Supporting a ceasefire, while dismantling pro-Palestine encampments

The liberalization of free speech allows power-holders to appear principled while fuelling the genocidal status quo

[This is an English version of my opinion piece published in La Presse on July 11, 2024.]

The past two weeks have seen the force of the state and private companies come down hard on pro-Palestine encampments in Canadian cities. The ruling of Judge Koehnen brought an end to the encampment at the University of Toronto, a decision by the City of Montreal ended the downtown encampment at Square Victoria, and a strange combination of private authority, private security, and two police forces disappeared the encampment at McGill University, the oldest in Canada.

These repressive actions come as public opinion and government policy seem to have turned against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In June, an Angus-Reid poll found that 63% of Canadians support a ceasefire and 43% a permanent ceasefire. In the last two months, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly has repeatedly voiced opposition to an Israeli invasion of Rafah and reiterated calls for a “sustainable” ceasefire.

Pro-Palestine encampments aspire to more than just a ceasefire, of course, but their demands to divest from companies complicit in Israel’s military operation and occupation would clearly contribute to one. The demands take aim at the financial support provided to Israel by Canadian institutions like universities and pension funds, support that allows the country to carry on killing Palestinians, ignore the orders of the International Criminal Court and the United Nations Security Council, and sidestep serious discussion of a ceasefire – much less Palestinian freedom or statehood.

The level of destruction in Palestine is difficult to fathom. As Palestinian anthropologist Neyrouz Abu Hatoum explains, “What is happening right now is a genocide that is destroying everything – life, land, infrastructure, generations, history, heritage, cultural heritage in Gaza, but also in the West Bank.”

The liberalization of free speech

The encampment protests highlight how Canadians are supporting this destruction and what we could do to stop it. In doing so, they reveal the emptiness of many liberal positions on the issue.

Mélanie Joly, for example, claims she has “pressured” the Israeli government to accept a ceasefire, but has been unable to name a form of pressure more significant than a conversation with her Israeli counterparts and her party continues to refuse calls from the New Democratic Party and various organizations to implement a two-way arms embargo or a broader set of sanctions against Israel – a clear way to exert political pressure.

The belief in dialogue and persuasion – upon a massively unequal playing field – is a touchstone of today’s liberal politics. Its logic and limitations were clearly expressed in Judge Koehnen’s ruling last week. While granting an injunction against the University of Toronto encampment, he stressed the importance of the students’ right to protest and encouraged them to continue it in another form. “Persuasion will not be achieved through occupation but through reasoned discussion,” he wrote. “If the [protesters] bring the same attention and focus to that exercise as they have to the encampment, they may yet achieve their goal.”

The decision was evocative of what legal geographer Don Mitchell calls the “liberalization of free speech.” In the course of the twentieth century, he argues, courts in liberal-democratic countries increasingly recognized people’s right to free speech and protest, while restricting where and how it could occur. Protests can be disallowed, for example, when they disrupt business activities or the “comfort” of the general public. The result, Mitchell argues, is that “people can speak and protest and picket all they want, just so long as that speaking, protesting, and picketing has no chance of being effective.”

Affirming an abstract right to protest while circumscribing where and how it can occur is indispensable for many liberals in the current context. It makes it possible to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, while quieting those who point out how much could be done and isn’t being done to achieve one.

Liberal and illiberal force in Montreal

Montreal mayor Valérie Plante has demonstrated this political two-step repeatedly since October 7. On two occasions, she has publicly affirmed the Liberal government’s call for a ceasefire, while otherwise addressing the issue only by publicly condemning various pro-Palestine protests.

Last week, Plante defended her government’s decision to dismantle a pro-Palestine encampment in the same muddled terms. “The right to protest for a cause is a fundamental right, but it cannot infringe upon the right to security and free circulation in a public space,” she said.

Despite having ordered riot squads from two police forces to remove the campers and a phalanx of garbage trucks to receive their belongings, Plante also insisted she sympathized with the protesters. Since October 7, she explained, “there are millions of us who feel powerless. Know that I share this feeling.”

It is difficult to find a more perfect disavowal of the unequal terrain on which social justice movements operate than a big-city mayor with the ability to direct two of the country’s largest police forces claiming to share a sense of powerlessness with those the police attacked.

Of course, there are worse things than liberals, as the actions of the Coalition Avenir Quebec, the Conservative Party of Canada, and the president of McGill have demonstrated. The latter, Deep Saini, has distinguished himself as a power-holder more hostile to the right to protest on a university campus than the Montreal police, the courts, or the Plante administration.

After three months of failed and increasingly embarrassing attempts to vilify and criminalize his students, Saini realized the legal and moral principles can be overcome with money. A private security company, with the support of the Montreal and Quebec police at the campus perimeter, finally disappeared a space that testified physically to the complicity of the university in a genocide and to the moral clarity of the students.

We will not stop, we will not rest

In the end, the most important lesson of the encampments is that, contrary to what Plante might say, none of us are powerless. Governments and many other institutions are currently supporting a genocide and they can take action to impede it instead. Everyday people can and have claimed power by organizing together and using persuasion and disruptive action to support Palestinians’ efforts to stop the bombing and liberate themselves.

The repression of the encampments can’t disappear this lesson. My heart swells with respect and gratitude toward the students. Free Palestine.