Gaza protest camp sets up at UBC as PM deplores speech praising Hamas

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VANCOUVER – The Gaza protest encampment movement that has shaken academic campuses in the United States and Canada reached British Columbia on Monday, with protesters setting up unauthorized fences and tents at the University of British Columbia.

Protesters had set up about 20 tents at MacInnes Field by noon, erecting temporary fencing around the site and requiring people to wear masks to enter.

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Premier David Eby called on school and student leaders to balance freedom of expression with people’s personal safety.

Eby said a college campus, while a protected space for free speech, should foster a safe space for students of all backgrounds, especially Jewish students during a time when they feel “particularly alone in the campus and need additional support to feel safe.”

“I have no reason to doubt that the leadership, both student and administrative, at UBC will find the balance between ensuring that students are safe and ensuring that the atmosphere of free exchange of ideas can continue to take place on campus.”

In a series of messages posted on social media platform

Inside the camp, about 100 protesters chatted and ate pizzas provided by demonstration organizers before breaking out into chants of “Free Palestine, from the river to the sea.”

Eby’s comments about the camp came after he and other politicians denounced an earlier demonstration in Vancouver where protesters chanted “long live October 7,” praising that day’s attacks by Hamas against Israel.

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Charlotte Kates, director of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, said at the rally outside the Vancouver Art Gallery on Friday that the attack was “heroic and brave,” before leading the crowd in chanting.

Eby said the comments about the attack, which killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were “the most hateful” he could imagine.

“Celebrating the murder, the rape of innocent people who were attending a music festival, it’s horrible,” Eby said at an unrelated news conference Monday.

“It is reprehensible and should have no place in British Columbia. “There is clearly an element of some people using an international tragedy to promote hatred that is completely unacceptable.”

Neither Kates nor Samidoun, which is a federally registered nonprofit that promotes the UBC camp, immediately responded to requests for comment.

Naisha Khan, spokesperson for the protest camp, said tents began going up at 5 a.m. Monday, with attendees coming from UBC, as well as Simon Fraser University and Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

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The camp was dotted with Palestinian flags and large banners with slogans such as “people’s university for Gaza,” “freedom for Palestine” and “SFU Students for Palestine.”

Nasser Najjar, a former Gaza resident, said he was there to show his appreciation and support for the protesting students.

Najjar, who is not a student, said he had lost his cousins ​​and about 30 friends during the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

Israel’s offensive, which came after the October 7 attack, has caused more than 34,000 Palestinian deaths, according to the local Health Ministry.

“My family was ruined,” Najjar said. “As Canadians, we have the right to demonstrate peacefully as long as there is no violence. “We have the right to protest this… We believe we have freedom of expression, which no one takes away from us.”

Similar camps have popped up on campuses across the United States, as well as at McGill University in Montreal and the University of Ottawa.

At McGill, activists have set up dozens of tents. The university said Monday morning that it had seen video evidence of some protesters using “unequivocally anti-Semitic language and intimidating behavior” during the protest.

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Khan said the protesters would not leave until UBC supported the Palestinian right to “resistance” and the right to return to what is now Israel.

Protest organizers are also demanding that UBC divest from Israeli companies that it claims are complicit in the “oppression and genocide” of Palestinians. They also want an academic boycott of Israeli universities and other institutions.

In a written response, UBC spokesperson Matthew Ramsey said the school is monitoring the situation and staying in contact with the RCMP.

Protests should “be conducted with respect for others and within the boundaries of university policy and the law,” he said.

“We also remind everyone that hate and intolerance have no place at UBC,” Ramsey said. “The university should be a place of reasoned debate where contradictory points of view can peacefully coexist.”

Ramsay said permission was not granted to install the camp fence at MacInnes Field.

Before Eby, the Vancouver Art Gallery protest had drawn condemnation from Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim, who called it a “celebration of terrorism and anti-Semitism.”

Sim said in a post on X on Sunday that people who “spew this vile hatred” were not welcome in the city.

Vancouver Granville Liberal member Taleeb Noormohamed said on a “celebration of the heinous murder of Jews.”

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