The Little Gaza Camp That Could

Jew-hatred at U of T reaches new low

Students set up pro-Palestinian encampment protest at University of Toronto | 650 CKOM

By

James Pew

“There’s no spinning or downplaying it. Anti-Jewish segregation is happening on the campus of the University of Toronto. The videos out of the ‘Little Gaza’ tent encampment protesting Israel are both abhorrent and astonishing.” - Joe Warmington, the Toronto Sun, May 6, 2024.

Anti-Israel, Pro-Hamas protest demonstrations and encampments have broken out across North America. This has taken place at formerly prestigious institutions like the University of Columbia, UCLA, Harvard, Yale, Berkley, Pennsylvania and other American universities. While in Canada, UBC, McGill, and the University of Toronto have seen the largest student demonstrations.

“Little Gaza” on the campus of U of T, is an encampment of anti-Israeli protesters that was started when protestors stormed a protective fence that was erected to keep them out. They took over and began occupying the area encircled by the fence, which is now being used to prevent Jewish and pro-Israeli students and professors from entering the school. 

At a border control checkpoint at "Little Gaza" on the University of Toronto campus, marshals inspect and control who can get into the fenced-off anti-Israel city. -- Joe Warmington/Toronto Sun

Considering the many clips of video of the encampment I have seen it is reasonable to conclude that the majority of protesters have chosen to cover their faces (either with COVID masks or Keffiyehs) and none of them will speak with journalists or anyone who isn’t part of their activist cult. They don’t engage in discussions, they only chant, block, and assault others.

It’s not just “clown world” we are living through, although things are without a doubt, clownish. Rather, these turbulent times of cultural wokeism are better described as inverted; “upside down world.” For, which version of sanity permits university campus protests, encouraged by radicalized university professors and administrators, where vile Jew-hating chants and anti-Israel rhetoric is generated at an ear-piercing scale by infiltrating social agitators, and the misguided university students of the Social Justice wing? 

It is upside down and backwards that our institutions of higher learning have become the bastions and crucibles for today’s idiotic, intensely dangerous, anti-Western movement fueled and funded by intensely dangerous international anti-western forces.

Indeed, the Toronto Sun revealed in January that anti-Israel protesters were getting paid. A group known as Plenty Collective in Victoria, BC paid $20,000 per month to people who attended protests. Essentially many of the participants at several carefully staged anti-Israel events were nothing more than paid actors who were given professionally-printed banners and signs, and instructed to LARP as protestors by chanting Jew-hatred thinly veiled in anti-Zionist “from the river to the sea” rhetoric.

As the Toronto Sun reported, this also happened in Montreal where protesters were paid $150 per day. And the New York Post revealed that anti-Israel “fellows” at three U.S. colleges were compensated by the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. Some of those payments were as high as $5,000 a week for  “eight hours of agitating.”

On May 1st, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, published a 73-page report which reveals that an activist organization, funded by George Soros, called Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which has chapters in Canada and the United States, has transferred millions of dollars through a network of nonprofits, including the Westchester People’s Action Coalition (WESPAC), Tides, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), and its parent organization Americans for Justice in Palestine (AJP). From the ISGAP report:

“It is clear that individuals who previously worked for Hamas-linked charities are now a driving force behind (campus protests). The Department of Education (DoE) should carry out an immediate investigation into which universities are funding and/or supporting SJP activities and instruct those universities to cease such funding and/or support … ISGAP calls for SJP (and its affiliated organizations) to be banned and for Jewish students to be protected.”

There are online platforms utilized by groups like SJP designed specifically to provide people who pose as protesters for coordinated protest events. Not a new phenomenon, the industry,  described in 2015 by CNN as “the lucrative business of crowds for hire,” includes firm’s such as Crowds on Demand, an American company with offices in Canada. From a piece in the San Diego Union Tribune last month:

“Launched in 2012, Crowds on Demand is a ‘guerilla marketing’ company that does far more than enlist actors to protest. They draw attention to everything from political issues to new companies and products. And in so doing, it hires thousands of protesters and performers each year from all over the country.”

In the same San Diego Union Tribune report, there is an interview with a man named Khalif Bradley, who started working with Crowds on Demand as a paid protestor, but “now supervises some of the events, making sure that all the freelancers understand their roles, dress appropriately and are in the right places.” Crowds on Demand does not require its “freelancers” to be trained actors, anyone with a “good attitude” and the ability to “follow directions,” is welcome to apply.

Hamza Howidy, a Palestinian from Gaza who was twice arrested and tortured by Hamas, thinks the pro-Palestinian protestors on campuses are hypocrites. Earlier today, Howidy told the National Post, “I don’t see a single pro-Palestinian protester demanding Hamas surrender… I believe that what motivates many of them is their deep hatred for the Jews and their antisemitism.”

A Jewish U of T professor was captured on a video posted to X by Caryma S’ad. He can be heard arguing with protestors, “This is my university… I would like to get in, I don’t want to discuss it with you. I would like just to get in.” But he does not get in. The face-covered protestors block him and refuse to budge.

There were also videos capturing the assault of a Jewish counter-protester who had his Israel flag ripped from his hands by Hamas supporters.  And later in a separate incident, police said “one person was assaulted from behind, was pulled by the hair and punched.”

PhD student Joshua Loewen-Samuels, a Christian Zionist who was assaulted at the protest, told the Toronto Sun he heard children in the U of T encampment being told to say “f*** Jews” and calling them “baby killers kikes, evil Zionists” who should “go back to Europe.” 

Said Loewen-Samuels: “The encampment is more dangerous than you may realize” and “I recommend you putting yourself in the shoes of a Jewish student,” because “there was so much anti-Semitic Jewish hatred expressed that I don’t have the time or the space to relate everything.” 

CUPE president Fred Hahn was seen lending his support to anti-Israeli protesters. He later reposted Toronto For Palestine’s characterization of the weekend protest as a “largely peaceful gathering.”

The Movement Defense Committee (MDC) is a branch of the Law Union of Ontario. Independent journalist Caryma S’ad captured video of MDC associate Gisela McKay at Little Gaza pointing out S’ad’s videographer as belonging with pro-Israel counter protesters. McKay can be seen on the video signalling in the direction of the videographer and saying, “He’s a Jew. He’s one of yours.”

What is particularly maddening about this entire episode, is that since the brutal October 7th massacre of Israelis by Hamas, we have been asked to extend an uncomfortable degree of contextual leeway and generously interpret unsettling nuances concerning the alarming rhetoric coming from the very people who just a few news cycles ago were fiercely dedicated to hunting down and exposing all who dared commit the dreaded invisible microaggression, which, regardless of intent, was judged solely by its impact. 

Do you remember microaggressions? How about impact over intent ideology? Two chestnuts that when deployed together, ruined the lives of many well-intended but haplessly micro-aggressive white people who unfortunately for them, had to be cancelled for Social Justice. But now, in the face of overt Hitlerian rhetoric, there are no mentions of microaggressions, or in this case, even macroaggressions, that are clearly directed at Jewish students and professors. It is truly sickening, and utterly un-Canadian.

Further, even if the ugly, hateful, face-covered agitators did not deliberately intend their Jew-hatred to harmfully impact Jews, what about the actual impact on Jews which is separate and distinct from the intent of protesters? The Social Justice creeps have been adamant for years that the only thing that mattered was the impact of one's words, which they often described as “violence” that “caused harm.” But this Social Justice standard is double-sided, and not applied equally to Jews and whites. Clearly the macro aggressively hateful rhetoric directed at Jews on North American campuses is having a negative impact on them, but the hypocritical “microaggression & impact over intent” people have not a word to say about it.

B’nai Brith published its annual report on Monday which shows university campuses have a serious issue with Jew hatred. This includes 5,791 anti-Semitic incidents. The group's director, Richard Robertson, told a group of news conference attendees that “The 2023 statistics make it abundantly clear when there is unrest in Israel, Jewish Canadians suffer unduly. The levels of antisemitism were already on the rise prior to the onset of the Israel-Hamas conflict.” 

The report focuses on the word “Zionist,” making the point that, “As an overwhelming majority of Jews identify as Zionists and believe in the need for a Jewish state … calls for attacks against Zionists should be seen as calls for attacks against Jews.”

The administration at U of T seems to be concerned with the escalation in antisemitic rhetoric and violence, but not willing or able to get tough with the protesters. Referring to the protesters, Premier Doug Ford told reporters at the Holocaust Remembrance commemoration on Monday “We need to remove those people…These universities have to make a move.” And surprisingly, in a rare moment of clarity, Justin Trudeau said the right thing:

“In a country like Canada, it should be, and it must be safe to declare oneself a Zionist. Jewish or not. Zionism is not a dirty word, or something anyone should be targeted for believing in. It is the belief, at its simplest, that Jewish people, like all peoples, have the right to determine their own future. Shortly after the Holocaust Israel was established as a safe haven for Jewish people. A place to live in security, and with dignity.”

Yesterday, the National Post reported on newly released documents by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). The following is from a statement by CSIS spokesman Eric Balsam:

“While the long-term impacts of the current (Israeli-Hamas) crisis cannot be easily predicted, it is clear that this conflict has raised tensions within our society. Violent rhetoric from extremist actors has increased since the attack by Hamas and, as the conflict continues to unfold, it is possible that these events could impact certain individuals’ intent to mobilize to violence.”

We didn’t really need an official or a report to let us know the obvious, however, at least the ball is seemingly moving in the right direction. With things escalating to such a serious degree, I fear for the worst, but always pray for the best. I will be monitoring the situation closely, and will post more analysis in these pages as developments unfold.

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author on Israel, read the long form essay series, beginning with The Case For Israel.

BREAKING NEWS:

1. A new long-form essay by Dr. M - Fulcrum and Pivot: The New Left Remaking of Toronto School Policy

2. James Pew has contributed a chapter to the new book Grave Error: How The Media Misled us (And the Truth about Residential Schools). You can read about it here - The Rise of Independent Canadian Researchers

Also, for more evidence of the ideological indoctrination in Canadian education, read Yes, schools are indoctrinating kids! And also, Yes, The University is an Indoctrination Camp!

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