Welcome to This Week in Canada, where Jewish students were barricaded in a room by pro-Palestinian protesters who had nothing to fear, Mark Carney is taking a walk on the supply side, and a war hero’s great-nephew remembers him. Let’s jump in!
Student organizers at Toronto Metropolitan University’s (TMU) Students Supporting Israel club spent weeks planning an off-campus event featuring two former Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) reservists. The goal, said 22-year-old organizer Ethan Elharrar, was to foster dialogue and allow students of all backgrounds—whether Jewish, Muslim, or Christian—to ask questions about life in Israel since October 7, 2023.
But the university refused to provide a space for the event, citing “a lack of transparency about the topic and guest speakers” and “insufficient lead time.” So the club rented a small, private boardroom in a nearby medical building—on the second floor, with no signs or public invitations. “We knew every single person who was invited,” Elharrar told me. The word still got out.
At about 1:15 p.m. last Wednesday, just before the event was supposed to begin, three masked people forced their way into the building and into the room, shouting through megaphones: “Free Palestine!” and “You’re supporting genocide!” Earlier that day, the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) group at TMU posted on Instagram: “ALL OUT TO 49 ELM STREET NOW”—and denounced the invited speakers as “Zionist war criminals.”
“We were shell-shocked,” Elharrar told me. “At first, I thought it was a prank.” But within minutes, roughly 40 more protesters had flooded the building—pounding on doors, chanting “intifada,” and surrounding the small group of roughly 10 Jewish students who were trapped inside. “They were holding us hostage,” he said.
