A pro-Israel counter-protest in response to the student-led encampment at McGill University’s downtown Montreal campus is underway alongside a heightened police presence strategically positioned to keep the two sides away from each other.
The counter-protest began at around noon.
The encampment, which has now been in place for six days, calls for the university’s divestment from companies that have business ties with Israel.
McGill has been attempting to pressure protesters into dismantling the encampment. Earlier this week, the university requested “police assistance” and lent its name to a provisional court injunction request to force them to leave.
Wednesday, that request was rejected by Quebec Superior Court Justice Chantal Masse, who said the plaintiffs — two McGill students — failed to show that the encampment caused them irreparable harm.
In her ruling, she wrote that if the injunction request were granted and protesters were removed, their “freedom of expression and to gather peacefully would be affected significantly.”
As of Thursday morning, there was a strong police presence on and around McGill’s campus.
There are Montreal police officers on bicycles, dressed in riot gear, blocking each side of Roddick Gates at the campus’s entrance.
Just before noon, protesters lined up along the fence surrounding their encampment, chanting: “Why are you in riot gear? There is no violence here.”
The encampment at McGill is one of many protests taking place on university campuses across North America that are in response to the growing death toll in the Gaza Strip.
The pro-Palestinian encampment on McGill’s campus is on its sixth day. A counter-protest is scheduled for May 2, 2024.