On the anniversary of the night Hamas launched a brutal attack on Israel, leading to a retaliatory military campaign that has devastated the Gaza Strip, Montrealers are taking part in several events to mark a year of violence in the region.
At around noon on Monday, a large crowd gathered at a vigil in front of McGill University’s Roddick Gates under a heavy police presence to honour those who were killed and taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.
Supporters of Israel, many waving Israeli flags, gathered on Sherbrooke Street, which was closed to traffic for the event.
Leon Novodvorets, a fourth-year McGill student, helped organize the vigil alongside advocacy group Federation CJA and other students.
“The Montreal Jewish community has been through a lot,” he said. “We’re here to mourn together, to grieve, to kind of know we’re not alone.”
A vigil organized by Federation CJA and students outside McGill University is the first of many events in the city to mark the anniversary of the Israel-Hamas war.
Posters of Israeli hostages were plastered on the fence surrounding McGill’s campus, which is closed to the public today. Individual posters on wooden sticks were also placed into buckets of dirt to symbolize what happened at a music festival and communities in southern Israel a year ago.
Monday marks a year since Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7, 2023, killed around 1,200 people and led to about 250 others being taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel has killed at least 41,500 people in an ongoing air and ground military offensive, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
About 90 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced from their homes and at least 680 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank — most by the Israeli army and some by Israeli settlers.
On Monday, the Israel Defense Forces said 728 of its soldiers have died in Gaza in the last year.
Reuben Polansky-Shapiro, a fourth-year Concordia University student who took part in the vigil in support of Israel, said he wants people on both sides of the conflict, all of whom are grieving, to be able to have respectful conversations with each other as the war wages on.
“A lot of my friends, they don’t agree with me. But I can grab a coffee with them, we can have lunch and we can talk about it and we can say, ‘Yeah, I understand your point, and I may not agree with everything, but I understand it.’ And that’s what I hope to see,” he said
‘We know divestment is possible,’ says Palestinian group
Meanwhile, a crowd of students gathered at Concordia’s downtown campus at the intersection of De Maisonneuve Boulevard and Mackay Street at 2 p.m. in a joint protest organized by the McGill and Concordia University chapters of Students for Palestine’s Honour and Resistance (SPHR) — which has also gone by Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights.
Palestinian flags waved over the crowd peppered with keffiyehs as demonstrators chanted to the beat of drum.
Local and provincial police stood a few metres away, separating the demonstrators from a handful of pro-Israeli counter-protesters who for the most part stood quietly wrapped by or waving Israeli flags.
“We’re here to commemorate one year since the Zionist entity began a genocidal campaign against our people in Gaza,” said Rama Al Malah, a spokesperson for SPHR McGill.
She said the students continue to call on their respective institutions to divest from companies with ties to Israel.
“Students in the ’80s led a divestment campaign against apartheid in South Africa and were victorious so we know divestment is possible,” she said before marching down with the rest of the group toward Roddick Gates.
Protesters break windows, throw paint
Montreal police Chief Fady Dagher told reporters at 4 p.m. that multiple protests had taken place peacefully Monday, but noted some protesters are “playing cat and mouse with police officers” on McGill’s campus.
At 4:20 p.m., police said a group of pro-Palestinian protesters headed up to Des Pins Avenue and Aylmer Street, where they began throwing paint and breaking windows of a building under construction.
A spokesperson said police “pushed back” the protesters and they dispersed.
In the last year, the city has seen countless protests, many of them calling for a ceasefire, denouncing the military response to Hamas’s attack and accusing Israel of committing genocide. There was also a two-month-long encampment at McGill’s downtown campus to protest the school’s financial and academic ties with Israel.
Other gatherings called for the return of remaining hostages in Gaza, denounced a rise in antisemitic incidents and called out different levels of government for not doing enough to curb them.
Dagher said his officers will continue to have an increased presence in the coming days.
“We are making sure that we are visible to discourage … anyone [who] has bad intentions, but also to be proactive. To anticipate any action,” he said.
He said because of this visibility, his officers were able to arrest five people last week who were in the possession of incendiary devices. He said he was not aware of any arrests Monday.
As people gather in Montreal and elsewhere, the violence in the Middle East continues.
In recent weeks, Israel’s conflict with Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah has escalated sharply, with Israeli airstrikes and a ground offensive into Lebanon as well as Hezbollah and Iran launching rockets into Israel.
The Lebanese Health Ministry says more than 1,400 people in the country have been killed as the Israeli military campaign has intensified.
Lebanese, Jewish and Iranian Montrealers share their stories and concerns as the fighting between Israel and Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran intensifies.