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The first anti-Israel encampment in Canada sprung up on McGill University’s campus on Saturday afternoon.

Over a hundred students set up tents and formed a human circle near the center of campus with banners proclaiming, “Intifada until victory,” and demanding the administration cut ties to Israel.

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The demonstrations are co-led by the Montreal chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement, the same group which praised the October 7 massacres committed by Hamas as “active decolonization of Palestinian land.” Another organizer, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), called for the release of convicted terrorist Walid Daqqah and celebrated the Oct. 7 attacks as “resistance…with one goal: liberation.”

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The encampments came despite the university’s that “encampments are not permitted on our campus.”

“We support the rights of our campus community to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly within the bounds of McGill’s policies and the law. We also have a duty to create a respectful environment that creates the optimal conditions for carrying out our academic mission and that protects the health and safety of our community,” a mass email sent Saturday morning to students explained.

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The demonstrations drew the condemnation of neighbouring Mount Royal MP Anthony Housefather. “I’ve watched in horror what is happening at Columbia University,” the Liberal Party member said in a video statement released Saturday night.

“Where it seemed that university administrations were incapable of acting when their codes of conduct were being violated and where other students were denied the right to feel safe on campuses.

“Having peaceful demonstrations is a protected Charter right in Canada,” Housefather continued. “But setting up encampments on college campuses is a violation of pretty much every code of conduct, including that of McGill University.”

The Liberal MP demanded administrators, local law enforcement, and city leaders remove the encampment ahead of final exams to ensure student safety.

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Former McGill alumni and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center leader Michael Levitt publicly requested “the administration to do everything in its power to protect the safety of its Jewish students & faculty…(from the) intimidation that’s been a hallmark of these encampments on campuses across the US.”

In February, anti-Israel students at McGill singled out the Bronfman Building, named after a prominent Montreal Jewish philanthropist, blocking the entrance to the facilities, citing its alleged “long history of complicity in the occupation of Palestine.”

Fellow Liberal Montreal MP Marc Miller denounced the “so-called ‘blockade,’” calling it “a despicable act.”

“Legitimate protest doesn’t include this type of outrageous behaviour,” the Minister of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship wrote.

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