"It's been 21 years since I attended the first 'Israeli Apartheid Week' at the University of Toronto. Since then, I have been on the front lines witnessing countless demonstrations, anti-Israel speakers and even the now infamous 'boycott, divestment and sanctions' campaigns promulgating hate against the Jewish state and Jewish students. The situation has only gotten worse for our children."

"Who would have thought that the Palestinian flag would make an acceptable appearance at some graduation ceremonies this past spring?"

"The consequences of these sobering statistics are transforming how Jewish students live and learn as they and their parents worry for their safety, given the report's finding that 22 percent have experienced some sort of physical violence."

Avi Abraham Benlolo, CEO, The Abraham Global Peace Initiative 

Arab Israelis make up: 22% of Israel's population   David Jacobs, X

 

Jewish-Canadian students are preparing to return to their university studies for the 2026 school year. The past three years, since October 7, 2023, academic attendance has taught Jewish students, all the way from elementary school, up to high school and post-secondary institutions that they are very special indeed. They are the only minority group in Canada that has been exposed to raw hate, from their teachers, through an altered curriculum, and from their non-Jewish classmates. School trustees rather than focus on academic performance and excellence in the role of schools in teaching a new Canadian generation have been involved in identity politics. School administrations wanly reject antisemitism, but not without pairing it with 'Islamophobia'.

 

What no one seems to want to mention is that these waves of torrid hate toward Jews long kept under wraps within the civilized society Canada once prided itself on being, has been unleashed by Palestinian students with support from the larger Canadian Muslim population involved in the slander of Israel and the none-too-subtle harassment of Canada's Jewish population, with an especial focus on the most vulnerable; the children of Canada's Jewish community. A community dwarfed in size by the presence of a much larger Muslim population which over the last decade has grown enormously through immigration, refugee intake and acceptance of illegal migrants. 

 

For three years and counting, Jewish students and Jewish faculty members of universities across Canada have had to cope with campus encampments dedicated to validating, supporting and mounting campaigns addressed to maligning, belittling, isolating the presence of Jews on campus as dread and unforgivable 'Zionists' who support the right of Jews to favour and defend the Jewish homeland of Israel, the Jewish state reborn on its ancient ancestral geographic footprint in the Middle East. 

 

A sign is seen urging the university's pension plan to divest from companies that do business with Israel, at the encampment set up at the University of Toronto in May 2024. Photo by Jesse Kline/National Post

• A professor wrote that we need to kill all Zionists, that she had worked with them and saw how evil they were.
• I was told by a professor, in class, in the middle of the lecture, that Jews belong in Poland and need to go back.
• I faced extreme pressure from other student organizations to release a statement against Zionism in my position as president of the (redacted) student union, and had my name placed on a list circulating on and off campus as a 'known Zionist'.
• Professor assigned us to listen to a podcast that discussed how Zionism was similar to Nazism, which was  unrelated to the course.
• I was harassed online ... She went as far as spamming my art page for five days straight, sending me radical reels, calling my elderly family 'killers'.
• Residents at my on-campus residence started rumours about me that I am a child killer, white supremacist, racist, and Zionist, all because these people found out that I was Jewish.
• Jews were described as greedy for money in a lecture.
• In a course that had nothing to do with Israel, my professor spent three weeks talking about Gaza and the creation of the State of Israel. He never mentioned the Holocaust as a precursor to its founding, repeatedly calling the state a 'Zionist political project'.
• When discussing characters in a book, my professor described one character by saying that 'based on his last name, he is clearly Jewish and probably has a hooked nose'.
• Working in my labs, I have had people refuse to work with me due to my Jewish identity and purposely try to mess up my data.
• Several faculty members in my program minimized the Holocaust or used it to condemn the Israeli response immediately after October 7.
• Shortly after October 7, I told my PhD supervisor that I did not feel safe on campus and she replied: 'Well, you should see the other side'.
• A member of my anti-racism research lab at the university minimized the impact of the Holocaust while the other lab members remained silent. For example, she said: 'The Holocaust was not the first time gas chambers were used. They were first used against Indigenous peoples in Canada.' When I raised this with my research supervisor, now tenured, her reaction was to protect the student responsible. For example, she said: 'What happens in the lab stays in the lab'.

National Post Staff 

"Over the past few weeks, CAUT has become aware of a number of disturbing cases in which university administrations have limited or suppressed debate on controversial issues. Whether it is banning posters or noisy demonstrations, we believe such heavy-handed actions constitute a clear threat to the purpose of post-secondary education."
"Not surprisingly, the failures involve bitterly contentious issues. One is Middle East politics. Last month Carleton University and the University of Ottawa banned a student organization poster for Israeli Apartheid Week because the universities felt it too provocative. The poster, by noted political cartoonist Carlos Latuff, shows a stylized Israeli warplane firing a missile at a child holding a teddy bear and standing on ground emblazoned with the word “Gaza.” York University has gone even farther, invoking a noise policy to justify handing club suspensions and fines to student organizations that held counter-protests for and against Israeli government policies."
"In invoking the need to be “respectful” and “civil” and to avoid “provo­cation,” too many universities are suppres­sing free speech and freedom of expression. Some universities are even stretching to invoke hu­man rights’ codes to justify suppression when these codes typically address the right to be free from discrimination in employment and in access to services and accommodations and are not meant to silence cam­pus discussion and debate."
"Our institutions must remember the integrity of their central mission, which is so aptly described in the University of Toronto’s statement of institutional purpose: that “within the unique university context, the most crucial of all human rights are the rights of freedom of speech, academic freedom and freedom of research,” and affirms that “these rights are meaningless unless they entail the right to raise deeply disturbing questions and provocative challenges to the cherished beliefs of society at large and of the university itself.”"
"The statement concludes: “It is this human right to radical, critical teaching and research with which the University has a duty above all to be concerned; for there is no one else, no other institution and no other office, in our modern liberal democracy, which is the custodian of this most precious and vulnerable right of the liberated human spirit.” "

The Canadian Association of University Teachers