All it took was a little leadership and the Tentifada at the University of Toronto pulled up stakes and left campus. The protesters standing up for Hamas at U of T left ahead of Wednesday’s 6 p.m. deadline laid out by Justice Markus Koehnen of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
Like spoiled children, they made their demands to the university and would not waver in the slightest.
They denounced Israel as an apartheid state, a terrorist state, the source of all evil in the world. They demanded Israel be isolated, that an arms embargo be imposed upon them, that U of T boycott Israeli academic, disclose their investments and then divest of any companies related to Israel.
What these so-called pro-Palestinian protesters didn’t do was demand Hamas release the hostages, they didn’t demand that Hamas accept a ceasefire or lay down their arms.
There are people who want to blame the Toronto Police Service for not clearing the encampment immediately. Others want to blame Mayor Olivia Chow, Premier Doug Ford or Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whichever is their least favourite politician.
The failure here lies solely at the feet of president Gertler and his senior administration at U of T.
It was their decision not to call the police for weeks. It was their decision to allow the campers to stay on campus erecting semi-permanent structures and installing portable-potties.
By doing that, the school administration had effectively granted the Hamasnik campers permission to stay on campus. Thus the police decision that they would not remove the encampment without a court injunction.
The protesters were outraged that Justice Koehnen had sided with the owners of private property in seeking to protect their property. They were also aghast at the idea that he would shut down their freedom of expression by ending the encampment.
“Case law is clear that exercising freedom of expression is not a defence to trespass,” Justice Koehnen wrote in his decision. “The University has suffered irreparable harm because of the protesters’ continued appropriation of Front Campus and their exclusion of others from Front Campus.” Oh well…
All it took was a little leadership and the Tentifada at the University of Toronto pulled up stakes and left campus. The protesters standing up for Hamas at U of T left ahead of Wednesday’s 6 p.m. deadline laid out by Justice Markus Koehnen of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. If only U of...
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