Front Burner - At the McGill encampment: Calls to divest from Israel

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

Unless it was dismantled last night after we put this podcast to bed, the pro-Palestinian encampment at McGill University is now entering into its 11th day. It's just one of several across Canada, and one of many more across North America.So last Tuesday, we headed to Montreal to check out the McGill encampment for ourselves. We went to speak to students there about their central demand: divestment. We wanted to learn more about what it means, why the students are calling for it, and why the broader push that “divestment” is part of — the movement known as BDS — is so controversial.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem, brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Unless it was dismantled last night after we put this podcast to bed, the pro-Palestinian encampment at McGill University is now entering its 11th day. It's just one of several across Canada and one of many, many more across North America. So last Tuesday, I headed to Montreal with our producer Ali Janes, and we wanted to talk to students about their central demand, divestment. To learn more about what it means,

why students are calling for it, and why the broader push that divestment is part of, the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement, or BDS, has been so controversial. The first thing you need to know about what we saw at the McGill encampment when we got there last Tuesday was that it was very muddy and cold and wet. It was actually absolutely pouring. The students we're listening to were standing under this big tarp tied to a couple of trees, chanting in French, under the rain, under the snow, free Gaza from the siege.

The second thing to know is that the students were camping out in this wet, muddy field. Oh my God, are you okay? Are you so cold? It's insane. Yeah, you're like very wet. I'm insanely wet, yeah. Have you been sleeping here? I haven't been able to close my eyes here, but I've been here the entire night.

They had fenced off this little area to one side of McGill's main quad, right beside the library. When we were there, we counted roughly 100 tents. They were controlling who entered that fenced-off encampment, and they weren't allowing any media inside, including us. But there was plenty of action outside the tent area, too. And many campers were happy to talk to us about life inside. What was it like last night?

Very cold. Very, very, very, very cold. Wet. This is Zeyad Abassam, a member of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights Concordia. There were a lot of Concordia students joining the camp. Surprisingly, spirits were high. People were eating. People watched a movie in very cold weather. How did they watch a movie? So we installed a projector outside,

and we installed tarps, and people came, the community came. We put up a movie, and then there was a discussion after the movie, and there was a considerable amount of people, you know, bigger than, you know, a normal university classroom, way bigger. You know, some of the students are waking up, you know, wet and their tents have collapsed on them. that energy and morale is super high. The community has been consistently showing up to support in materials, in food, just in spirits and energy. And we're able to overcome these very small obstacles,

such as rain and mud, because we're doing this for Gaza and we're doing this for Palestine. And this remains like the compass that's directing all of us. That's a student from the McGill chapter of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, or SPHR. She told us to call her Rana, a pseudonym. She wouldn't give us her name.

She said she's scared of being doxed online, which was something we heard from many of the protesters. Do you want to give us your name? No, I would not. Can I ask why? Yeah. from many of the protesters. Do you want to give us your name? No, I would not.

Can I ask why? Yeah. We have had cases in the past where students have had their names out and, you know, harassment and doxing have been pervasive on campus. Many, like this student from Independent Jewish Voices, had their faces covered, either with N95-type masks or kefiyas.

And you're wearing a mask right now. Yes. And I, like, can you explain to me why you're, like, I have not seen your face during this entire interview. Yeah. Why? Yes, two reasons.

Firstly, we are a COVID-conscious encampment. And secondly, it goes back to the doxing. If I have my face out, that makes me a recognizable target, even if I believe unequivocally for what I stand for. We've had students' names be released on websites, students' emails, telephone numbers, all across the board. They've received very threatening messages. I'll just note that we have seen one of those websites and determined that those concerned do appear founded. Anyway, like Rana said earlier, lots of people were bringing the campers supplies. People like Michelle Hartman,

a professor of Arabic literature in the Islamic Studies Department at McGill. But I have come down every day to support the students. I've brought coffee, I brought some hand warmers, and to give kind of, you know, a bit of physical support, but also moral support and intellectual support to the students who are really standing up for what they believe in. But I have been in consistent awe of the generosity of the people of the city and the citizens around. One Concordia student, Ari Nachman, with the group Independent Jewish Voices, told us the community members had even been helping out with laundry. Someone actually came to my tent, took my clothes that were super gross and muddy, washed them in their house, dried them, and brought them back to my tent.

Like the pants I'm wearing today right now, they're in good shape. The encampment had a first aid station and a station for food and coffee. People brought in wood pallets when we were there to make pathways over the muddy ground. There were teach-ins and workshops. People brought in wood pallets when we were there to make pathways over the muddy ground. There were teach-ins and workshops. Ari told us that they were actually going to be leading one on anti-Semitism. So I'm going to give a workshop within the encampment to campers about, with other Jewish people present, about anti-Semitism.

And Friday we have Shabbat. We had the Seder for Pesach two days ago. There were Muslim calls to prayer. There were circles of people singing and playing music. All of this is to say that when we visited Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of last week, we saw a gathering that generally seemed pretty chill, pretty jovial. Now, as you are probably very aware, the students' encampment has been controversial because it's on a university quad

and because of some specific things that have surrounded it. We'll get to why a bit later in this episode, but first, we had gone there to hear more about the protesters' demands. You know, our tuition money is being used to directly invest in corporations that are manufacturing weapons being used against our people in Palestine and being used against our people in Palestine and being used against our people in Gaza. Any company that is investing in unethical war against a whole people where it's killing 30,000 people in a small strip of land where there are 2 million people

needs to be divested from. We have watched a genocide unfold for multiple months and we want to hold our own institutions here accountable for their complicity within this genocide. So we're here today to call for academic boycott and divestment and for our university to cut all financial and academic ties with the Zionist regime. McGill posts its investments publicly on its website, and there are some specific companies that demonstrators want the university to pull its money from. Companies that the protesters say are profiting off of the war in Gaza and who supply weapons or technology to the Israeli military, as well as companies operating within Israeli settlements in the West Bank. settlements in the West Bank. Like Lockheed Martin, the American weapons manufacturer,

McGill has about $535,000 invested in them. Or Safran Group, the French multinational which has supplied defense technology to Israel. McGill has around $2 million of investments in Safran. Or Royal Bank, which has millions of shares in Palantir, a company that provides AI tools to the Israeli military. McGill has around $10 million invested in RBC. We will not stop, we will not rest. This is not a new demand at McGill. Some students were calling for pretty much the same thing back when Laura Khoury was there studying mechanical engineering from 2013 to 2017. There was a huge push in the student

body trying to push for divestment over and over again. We had thousands of McGill students, alumni, professors and staff sign papers to the board of governors calling for divestments. There were many people who attended board of governors meetings so there was a lot of times where the student body over the years have attempted to talk to the McGill administration and say, you have a policy that is meant to protect students, that is meant to listen to the students and have an ethical investment policy with regards to your endowment fund. And the McGill University continues to not listen to their students. In a 2022 referendum, McGill's student union voted 71 percent in favor of a policy boycotting and divesting from companies and institutions that it called, quote, complicit in settler colonial apartheid against Palestinians. McGill's administration threatened

to sanction the student union because they said the policy violated the university's values of inclusion and that it disrespected students' political and religious beliefs. The policy was eventually abandoned. Then in November 2023, the students' union voted again on a similar motion. This time, 78% voted in favor. That was temporarily stopped by the Quebec Superior Court after an unnamed student filed an injunction, which described the policy as, quote, hate literature, and argued that it violated the student society's anti-Semitism and equity policies. The case is still before the courts. So both Laura Khoury, the alum,

and Rana, the Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights member, told us that this encampment is partly in response to those previous efforts not working. Like, if you're not going to heed our demands through the systems that you have in place for us, we're going to use our other tactics to have these demands heeded. These calls aren't exclusive to McGill or Concordia or to the encampment protests

that we're seeing on campuses across Canada and the U.S. They're ultimately part of a much larger movement, the BDS campaign. In a little bit, we're going to hear from a representative of B'nai B'rith, Canada, who says BDS is anti-Semitic. But first, a bit more about BDS. Michelle Hartman, again, the McGill prof. The B is boycott, the D is divestment, and the S is sanctions. And these are the three different parts of the demands. And they come from a call that was released in 2005 by a really large coalition of civil society groups in Palestine saying, also, we've exhausted our means of trying to get the world to listen

to how we can end the occupation. And so now we're calling on the world to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel. And this really came out of a period, it came following the Second Intifada and the collapse of the Oslo peace process. It represented the failure of the international community to really take any action to stop decades of occupation and dispossession.

This is Michael Buechert, Vice President of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East. We spoke with him when we were in Montreal too. And so it was kind of an acknowledgement that, well, if the world leaders aren't going to do anything to rectify this situation, we have to take it into our own hands. And so it's really an invitation for people to adopt these tactics where they are, in their own purchases, in their own institutions,

action that they can take to actually try to put pressure to bring a just resolution and justice for Palestinians. Michael's PhD research focused on comparing the BDS movement to the South African anti-apartheid movement, which BDS is modeled after. For decades, the anti-apartheid movement had been campaigning to get different organizations and companies to break ties with the South African regime at the time. So they were boycotting South African products. They were pushing for divestment from companies linked to South Africa,

whether that was churches seeking divestment of their own assets, whether it was pension funds or at the university level, and also a push for ultimately economic sanctions from their own governments. And so it was these sorts of tactics that I think created a political consciousness around the horrors of apartheid and the need to do something about it. Michael says that studies on the anti-apartheid movement have found that boycotting and divesting from South African companies didn't actually have a huge financial impact on those companies or on South Africa's economy. But what it did do was help create

enough political pressure on governments to push them to impose binding economic sanctions. And he says those sanctions are seen as the move that really helped end apartheid. So I don't think that Brian Mulroney would have imposed the actions he did if it wasn't for the decades of really significant and persistent political pressure, including around the same time a lot of successful divestment votes from Canadian universities and churches and that sort of thing. Brian Mulroney's 1986 sanctions on South Africa happened soon after a number of Canadian universities

had divested from the regime. And the first Canadian university to divest? McGill. You know, it followed at least a six-year campaign from students and faculty. So I think even that, when we think of McGill as a leader, it wasn't because the board sort of took this upon themselves necessarily voluntarily, but as a result of years of really, really significant political pressure

and following divestment votes in the U.S. But when they did have that vote, it was followed quickly by votes at York and Dalhousie and Carleton and other universities. So it did kind of lead the trend as a result of all of this organizing. That South Africa vote was something we heard a lot about from the protesters at McGill themselves, including Laura Khoury, the McGill alum. It took them years to divest from South Africa. And if we ask anybody here right now, was that the right decision or not? Should have they done it earlier or not?

They will say yes. And I am sure that with enough pressure, only when the pressure is enough to put McGill in a corner, they will eventually divest because they know that they can't stay pushing against the majority of the students. And we just need to keep putting enough pressure on the university to do the right thing. The movement to boycott, divest and sanction is not just happening at universities. You might have heard about the calls to boycott indigo bookstores and the uproar around that. In November, 11 people were arrested for throwing paint on a Toronto indigo store and postering it with signs that accused CEO Heather Reisman, who is Jewish,

of funding genocide. Toronto Police's hate crime unit is investigating graffiti outside the indigo's downtown flagship store. This was the scene this morning at Bay. Toronto Police called the vandalism hate motivated and some observers called it an anti-Semitic protest. Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center says it's reported the incident to police. They released a statement, and that reads in part, it is absolutely appalling to see this targeting of an indigo store and its Jewish founder and CEO in a vile anti-Semitic attack.

Michael Buchert's organization, the CJPME, is one of the groups calling for indigo to be boycotted. He believes that the boycott has been misrepresented. The co-founders of Indigo also co-founded an organization called the Hesig Foundation for Lone Soldiers, which provides financial assistance to foreigners who volunteer to travel to Israel and participate in the Israeli military. This provides finances to help them with their education and other things after they've served in the military. So a lot of people, including my organization, don't want to be participating in that. I think we're calling on people to

boycott Indigo based on this very direct complicity in the Israeli military and its operations in Gaza. People have tried to portray it as though it's targeting the CEO because of her identity as being Jewish, but that's further from the truth. It's because of her direct support, financial support for the Israeli military. So one of the other main calls in the BDS movement is to cut ties with Israeli academic institutions. This is a call that we heard at the encampment yesterday. But the pushback to that is that it is often Israeli academics and artists who are critical of their government and who push for change from within. And so how would you respond to that? and who push for change from within.

And so how would you respond to that? The way that Palestinians describe it, these institutions themselves are deeply complicit, whether it's through providing research that contributes to the military. There are universities that are located on occupied Palestinian land. There are all sorts of ways in which these institutions are complicit in the ongoing oppression of Palestinians. And I think it's also really important to remember at this moment that we're witnessing what people call scholasticide in Gaza, where over the past six months, Israel has destroyed every single one of Gaza's universities

and is killing students, killing teachers, killing professors, has completely destroyed the entire educational system. I think another thing that people might not know is that the guidelines around this are not that all individual Israeli academics are to be boycotted simply based on their nationality or their institutional affiliation, but based on institutions and institutional complicity. And so... Michael argues that actually, this is something that Canada has already done in another context. Only two years ago, the government of Canada directed the federal granting agencies that

fund academic research in Canada to impose an academic boycott of Russia following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, including to stop working with and collaborating with Russian academics and Russian industry, if it can be determined that this would sort of help what they refer to as Putin's regime. And so the government itself has recognized that cutting ties with complicit academic institutions and researchers is a legitimate and productive approach. And I think what the student protesters are calling for is the exact same standards to be applied at their own level

by their own universities. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you.

Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income. That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Money for Cops. Okay, let's talk about the pushback against BDS now. Find me another country which is the subject of hate-based, woke-based, anti-Semitism-based hatred against one country's policies. Henry Topaz is Quebec Regional Director for B'nai B'rith Canada.

They're a Jewish human rights and advocacy organization. And they also provided legal support for the McGill student we mentioned earlier, who filed an injunction in November to stop the Students' Union from adopting a boycott and divestment policy. We asked Henry about that case, but he said he didn't want to comment on it right now, as it's still before the courts. I wonder if you could break down specifically for me why you believe the movement is anti-Semitic. Because it singles out only the Jewish state. Only the Jewish state.

Find me any policy that says, okay, China has all types of hatred going on and exclusion against one people, the Uyghurs. Is there any BDS against China? Is there any BDS against Iran that murders its own people? A woman goes out with her hair uncovered and she's murdered? There's only one country that is subject to BDS. If those other countries were part of a movement for BDS as well, would you have any problems with it then? It would be a subjective discussion. Why? Why is it happening? Why do you think it's happening i believe it's happening because of anti-semitism against the jewish people and the jewish state and no other reason

uh the people who advocate for bds including the students at mcgill now they talk about how they take inspiration from the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. And do you think that's a fair comparison? I think it's a horrendous comparison. I just came back from Israel, and in Israel, there are judges on the Supreme Court who are Muslims. There are doctors. I was in the hospital visiting someone, undergoing chemotherapy, being administered to her

by a head-covered Palestinian woman. There are doctors, lawyers, every profession. There are Muslims serving in the Israeli military. So somebody has to explain what is apartheid in Israel to me. I wonder when you hear the comparisons made to South Africa, if you could just elaborate for a little bit more on what that makes you feel like. I think it's nonsense. I don't think it requires elaboration. It's nonsense. And everybody knows it. Anybody who thinks and understands and sees what goes on in the state of Israel realizes that there is no apartheid in Israel. None. We actually talked to Henry right before he was headed to a pro-Israel counter-protest

that took place Thursday afternoon right across from the encampment at McGill. The gates to the university had been shuttered, effectively separating both groups by campus fencing. Dozens and dozens of police officers, some on horseback, stood watch. Several hundred counter-protesters showed up. Some were students. Many others were from Montreal's broader Jewish community. They were waving Israeli flags. Some had signs that said, release the hostages or bring them home now. They set up the stage and blasted music. We asked Israeli international student Michael Ishayek what he thought about the students' divestment demands. What I think, I think that if they really cared about the people in Gaza

and if they really cared about the Palestinians like they're saying they are, they would have condemned Hamas and would have not focused on Israel. Israel is not a problem of the Palestinians. Hamas is the problem of the Palestinians. We want the Palestinians to have a country as much as they want the Palestinians to have a country. We want the Palestinians to live peacefully and to live with dignity. And if we really want the Palestinians and the people in Gaza to have good life and decent life, we need to get rid of Hamas. And I think that instead of calling for the university to divest from Israel, they should call for Hamas to leave Gaza immediately,

to give the hostages back, and to let the Palestinian people have their own country and live in dignity. We heard the sentiment from other counter-protesters too, that pro-Palestinian demonstrators, including Jewish ones, were misdirecting their anger. I'm a little embarrassed for the Jews who are there who don't understand the situation, who don't understand what is happening, who don't have an idea what Gaza and Hamas is all about. This is Avi Sohavchesky.

There are other solutions besides asking Israel to stop fighting terrorism. You can also ask the Palestinians to stop terrorizing Israelis. And that's the solution, not getting Israel to stop the war. Because if you stop the war, what happened in October the 7th will just happen again and again and again. Avi was holding a large Israeli flag. He'd come for one main reason. The Jewish community is fighting the anti-Semitism that's happening at McGill University. And I'm here to support them. Okay, about that.

Some people will look at the encampment and think its very existence is anti-Semitic. A lot of others will say that is completely untrue. We did a deep dive on these kind of debates in an episode last week on campus protests, and if you haven't already, I do hope you'll go back and take a listen. But also, some specific stuff has happened related to this encampment at McGill that has made it a focus of charges of anti-Semitism. For example, there is a video that McGill shared with the media. It was posted by an Israeli student group called Startup Nation. And in it, you can see some people wearing keffiyahs who are shouting at someone,

or some people off camera, to quote, go back to Europe. Startup Nation says the people being yelled at were Israeli students. Then the group starts singing, All the Zionists are racists. All the Zionists are racists. All the Zionists are the terrorists. McGill said this was evidence of unequivocally anti-Semitic behavior. It's part of the university's case for why they say the encampment must be dismantled. We asked some of the encampment members about the video.

They told us that this didn't happen in their encampment. They said that there had been a march that day that ended at McGill and that the people in the video were in that march and that they didn't know them. It's really hard to verify one way or the other because many of the people in the video have masks or scarves covering their faces. Ari Nachman from Independent Jewish Voices told us the video did open up this big discussion in the camp about what constitutes anti-Semitism. So one of the reasons Go Back to Europe is violent is, first of all, not all of us are from Europe, which is true. And second of all, and we discussed this with the Palestinians here,

the Palestinian men told me here, it was like, I'm so sorry you got to hear that because not only is it hurtful and inaccurate about I'll go back to Europe but also like Europe was terrible to you like you probably don't want to hear that and we discussed that collectively. Ari also said that it wasn't a chant that they had heard at the camp itself for the record we didn't hear it or anything like it when we were there. Regardless Ari said that there was a real double standard going on no one seemed to be talking about how in that video shared on Startup Nation's Instagram, the pro-Palestinian protesters were labeled as jihadists. It takes audacity to claim you're being oppressed because you hear a chant,

and yet you show up to these places and you call people jihadists. So that's one thing. Another example is that in December, McGill revoked the university's name from the local chapter of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights over a now-deleted social media post published just after the October 7th attack that referred to the attack as heroic. We have not seen the post, but it has become such a flashpoint that actually people spoke about it from the stage of the pro-Israel counter-protest last Thursday. This is how they celebrate death, and today we're here to celebrate life. I asked Rana, the SPHR member, about the post and whether the group stood by it.

I mean, the context under which all of the events of October 7th transpired and us releasing that post and seeing all of these mass mobilizations happen, you know, is still within the context of a 75-year-old violent occupation and 2.2 million people in Gaza who have been besieged for 17 years with limited access to water and food and educational and medical services you know a a 17 year old land air and like ground blockade essentially so you know what were these these mobilizations and what was fueling them is seeing these 2.2 million people um resist their occupation of course and their and their oppressor and remain steadfast um in the face of a genocide which has lasted eight months essentially

okay so i just want to be clear because people are going to hear what you just said, and they are going to feel like, not all people, but some people are going to feel like what you're saying is that what happened on October 7th to women and children and civilians was okay. And what would you say to a person that got that impression from what you just said? What I'm saying is we can't take the events of October 7th out of that broader context of a 75-year-old occupation. There were events before October 7th and after October 7th, and there has been women and children and men and Palestinians who have been ethnically cleansed and mass displaced and mass, like in mass starvation and killed and raped and assaulted for the past 75 years. So this is a member of Independent Jewish Voices.

Do you want to give your name? Yeah, it's Ruth. Yeah, I think it's important in these moments and in particular in discussion about an Instagram post released very soon in a moment of heightened emotional tension to draw attention to the fact that we are mostly criticizing the people who are experiencing 75 years of ethnic cleansing and oppression, and we are essentially asking them to censor themselves

from those emotional reactions. So I would like to ask if that question has been served to the Zionists who on October 7th were celebrating the IDF as a force of safety when in reality the IOF is a force of genocide. What might you say to people who say, why can't you do both? Because our centered goal as an organization and as a coalition of student groups who are fighting for the Palestinian people is to centre their lives and their lived experiences as human beings in this struggle. I am a Jewish student at McGill. I deeply care for our community and want to combat anti-Semitism. We do that is by standing united as a student body and not letting our movement be brought into splintered conversations about Instagram posts that were deleted six months ago. For its part, McGill University wants the police to dismantle the encampment.

But as of this recording on Monday afternoon, it's still there. Police say they are evaluating their options. As for the divestment demand, a McGill rep told Radio Canada last week that essentially there are proper channels for students to make such requests and that camping on the lawn is not one of them. There is a process, and we've been reminding everybody of this process. Unfortunately, the students who are demanding divestment have chosen not to follow that path, which is the actual path to make things change. In one of its statements to the media, the university also said that it hires external fund managers to handle its investments and,

quote, does not invest directly in individual stocks or companies. We asked McGill for an interview. We also asked if they might be willing to negotiate with the students. Brown University, for example, struck a deal with its students last week. In exchange for them removing their tents, the university is taking divestment proposals to a vote. We never heard back from Miguel. All right, that is all for today. A very, very big thank you to our colleagues in Montreal,

Jennifer Yoon and Jean-Montpetit. This episode was produced by Ali Janes. Sound design was by Sam McDulty. Our senior producer is Elaine Chao. Our executive producer is Nick McKay-Blocos. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.