As students have the privilege of returning to campuses across Canada, I can’t help but think of Medo Halimy. The 19-year-old documented his daily life through the siege on Gaza, bringing awareness to the genocide of Palestinians and sharing moments of Palestinian resilience and joy. On Aug. 27, Israeli airstrikes killed multiple people in Khan Younis, including Halimy. Today, Halimy’s beautiful message continues to echo through global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movements: “They’re taking away life, but I’m bringing it to Earth.”
Halimy is one of over 40,000 Palestinians that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have killed in the past 11 months. However, the violence against Palestinians exists beyond the confines of Gaza. Globally, institutions including McGill University have the blood of Palestinians on their hands. Our university is complicit in the colonial Israeli state’s systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Corporate universities—motivated by donor funding, their international status, and underappreciated student and faculty labour—refuse to adequately acknowledge and rectify their ties to colonialism. As an institution founded on imperialism that continues to reap the benefits of transatlantic slavery and a centuries-long genocide of Indigenous peoples, McGill’s management of the 75 day-long Palestine Solidarity Encampment was dismally predictable. The administration’s brutal dismantlement—with aid from private security firm Sirco, the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal, and Sûreté du Québec—as well as its months-long mistreatment of Palestinian support groups on campus, has sent a clear message: McGill does not care about Palestinian life.
McGill refuses to cut ties with the Israeli state so as to “not interfere with the academic freedom of individual members of the university community to engage or partner with an institution simply because of where it is located.” Yet, the administration did not think twice about condemning Russia and cutting ties with Russian academic institutions after the Kremlin’s horrific invasion of Ukraine. In fact, McGill promptly shared that the war was a reminder of “the fragility of life as we witness lives disrupted, refugees fleeing their homes, and atrocities visited upon civilians and their communities.”
In Gaza, the IDF has killed an innumerable number of civilians. Israeli forces have deliberately halted critical aid to Gaza, including oxygen tanks, generators, refrigerators, and vital medical equipment. Starvation and famine have run rampant across the strip. Israeli forces have displaced almost 2 million Palestinians from their homes, violently forcing them out of land that is Indigenous to them. Media coming out of Gaza documents the disgustingly brutal reality of IDF soldiers’ violent methods—methods which colonial powers have used throughout history to oppress marginalized groups—including sexual abuse of Palestinians, daily murders of hundreds of children, systemic killings of journalists and medics, and destruction of entire systems infrastructure, to name a few. So, McGill, is this not evidence of the supposed “atrocities visited upon civilians and their communities” that you claim to stand against? Or will you continue to hide behind the facade that these are the unfortunate consequences of war?
With great power comes great responsibility. McGill, a globally recognized and renowned institution, has proven time and time again it is unafraid to use violence against its students when the university’s authority is challenged. However, responsibility does not halt at the level of our university’s leaders. Student movements have historically had monumental impacts. At McGill, student-led protests compelled the university to divest from South African apartheid in 1985 and more recently resulted in McGill’s divestment from fossil fuel.
Incoming and returning students alike, it is your responsibility to educate yourself on the genocide of Palestinians. Claiming you do not know enough about the occupation of Gaza is simply not an excuse not to take an active stance against the military state of Israel. Palestinians should not have to publicly document their own deaths for the world to acknowledge their humanity. Recognize that the violence in Gaza is a genocide and learn that it did not begin in October 2023. As students, we must never simply accept McGill’s shameless complicity in an active genocide.
For Medo Halimy. For Hind Rajab. For Mohamed Abd Rabbo. For the martyrs across Palestine. The resistance will persist.
