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TOP STORY
A series of anti-Israel riots in Montreal have attracted international condemnation, and prompted Conservative calls for an emergency parliamentary probe.
“Violent protesters set cars on fire, threw small explosives and other objects at police officers, and set fire to an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” reads a Monday letter penned by Conservative members of the Standing Committee on Public Safety.
“This is the crime, chaos and antisemitism that is taking over Canada,” it added.
The violence was condemned by everyone from Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante to Quebec Premier François Legault to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
A lengthy statement by Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre became one of the most circulated reactions to the disorder in Montreal.
“This is what happens when a Prime Minister spends 9 years pushing toxic woke identity politics, dividing and subdividing people by race, gender, vaccine status, religion, region, age, wealth, etc.” wrote Poilievre in an X post seen nearly six million times.
The disorder was two-fold. One was an anti-NATO, anti-Israel demonstration on Friday that resulted in smashed windows and burned cars in the Montreal core.
The other was a two-day mass-walkout of post-secondary students that would see masked activists blockading university property, forcibly cancelling classes and leaving a trail of graffiti and broken windows.
The walkout was organized by the Coalition de résistance pour l’unité étudiante syndicale (CRUES), a radical Quebec student organization that sees both Canada and Quebec as illegitimate colonial entities. Manifestos released by the group refer only to “so-called Quebec” and “so-called Canada.”
In a statement laying out the aims of the walkout, CRUES said it was to back “resistance movements” seeking the “liberation of Palestine” from what they call the “Zionist entity.” The group also compared Palestinian militancy to its own “struggle for the wage and unionization of internships.”
Video broadcast by Global News showed demonstrators, their faces concealed by keffiyehs, entering a lecture hall at Concordia University and ringing cowbells until students dispersed.
It was the walkout that would yield images of hundreds of keffiyeh-clad demonstrators overwhelming security and pouring into the lobby of Concordia University, as well as a woman on the street outside raising her arm in a fascist salute and calling for a “final solution.”
That woman would later be identified as the operator of a Second Cup franchise at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital, prompting the coffee chain to shut down the location.
A video circulated by Israel’s Washington, D.C., embassy, among others, showed two men attempting to force their way through the locked doors of a Concordia lecture theatre against chants of, “Viva, viva Intifada.”
The Université de Montréal campus was similarly splashed with paint, including a large green “Palestine Libre” (Free Palestine) written across a central courtyard, according to a report by CityNews.
All last week, student unions and departments at Université de Montréal had voted on whether to endorse the walkout. In the lead-up to a vote at Dawson College, the school’s Muslim Students Association issued an open endorsement of religious war.
“To those considering a NO vote … know that your vote cannot alter the destiny that awaits the Zionist entity,” the group said in a social media post.
“Efforts to obstruct justice will be in vain. The liberation of all the Islamic homeland is inevitable.… History will bear witness to the triumph of Islam. Remember Hittin.” Hittin is a reference to a 12th-century battle that preceded the Muslim reconquest of Jerusalem.
On Friday evening, it was a separate anti-Israel demonstration converging on Montreal’s Palais des congrès conference centre that would yield images of masked men in keffiyehs smashing windows and setting cars alight.
A camera crew for TVA captured images of crowds clad in black and carrying Arabic-language banners massing outside the conference centre, setting off smoke bombs and breaking windows. TVA would count 600 demonstrators, and catalogue the crowd breaking windows and setting cars on fire as they moved towards the Palais.
“This doesn’t make any sense. It’s completely crazy,” one bystander yelled at the mob in French.
One of the most widely circulated videos of the violence was via the X account 3jane.tv. A 30-second clip showed demonstrators clad all in black save for a keffiyeh, breaking windows with hammers, rocks and poles.
Inside the Palais des congrès was a three-day meeting of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. Israel is not a NATO member and the Israel-Hamas war was not an agenda item. In fact, discussions would be dominated by NATO support for Ukraine against Russia.
Nevertheless, the group Divest For Palestine — in conjunction with other leftist anti-Israel groups — organized a Block NATO rally, accusing the alliance of being an agent of “Global North imperialism.”
The group’s own literature makes clear that NATO’s links to Israel are tenuous, but a manifesto paints them all as part of a bloc “well-versed in territorial occupation strategies.”
After the demonstration was dispersed by Montreal Police using chemical irritants, Divest for Palestine would issue a statement claiming they were the victims of colonial police brutality. “Down with militarism, imperialism and colonialism!” it read.
IN OTHER NEWS
Canada-India relations are currently at historic lows, and it was all kicked off in part by the Trudeau government’s charges that “agents of the Indian government” have had a direct hand in assassinations and other criminal activity on Canadian soil. But in a development that’s gotten far more attention in India than in Canada, Trudeau’s official national security advisor, Nathalie G. Drouin, issued a statement saying that they don’t believe any of this is the fault of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “The Government of Canada has not stated, nor is it aware of evidence, linking Prime Minister Modi … to the serious criminal activity within Canada,” said Drouin. “Any suggestion to the contrary is both speculative and inaccurate.”
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