Jewish students worldwide were bracing themselves for what was to happen on campuses on October 7, 2024, a year after Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas waged the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust — slaughtering babies, committing sexual violence, burning whole families alive, and taking 240 civilians hostage. Jewish students at Concordia University were no exception.
Since the start of the war, Montreal police have reported 325 demonstrations in connection with the conflict and more than 288 possible hate crimes against Jewish Québécois over the last year, resulting in 41 arrests.
Starting on this past October 7, Students for Palestine’s Honour and Resistance (SPHR) Concordia and other anti-Israel protest groups on campus planned to show “administrations why they must divest and end their complicity in the genocide in Gaza” during their so-called “Week of Rage.”
Based on SPHR Concordia’s prior actions- such as repeatedly vandalizing school buildings with antisemitic hate, forcing the Concordia University Sir George Williams Campus (SGW) campus into lockdown by disrupting and blocking of classes during their “National Day of Action”, and threateningly encircling a Jew at one of their protests- I, and my peers have expressed valid concerns regarding their safety.
SPHR’s recent history also includes rioting on Jewish and Israeli clubs’ tables on campus, repeatedly calling for an Intifada, and stating the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel as justifiable “resistance.” Given this track record, students reasonably anticipated that the incidents during the “Week of Rage” would be no different.
In response, Jewish Concordia students along with the well known Pro-Israel student group, StartUp Nation Montreal, and Hillel Concordia demanded that the school’s administration “uphold its responsibility to ensure their safety and security.”
Though the school did not respond immediately, a Quebec judge barred certain pro-Palestinian groups and activists from blocking access to any part of Concordia or attempt to disrupt classes five days before the anniversary.
The following day, a message penned by two members of the school administration’s leadership team outlined how exactly the university would be “[taking] steps to support a climate of safety and respect on campus.”
Of course, neither act curtailed any of the planned anti-Israel antics.
On that day, while numerous Jewish organizations on campus held a 1000+ strong a vigil for the victims and the current captives still held by Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups and supporters, anti-Israel protestors were busy barging through police barriers, vandalizing construction site for a new education building known to be funded by “Zionists,” and flooded the streets with protestors shouting “the student intifada lives on” while SPHR and its partners declared their desire to “commemorate the historic breach of the colonial border wall and a year of Palestine’s historic resistance.”
During The Week of Rage, Anti-Israel protestors were also seen “barging through a metal fence, which was erected by Montreal police, after McGill University announced that access to campus would be restricted to students, faculty and essential visitors from Oct. 5 to Oct. 11.”
A video posted on X by Andy St-André, a TVA Nouvelles journalist, showed protestors attacking “Sylvan Adam’s Sports Science Institute (SASSI) which hopes to establish a permanent partnership with Tel-Aviv University,” stating that, “the site was met with shattered glass and paint, affirming that there will be no peace so long as McGill continues to partner with institutions complicit in genocide.”
As local journalists reported, “hundreds of people still protesting broke into small groups, dispersing in all directions,” which prompted the authorities to dispatch “an army of more than 80 SPVM officers, over a dozen Sûreté du Québec (SQ) officers and campus security.”
Since then, Montreal has multiple dramatic expressions of anti-Israel antisemitism that have continued to veer into outright politically motivated violence. We continue to see countless horrific incidents, such as a Second Cup franchisee at the Jewish General Hospital calling for the final solution, “referencing Nazi Germany’s slaughter of millions of Jewish people during the Holocaust” and performing the Nazi salute, as well as cars being lit ablaze by rioters at an anti-NATO protest.
How loud must we shout before politicians enact laws restricting this behavior and for school administrators to better enforce the code of conduct policies?
This article was originally published in The Times of Israel.
