Quebec Superior Court granted a temporary injunction against a pro-Palestine organization from blocking buildings or protesting within five metres of campus buildings at McGill University, while Jewish students are continuing to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks.
The provisional injunction, issued on Oct. 8—which will remain valid for 10 days—is intended to mitigate further threats by Students for Palestine’s Honour and Resistance (SPHR), a club not officially registered with the school, which announced a ‘Week of Rage’ from Oct. 7 to 11.
SPHR McGill and SPHR Concordia Instagram accounts posted videos and images of protesters with keffiyehs and Palestinian flags storming the McGill campus on Oct. 7, with the all-caps caption: “LONG LIVE THE STUDENT INTIFADA. LONG LIVE THE RESISTANCE.”
A video shows protesters 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. The posts also show windows being smashed.
According to the SPHR caption, protesters targeted the construction site of the Sylvan Adams’ Sports Science Institute, “which hopes to establish a permanent partnership with Tel Aviv University,” on Monday.
“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,” the SPHR Instagram caption says.
The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Board of Directors removed the club status of SPHR McGill, after receiving a notice from the university’s president office that informed them of hateful behaviour and demanded that the club’s status be revoked.
McGill sought the injunction to “protect its academic mission and defend students’ and instructors’ right to learn and work in an environment that is safe, stable, and suitable for teaching, learning, and research,” according to a statement from McGill’s deputy provost Angela Campbell and vice-president Fabrice Labeau.
The injunction will be in place while students write midterm exams, the court decision noted, with more than 13,600 midterms scheduled for this week.
The decision, written by Justice Babak Barin, orders protesters affiliated with SPHR to “cease, desist and refrain from blocking or otherwise obstructing” the entrance to any buildings on McGill campus. It also orders SPHR members not to protest within five metres of any buildings on campus and to refrain from “intimidating, harassing and/or threatening” anyone entering a building on campus.
Barin wrote that he could not disagree with McGill’s submission that SPHR’s announcement of a Week of Rage, “poses an imminent and major threat to the stability of academic life and the rights of students, staff and faculty at the university.”
Anthony Housefather, the Montreal-area MP and the special advisor to the prime minister and cabinet on Canada’s Jewish community and antisemitism, praised McGill’s administration for seeking the injunction.
“It was actually McGill itself that took this action and that’s what I think needs to be congratulated,” Housefather told The Canadian Jewish News. He added that, despite a climate of hostility on the Montreal campus created by anti-Israel protesters over the past year, McGill’s administration had taken notable steps in mitigating expressions of hate at the university, such as establishing clear boundaries with abuse of podium infractions, developing a structured complaint system for students to report incidents, and enforcing university policies during a pro-Palestine encampment which was dismantled in July.
Housefather says there’s a “high bar” that needs to be met for injunctions to be granted.
“You have to meet a number of legal tests,” the Montreal MP explained, saying that recent activity by pro-Palestine protesters, who blocked access to campus buildings and targeted Jewish students, prompted “emergency relief from the court.”
Housefather noted that the recent protests on McGill’s campus, which took place on Oct. 7 and the days following, indicate that demonstrators are “celebrating what happened on Oct. 7 by going out in the streets on that day.”
“People who support Israel and the large majority of the Jewish community were out to remember the victims of the worst massacre since the Holocaust and you had other people using that day to protest against Israel and yelling hateful chants,” Housefather said. “To do that on the day of the massacre itself shows that they’re not out there to protest Israel’s actions since Oct. 7. That’s not what they’re doing.”
Elia Nissan, a civil engineering student at McGill, and co-president of Israel on Campus McGill (IOC) says she remembers pro-Palestine protesters chanting and shouting during a moment of silence on Oct. 7, which was meant to pay tribute to Hamas’s victims and the Israeli hostages dragged into Gaza a year ago.
The moment of silence occurred outside of McGill’s campus, during a vigil at 12:30 p.m. on Oct.7, as members of Montreal’s Jewish community congregated to mourn and reflect.
Montreal Police were present for the vigil, and held back a small group of pro-Palestine protesters near one of the Montreal campus’s main entrances.
After hearing those disruptive chants, Nissan says anti-Israel hostility “skyrocketed all day.”
Videos reviewed by The Canadian Jewish News show protesters wearing keffiyehs running throughout the Montreal campus.
Graffiti was scrawled on campus buildings, Nissan said. One image shows the words: “Vegans for Palestine. Don’t eat meat. Eat Zionists.”
Meanwhile, other images showed a red inverted triangle next to a shattered window, a controversial symbol, which has been commonly used by pro-Palestine protesters since Oct. 7.
SPHR originally declared plans for a walkout and rally in an Instagram post earlier this month, which called the Oct. 7 attacks a “heroic resistance,” and garnered over 900 likes.
Despite rising animosity on campus, and threats of intimidation, harassment and violence from anti-Israel protesters, Nissan says now is the time for Jews to come together.
“We just want a safe space to mourn and to feel seen,” she said.
