for Gaza on McGill University’s campus.
Sarah Shamy, Palestinian Youth Movement Montreal: We’re really seeing the student movement be on the front lines of this movement, which is for Palestinian Liberation.
Columbia University really sparked the initial fire that really kind of erupted and became a movement on its own, where students have been answering the call to set up encampments.
Zoya, Encampment protestor: Our demands are simple. We don’t want our tuition to be going towards institutions and Israeli companies that fund genocide.
We’re currently standing at a death toll of 34,000 people, most of which are women and children.
Text: Activists are calling on McGill to divest from companies implicated in Israel’s assault on Gaza and cut ties with Israeli universities complicit in apartheid.
Zeyad Abisaab, SPHR Concordia: We demand that the Board of Governors mandates the McGill investments office to divest from all companies complicit in the genocide of the Palestinian people, including the over $20 million currently invested in weapons manufacturers.
And lastly, declare, we demand that McGill and Concordia University publish a statement immediately condemning the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.
Text: The encampment faced massive downpours.
McGill has requested “police assistance” to clear the camp.
McGill administrator: So this is a final warning.
I ask you immediately comply with the instructions we gave you earlier.
We will now consider other options to ensure that our instructions are followed, including seeking assistance from the police.
Text: The media have also repeated McGill’s administration’s suggestion that antisemitism is rife in the encampment.
Mara Thompson, IJV McGill: I feel that McGill has played a really dangerous game and an irresponsible game by conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
I feel that their consultation with the Jewish student body is totally incomplete.
They disregard student referendums, and student testimonies and groups like IJV who are publicly anti-Zionist and still very rooted in their Jewish values.
I think that conflating the two risks diluting what we understand antisemitism to be, which I think is really dangerous in the long term, since antisemitism is a threat.
Ali Salman, SPHR Concordia: The encampment itself is not just anti-racist, even like purely antisemitic.
We’re against antisemitism.
We have laws or rules, if you’re antisemitic or even racist, you’re out.
Not just out of the encampment. If you’re part of the organization, you’re out.
And this is something that’s very fundamental in our beliefs.
Zeyad: We have members of the elderly community, we have children, we have people from all different walks of life, and different communities all together.
Keeping each other safe, keeping each other secure, keeping each other healthy.
The community has donated, whether it’s money, monetary donations, whether it’s material donations, the community has supported this encampment fully.
Without the community, without the people of Montreal, the people of Quebec, without people coming from all over the place, all over the city, even from outside of the city to support the encampment, either financially, or through donations, none of it would have been sustained.
Miriam Liben, IJV Concordia: There was a video that we saw this morning of children in refugee camps in Gaza, holding up signs being like “thank you for your solidarity,” with McGill and Columbia and different names of different universities.
I think that felt incredibly powerful.
Ali: You can see that the encampments are becoming a revolutionary movement, and I think that these encampments will not end without something.
I think they’ll bring change.
Text: On Wednesday, a Quebec judge rejected the injunction to force McGill protesters to leave. The encampment continues.
“We need media that enlarges the sense of what’s possible.”
Naomi Klein, journalist and author
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