Encampment protesters say they won’t compromise as talks continue with McGill

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Discussions were continuing Thursday between McGill University and organizers of a pro-Palestinian encampment on the school’s downtown campus, but protesters say they won’t compromise on their demands.

The protesters, who have been camping outside the university for 13 days, want McGill — and other schools — to divest of investments in companies linked to the Israeli military and the Israeli state.

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Ari Nahman, a spokesperson for the encampment, said discussions continue with the university.

“I would not use the word negotiations, because we’re not here to compromise, we’re here to demand, and I think it’s the bare minimum to demand divestment from warfare,” Nahman said in an interview Thursday. “I know they asked us to leave before graduation, and we will ask them to divest before graduation.”

Nahman, a student at Concordia, said protesters don’t want to stay at the camp forever, but they won’t leave until the university takes concrete steps toward divesting from companies like warplane-maker Lockheed Martin, in which the university’s endowment has invested more than $500,000.

Nahman said the encampment is also calling for transparency from universities about their investments, including Concordia, which doesn’t disclose individual investments.

McGill University declined an interview request Thursday, “out of respect for the ongoing discussions.” The university said Wednesday that convocation will take place as planned in late May and early June, but not where the ceremony, which usually happens on the same field as the ongoing protest, will take place.

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The scene was relatively quiet on Thursday morning as a handful of people sat outside while others came and went. At one point a woman passing by in running gear shouted “boycott Israel, boycott the criminals” in French, and voices from inside the camp echoed the chant.

However, a recent poll suggests that public support for the protest is waning. A Leger poll conducted last weekend suggests just 31 per cent of the respondents support the McGill protests and similar encampments that have been established at other universities, while 48 per cent said they oppose them.

Nahman said they wonder how many young people were included in the poll and how informed people who were surveyed are about the encampment’s demands and the efforts made to lobby universities before the encampments began.

“It’s really privileged to be uncomfortable about encampments while we’re here asking for the end of a genocide,” they said.

Meanwhile, a group of Jewish students met with legislators on Parliament Hill Wednesday to say they are being forced to hide their Jewish identity and fear for their safety as they face a tide of antisemitism from which school administrators are failing to protect them. 

But Nahman, who was wearing a Star of David necklace, said many Jewish students are part of the pro-Palestinian protest movement and that they see efforts to conflate the Jewish faith with the actions of a country that has killed tens of thousands of civilians as antisemitic.

Montreal police, who have at times blocked some supplies from entering the camp but have said they will not dismantle it as long as it remains peaceful, said they had no update on the situation Thursday.

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