There are Judges to Weigh Judgement But There is Little Justice

An Ontario court has granted an injunction to the University of Toronto to clear a pro-Palestinian encampment on school property.
The Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday 2 July that protesters must take down tents in an area known as King's College Circle by Wednesday 3 July at 6 pm. The ruling by Justice Markus Koehnen also gives Toronto police the authority to arrest and remove anyone who refuses to comply with the court order.
The injunction allows the protesters to demonstrate throughout the campus, but prevents them from camping, erecting structures, blocking entrances to university property and protesting on campus between 11 pm and 7 am. "As a result, the injunction does not limit the freedom of expression that the law provides," the judge wrote in his decision.

Tyler Cheese for CBC News

Anti-Israel protesters leave the University of Toronto campus after clearing tents and signage on Wednesday. Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post

"There can be no doubt that some of the speech on the exterior of the encampment rises to the level of hate speech."

"[Comments such as] We need another holocaust; Death to the Jews; Hamas for Prime Minister; You dirty fu--cking Jew; Go back to Europe..."

"None of the named respondents and none of the encampment occupants have been associated with any of these statements."

"[The] automatic conclusion that those phrases are antisemitic is not justified. [Including] a photograph of the [Jewish] university president which was described as depicting the president as a devil with the caption 'blood on your hands' in bold letters beneath [the] inverted triangle [used by Hamas to mark its targets, as well as the phrases] intifada, Free Palestine by any means necessary [and] From the river to the sea [call for Jewish genocide]."

Judge Markus Koehnen, Ontario Superior Court of Justice

Organizers from the pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Toronto’s downtown campus say they will regroup before deciding whether to comply with an injunction ordering them to clear the camp by 6 p.m. on Wednesday. Toronto police have the authority to arrest protestors if they do not disband the camp. CBC still from video

Jews just cannot seem to win, for losing the debate. Jews, throughout their millennias-long history have developed a keen ear and eye for the loathing their presence engenders in portions of any society in which they live as a minority. Their antennae are chronically attuned for the hostility that never fails to waft their way. Sometimes in underhanded ways, sometimes in blatant accusations, sometimes through threats, and when the situation becomes threatening, violence is more often than not, not far behind.

 

This is not idle chatter and mere speculation; 'intifada' has an identifiable meaning; it is anything but innocent of threat. It presages an overt determination to mount a violent campaign for the singular purpose of destroying the lives of Jews wherever they happen to be; residing in their own Jewish state whose purpose is their security, or within other states as minority groups in a historical diaspora that resulted from forced exile from their ancestral geography. 

 

Jews know intimidation, they know fear, they have a very personal acquaintance with the need to flee at a moment's notice.

 

Yet an 'impartial' judge of human interactions leans heavily on freedom of speech, discounting the toxin of hatred leading to threats that will invariably become violent action. The theatre of antisemitism in all its raging distemper and mass pathology is now on stage in full disruptive, threatening display. From sneering charges of colonialist oppressors thrown out at ordinary Jewish Canadians, students attending university, children in primary schools, adults attending synagogue, to under-cover-of-night Nazi messages in cemeteries, on Jewish community centre doors, smashed windows on Jewish-owned small businesses, Jews are constantly reminded of the vast division existing between themselves and all others.

 

Judge Koehnen was ruling on a permanent injunction against campus encampments of pro-Hamas, Jew-hating, Israel-bashing students, directed by outside interests fuelling hate and being remunerated for their participation in a hate-fest that erupted in the wake of the October 7 mass atrocities committed by the terrorists governing Gaza when Hamas operatives flooded across the Gaza border into southern Israel to commit mass rape, mutilation of girls and women, slaughter of Israeli civilians and the kidnapping of people innocent of harm to others. 

At universities across North America, well organized 'Palestinian Student' groups have unnerved public authorities by their protest marches replete with celebration of the October 7 atrocities, citing Hamas as heroic in its rampage against the apartheid colonialist oppression of the victimized Palestinians. The universities appear disinterested largely in dispelling the slanders, much less the encampments. Citing freedom of speech despite hate laws that forbid the ferocity of the hate-inspired threats emanating from diehard antisemites targeting Jewish students with their vitriolic messages of dismissal.

Universities themselves -- and in particular the University of Toronto among the worst -- have coddled the Jew/Israel detractors, giving them space to invite radical Islamist speakers, enabling the promotion of the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel, complicit in fostering an atmosphere of bleak antisemitism. An atmosphere that has been decades in the making with faculty appointments of academics whose long-range plans have been a schedule to subvert civility and awaken latent antisemitism. An Islamist conquest.

 

An aerial view of the University of Toronto encampment on July 2. (Mehrdad Nazarahari/CBC)

"There was considerable debate in the record about the use of certain slogans such as 'from the river to the sea', 'glory to the martyrs' and the word 'intifada'."

"A number of intervenors asked me to find those phrases to be antisemitic. I accept that these expressions are perceived as hurtful and threatening to many Jews."

"There appears however, to be considerable variation, nuance and context around the meaning of these terms which, in my mind, would make it improper to automatically assume that they are antisemitic, especially on an interlocutory motion."

Justice Markus Koehnen