The Spring ’24 Kaffiyeh Collection was in abundant display inside Courtroom 4-8.
It’s all the accessory rage these days. Particularly chic when paired with black pumps and silk trousers, as one woman co-ordinated her ensemble.
I have several versions of the scarf myself, though I wore it primarily for utilitarian purposes — protection against choking during sandstorms in overseas desert terrain battlefields. And once I got pulled off an El Al flight out of Tel Aviv for having it wrapped around my neck. Forgot I still had it on.
No political statement intended. As is clearly the case for the protesters who have for 49 days now occupied the encampment at King’s College Circle, main quad on the University of Toronto’s downtown campus. Perhaps they got an unescorted day pass to decamp temporarily and attend the injunction hearing Wednesday at the downtown courthouse, where the university is seeking to have the cantonment of some 180 tents dismantled after negotiations with the students — and not all of the squatters are students — have gotten nowhere.
In interviews, some of the protesters have boasted about being in situ since Day 1 and, collectively, they’ve vowed to stay put for as long as it takes to arm-twist the university administration into meeting assorted demands. Most centrally to cut ties with Israel by divesting from companies profiting from Israel’s offensive in Gaza in a war that has raged for eight months — Israel’s military retaliation for the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas — but also to terminate academic partnerships between U of T and Israeli universities deemed complicit in the war. Further, at least in pamphlets and social media postings, the right of return for Palestinians and Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine (non-starters).
The encampment is encircled by a perimeter fence fortified with zip ties and bits of wood, guarded by marshals — bouncers — who unilaterally can decide who goes through the Checkpoint Charlie gate. Why are you here? Are you a Zionist? Like that.
It does seem to me more sensible, if attrition of the dug-in occupiers is an objective, that anybody who leaves — as a couple of dozen did for the purpose of observing this hearing in Ontario Superior Court — then maybe they should be prevented from gaining re-entry. Can’t just go waltzing in and out as it suits one’s wishes, maybe to enjoy a shower, have a hot meal, participate in convocation ceremonies.
University officials appear to have backed off from a threat of severe disciplinary measures — suspension, expulsion and termination of employment for faculty involved — if the encampment populace ignored a trespass notice deadline that came and went on May 27. Toronto police — so feckless in constraining rallies that have too often tipped over into hate during these past many months as antisemitic incidents have skyrocketed, alongside criminal acts targeting Jewish businesses and schools — have said they would take no action to disperse without a court order. Hence the two-day hearing before Justice Markus Koehnen.
Broadly speaking, the hearing pits trespassing transgressions — U of T is a private institution; these are university grounds — against freedoms of assembly and speech. Speech that has been bluntly provocative and more than occasionally hateful both verbally and in signage around the encampment, which the students have christened People’s Circle for Palestine and which I would characterize as a self-imposed gulag. Signs the university’s contracted security can’t remove because most are placed within the fence. Speech that encompasses such declarations as “GLOBALIZE INTIFADA’’ and “RESISTANCE BY ANY MEANS.’’
As well, as has been alleged, slurs directed at counterprotesters: “Kike!” and “Go back to Poland!” Protest leaders insist they’re not responsible for and incapable of policing what’s said and done by individuals outside the enclosure. Ground Zero that has become, as the judge noted, a “focal point for passions on both sides.’’
But even the ugliest of speech must be protected. That’s a fundamental right in a democracy and under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is why hate speech is rarely prosecuted and even more rarely successfully.
Right off the top, lawyers for the university made it clear they weren’t disputing the horrific toll being paid by Palestinian civilians in this dreadful war. It’s the appropriateness of this encampment on U of T property that’s being argued on the twin grounds of trespassing and to what length the Charter can be applied for freedom of speech amidst the harm being experienced by Jewish students and others who feel threatened and harassed and denied freedom of movement, engulfed by intemperate language being thrown around — apartheid, occupation, genocide — with affidavits filed to support their complaints.
“The University of Toronto is deeply committed to upholding its policy on freedom of speech,’’ said lawyer Monique Jilesen. As indeed every academic institution should be so that all ideas, no matter how radical or discomfiting the debate, can be expressed. There won’t be much opportunity to get away with it in the real world, beyond the walls of academe.
But Gaza, 9,300 kilometres from Toronto, isn’t the point in this specific quarrel and the interlocutory injunction (immediate relief) being sought urgently. It’s the trespassing — “there can be no doubt, in my submission, that this is a trespass,’’ stated Jilesen — and infringement of rights for a community, the Jewish students, teachers and others, who feel unsafe and unwelcome on their own campus.
I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat it here: Trespassing it may be but it’s not worth a chaotic exhumation of the encampment that could result in a violent clash with police.
I do hope, though, that it’s a long, hot, wet summer.
