The Electronic Intifada 28 June 2024
The encampment at the University of Toronto.
As the annihilation of life in Gaza continues, hope has become a precious commodity.
The bloodshed and suffering of the people of Gaza is becoming normalized.
Mass murder is being normalized. Mass destruction is being normalized.
But not to all.
Students in universities all over the world still hear the cries of the grieving mother, the orphaned child, the destitute father in Gaza.
The students of the University of Toronto heard those cries.
On 2 May, a group of 100-200 students took it upon themselves to answer the voice of the people of Gaza. Inspired by the international university campus protests, Toronto students mobilized for Gaza.
The encampment is still going strong nearly two months later.
There, Ameer Khoury, a key member and organizer of the Palestine Youth Movement in Toronto, told me that what he and his group does, what students at the campus are doing, is a responsibility.
Inspired by the late, great Ghassan Khanafani, Ameer recited his favorite quotation:
Students taking part in the encampment.
“Imperialism has laid its body over the world, the head in Eastern Asia, the heart in the Middle East, the arteries reaching Africa and Latin America. Wherever you strike it, you damage it, and you serve the world revolution.”
The Toronto protest, along with all the campus encampments that have sprung up around the world, are as much directed against the “imperialist powers of the world” as they are in solidarity with the suffering people of Gaza, Ameer said.
Originally Palestinian, he also said he saw it as his responsibility to fight for his own people.
“Students have always been at the forefront of protests across history, against injustice of all kinds. See Vietnam, South Africa, see Cuba. Now it’s Palestine. This is our responsibility. This is our time.”
Smears and threats
Israel’s genocide in Gaza is history being written before our very eyes. And these students are determined to not just bear witness but to protest the silence and amplify the cries of the people of Gaza.
Still, for me, entering the protest encampment for the very first time, brought unwelcome feelings flooding back.
The Toronto encampment reminded me of the camp to which I found myself displaced in Gaza in the first month of the genocide. Some tents bore the names of towns across Palestine but one caught my eye.
Seeing the name of the Shujaiya neighborhood in Gaza City came with a fleeting moment of pride, which went away in a flash as pain and sadness settled once again.
The University of Toronto encampment has so far avoided the heavy-handed tactics deployed elsewhere. Students at York University, for instance, also in Toronto, were met with Canadian police brutality.
On 26 June, it was reported that the University of Waterloo, not far from Toronto, has filed a lawsuit against its own students over their Gaza encampment.
Handala, the always 10-year-old Palestinian boy and a symbol of a just cause.
And on 17 June, Meric S. Gertler, the University of Toronto president, wrote in an open letter that the administration was pursuing a two-pronged strategy to “resolve the encampment,” including legal action.
Sara Rasikh, a graduate student at the university and one of the many students that have made their way to King’s College Circle, where the encampment is located, criticized Gertler’s approach.
“The university from day one has been more concerned about ending the encampment than ending a genocide. President Gertler must stop deceiving us with carefully crafted policies that silence student voices, while his administration claims to act in good faith,” she said.
The university needed to take the students’ demands for full disclosure of university investments and for the administration to agree to divest from companies complicit with Israel’s genocide in Gaza, she added.
And both she and Ameer said they would not be dissuaded, despite the smear campaigns, the threats of arrest and expulsion.
Let history record that Gaza has moved the hearts of people.
Mahmoud Nasser is a Gaza-born photographer and writer, currently based in Toronto, Canada.
