At McGill, Jewish, Palestinian, and other students are working together to upend their university’s complicity in Israel’s assault on Gaza
For a supposed hotbed of antisemitism, the scene at McGill’s Gaza protest encampment was distinctly Jewish: giant bottles of kosher grape juice and matzah bread piled on the ground, the fixings for a Passover dinner.
On Sunday, when I visited the university’s campus, now the source of daily national headlines, a large group of students were settling in for this religious ritual.
Passover tells the story of Jewish struggle against enslavement in Egypt—including the Pharaoh’s commandment to kill every newborn boy. It’s also the most justice-oriented of our holidays, demanding we apply the imperative of liberation to the present.
“In the midst of Israel’s genocidal assault on the people of Gaza,” one Jewish student read out to the circle, “these verses now resonate with unbearable urgency.”
As students passed around the flat matzah—symbolizing the meager “bread of affliction” baked quickly while fleeing Egypt—they wove in the current reality of Palestinians in Gaza, enduring a catastrophic famine imposed by the Israeli blockade.
In the middle of the circle, a large painted tapestry depicted Passover’s other symbolic foods. In the background, a large Hebrew banner hung on a fence: “thou shall not covet thy neighbour’s home.”
Many were first-time participants in such a meal. People drummed and sang Jewish songs.
This environment—of respect, curiosity, and support for freedom, apparent at Passover and through the rest of the camp—is what B’nai Brith claimed this week represents a “horrifying normalization of antisemitism on university campuses.”
It’s what the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs claimed was a “toxic” situation full of “calls for violence and antisemitic slogans.”
I witnessed no such thing. (more...)
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