Hillel Ontario has filed an “official report” with the leadership of the University of Toronto and with campus police about a back-to-school pro-Palestinian protest on Sept. 6.
Approximately 70 protesters gathered at midday on the same King’s College Circle lawn where many of them had previously been part of a two-month-long encampment designed to oppose Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. The group included students, former students, students from York University and Toronto Metropolitan University, CUPE union members, professors and the group Jews Say No to Genocide.
They continued calling on the UofT to divest of any investments that aid the Israeli military, following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks that killed 1,200 Israelis and saw over 200 others kidnapped.
The tent city was dismantled peacefully on July 3, after an Ontario Superior Court judge granted the university’s request for an injunction. The judge ruled the occupiers were damaging the school and preventing people with different opinions from accessing the grounds.
“We are deeply concerned about last Friday’s protest at the University of Toronto,” said Jay Solomon, a Hillel Ontario spokesperson, in an email to The CJN on Sept. 9.
In particular, the Jewish campus advocacy organization for students alleges the loud back-to-school protest violated the school’s recently published guidelines for demonstrations.
“Activities resulting in noise that prevents the speech of invited guests, University members, and others; that obstructs UofT activities from continuing; or that negatively impacts those living in UofT residences are not permitted. This might result from the use of amplifiers, megaphones, microphones, etc. so care should be taken when using such technology.”
The organizers used a microphone with a loudspeaker, as well as a megaphone, to amplify their chants calling for intifada, and other slogans such as “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free”.
“We… have filed a report with the university asking them to investigate the unauthorised use of sound amplification devices,” Solomon said. “Members of the Hillel UofT team were on scene and continue to call on the university to take urgent action to safeguard the well-being of Jewish students on campus.”
A spokesperson for the protesters, former UofT student Erin Mackey, told reporters the university’s policies about protests are unreasonable. Mackey was the chief spokesperson during the Occupy UofT encampment movement. She graduated in June.
“[These] are all violations of free speech and infringe on our right to protest here and obviously, are in response to the encampment that we held,” Mackey said, adding that she is now a member of a group calling itself UofT Alumni for Palestine.
Mackey also took issue with other parts of the school’s recently re-published guidelines from August which include a ban on writing in chalk, affixing posters outside of designated areas, putting up tents or barricades, and protesting overnight outside the hours of 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.
University of Toronto guidelines
For its part, the university denied the protest regulations are new.
In a statement to journalists titled “Fact Check” issued after Friday’s protest, the university’s communications team said the school “welcomes vigorous debate and protest.
“The university has robust and longstanding policies in place to enable and protect free speech. No changes have been made to these policies for the fall term,” the unsigned statement read.
When asked whether the Friday protest would have violated the policies on excessive noise, the university said probably not.
“Brief and moving protests would not rise to that level,” UofT said in an email on Sept 9.
The school also denied the protesters’ claim that UofT is complicit in the Israeli military action against Hamas in Gaza, which has resulted in the deaths of at least 14,000 militants and 16,000 civilians, according to Israel’s prime minister in May. Hamas’ casualty figures put the number at 40,000 dead in total, without differentiating between soldiers and civilians
The university maintains it has no ties to any Israeli military action, and asked journalists to use the statement to “filter out any propaganda”.
“Such claims have no basis in fact.”
Jewish students anxious: Hillel Ontario
Hillel Ontario’s CEO, Rabbi Seth Goren watched the protest take place. Rabbi Goren didn’t bring a crowd of Jewish students with him to counterprotest, although about 15 members of the local group Israel Now turned out with Israeli flags and homemade signs.
“I would say that students feel scared, I think they feel anxious,” Rabbi Goren said.
He pointed to what he called an uptick in the number of people seeking help from Hillel for mental health and wellness programs and counselling. He also knows of students who want to transfer to other schools outside of Ontario.
While last year, campus Jewish groups like his were admittedly overwhelmed with the flood of antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents including the encampments, Rabbi Goren said that Hillel has ramped up staffing this year. The organization has hired employees to work in outreach to university administrations, but also to coach and support Jewish students.
For Rabbi Goren, Friday’s protest was another example of the need for universities to double down and actually enforce their existing policies of anti-racism and anti-discrimination, and keep all students safe.
“That’s really our hope,” he said. “Because we recognize that harassment, whether it’s antisemitic or it’s any other type of harassment of a student, is not acceptable, violates university policies and people who engage in that conduct should be held accountable.”
While the judge’s ruling did find evidence that Jewish students and staff were the target of antisemitism outside the confines of the spring encampment itself, he absolved the 14 main organizers of any blame. He also said the university did not prove its case on this issue sufficiently well, even though the UofT’s president told a House of Commons committee the school had sent 38 cases to the Toronto police hate crimes unit for investigation.
Big circle of hate: Jewish student
Graduate student Nicole Iancovitz was having lunch on campus before her afternoon class when she heard the protesters chanting. It was the first week of school for the health policy student, who has been working in her field and is now taking a master’s degree at the same time.
Iancovitz, 36, called the UofT protest a “big circle of hate”.
She normally wears a flexible silver Star of David charm on a chain around her neck, but on this day, the Richmond Hill, Ont. resident decided to play it safe with her Jewish jewelry. As a precaution, she wore the pendant twisted into an unidentifiable shape.
“I haven’t been back on campus in about 10 years,” Iancovitz said, adding she had heard a lot about what’s been happening last year and didn’t know what to expect.
“And this is a clear indication of where we’re at and it’s only the second day of school.”
Iancovitz became emotional when she spotted Israel’s special envoy for combating antisemitism, Michal Cotler-Wunsh, standing near the protesters and loudly challenging their calls for intifada.
The two women hugged, as the Toronto resident thanked the Israeli diplomat for her tireless advocacy since being appointed to the position a year ago this week.
‘Shame on UofT’: Michal Cotler-Wunsh
Cotler-Wunsh, who was raised mostly in Montreal, was appalled to see the pro-Palestinians back on the same spot they occupied for two months. While nine campus security guards were stationed around the perimeter of the grassy area, they did not intervene except to block the pro-Israel adults, including former Jewish Defence League leader Meir Weinstein, from coming too close.
“Did you see? Literally tears,“ Cotler-Wunsh told The CJN, referring to her encounter with Iancovitz. “And they’re afraid. And where are the adults? Why isn’t the community here standing next to the students and saying ‘You are not alone’.”
Since she was appointed to the post last Sept. 13, Cotler-Wunsh has been travelling the globe to meet with Jewish communities, as well as leaders of universities, police chiefs and politicians. But despite the “tsunami” of antisemitism she is trying to combat since it was unleashed following the Hamas attacks on Israel Oct. 7, Cotler-Wunsh says several things keep her going.
The first is the resilience she is seeing displayed by the younger generation of Jews.
“They recognize that this is their fight in many ways,” she said, even if they don’t yet have all the skills they need, or the support.
“And when I look at those young students that are here and very much in many ways in the trenches, I know that if we equip them with the tools, then just like their counterparts in Israel that on 10/7 ran into the fire, recognizing that it was on them now, we have a generation like that here.”
She decried the pro-Palestinian campus protesters’ chants calling for the destruction of Israel and also their repeated use of slogans taken directly from the Hamas charter, especially so soon after six Israeli hostages were discovered executed in the tunnel under Rafah in the final days of August.
Instead of the world condemning the war crimes, as happened in 2014 when ISIS and its supporters executed hundreds of hostages including foreign soldiers and journalists, today much of the world has turned its back on Israel, she said.
“The second thing that I have discovered in almost every place and space where I’ve met with university presidents and administrators and mayors and legislators and police chiefs and union leaders and teachers is that they’re cowards at a time that requires moral clarity and courage,” Cotler-Wunsh said.
She called for the UofT to start applying its existing policies and codes of conduct which would be used if any other minority group-aside from Jews-was being targeted by harassment, bullying and intimidation, and calls were being made for their annihilation.
While she praised non-Jewish allies who have tried to stand up for Israel, she thinks they haven’t been loud enough. In the meantime, her advice is for Jews to be resilient, and to have courage, as they now remember who they are after Oct. 7—an Indigenous people who returned to their ancestral homeland in the land of Israel after 3,000 years of exile.
“There is a multi-front war that is raging, not just the one in Israel,” she said, pointing to the delegitimization, demonization and double standards that her office uses to define modern antisemitism. “[It’s] happening right here on university campuses, on the streets, in corporations, in school boards, in unions. And every single individual has the responsibility to not only be boots on the ground but to transcend and reach across differences and find allies that are committed to our shared values wherever we are.”
A spokesman for Hillel did not provide an answer to The CJN’s question of whether the organization had arranged to bring any Jewish students to campus Friday to hold a counterprotest. However, Hillel’s Rabbi Goren said he’s started to see students taking Cotler-Wunsh’s words to heart.
“I think it’s important to recognize that the students feel angry, they feel very much like they are entitled to certain types of protections that are afforded to other groups across campus and aren’t being given to them,” Rabbi Goren said. “And as far as I’m concerned, they have every right to feel that way.”
Toronto police made one arrest as a result of Friday’s protest rally. After the initial pro-Palestinian crowd left campus, they marched through the streets of downtown Toronto, and their numbers swelled to an estimated 150 people. When some activists attempted to occupy an office building at 777 Bay St. where UofT’s asset management offices are located, Toronto police moved in to enforce trespassing laws and threw them out. Social media video shows one male protester wiping his eyes, after it is alleged pepper spray was used.
Toronto police arrested and charged a 21-year-old woman with assaulting a police officer and failing to leave the building when ordered to.
Mary-Grace Ommert is scheduled to appear at the Ontario Court of Justice, on Oct. 21.
