Robert stopped by the University of Toronto encampment a few days ago while en route home from visiting his elderly mom at her retirement home.
The Toronto man, who did not want his last name used, was wearing his kippah under his baseball cap.
But there were no visible signs on him that he was Jewish.
”I wanted to take a closer look at what these people were doing,” he told True North.
But once allowed into the encampment by a gatekeeper called Daisy — and after agreeing to their six community rules (one which asked him to be “respectful” of those in the community) — he was stopped by three or four people who yet again insisted he read the community rules.
When he made it clear he understood the rules, a bunch of guys came over to harass him, he said.
”They grabbed me, tried to pull me out, then they surrounded me and wouldn’t let me move anywhere,” he said. “They were in a very tight circle.”
When he started to get jostled and manhandled, he called 9-1-1 while the group of agitators looked on.
He was inside the encampment about 45 minutes and when he tried to walk around the area, the agitators kept “cornering” and watching him. Campus security kept an eye on him, and told the agitators he’d leave after he walked around, Robert said.
He was told the “community feels unsafe” with him there. He didn’t know what they meant by the “community.”
”The collective makes rules they insist everyone follow in this private space and they don’t abide by their rules,” he said.
Robert said he felt “threatened” the entire time.
”It was their purpose to threaten…to get rid of me,” he said, noting they were yelling anti-Israel slogans while he was on the phone with 9-1-1.
”They were extraordinarily threatening,” he said, adding that a faculty member warned him that walking around the encampment “comes with consequences.”
He said 22-year-old Daisy, at one point, pulled out a face mask, dropped it in the mud and still put it on.
Robert said after that experience, he’s “frightened.”
The great irony in all of this is that these squatters and their media shills — who have repeatedly claimed inaccurately that Israel is an occupying force — see no problem occupying private land at the University of Toronto.
I suppose it has gone way above their heads that while Israel haters have moaned for years that Israel is an “apartheid state” that keeps Arabs out (also not true), they quickly gave themselves the power to keep out whomever they chose on the land they are occupying.
As the days have worn on, the ones banned are primarily Jews.
But even Jews spotted outside the encampment’s entry gates are being harassed.
Meir Weinstein, an easily recognized longtime advocate for the Canadian Jewish community, was confronted by agitators outside the encampment.
They wouldn’t even allow him free access outside the encampment until the campus police showed up.
”They don’t intimidate me but these are the values they want western countries to adopt,” Weinstein said.
Still, one should not be surprised that these entitled little brats and assorted hangers-on in this illegal encampment fail to see the irony of their actions.
From the videos that have been circulated and posted so far, the encampment appears to have drawn the drug and alcohol-addicted along with some very mentally unstable individuals who call people they don’t like obscene and ridiculous names.
They’re the same kind of people, maybe even the same people, I have regularly seen in (and who have tried to chase me out of) Toronto’s homeless park encampments.
Many there, masked with their heads wrapped in shmattas and situated in the same green donated tents, no longer have any clue what they’re fighting for.
It’s certainly not for a ceasefire.
Now, manipulated by the evil interlopers who are not students and the pro-Iran media shills, they mouth the demands for UofT to divest from Israel and stop associating with Israeli academics.
I especially love the anti-Israel vitriol from Samira Mohyeddin, a lesbian who bills herself an award-winning journalist. She’s been at the encampment every day, posting her pro-Iran comments on X and Instagram.
It seems she’s a perfect example of how Israel hatred outweighs support for a misogynistic and homophobic regime.
Make no mistake, divestment is a key element of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, one of the purest forms of anti-Semitism.
Like Columbia and UCLA, I predict this will not end well.
Instead of dealing with this illegal occupation firmly at the outset, the same weak administrators will allow this encampment to fester until the protesters get testy and increasingly violent.
In other words, they’ve allowed the dregs of society to call the shots.
Once things get out of control or someone gets hurt, they will call the police in a panic to help them clear out the occupiers.
Of course, the pro-Hamas crowd will get all kinds of media attention as they are arrested.
But they won’t have to worry.
Paramount Fine Foods owner Mohamad Fakih, who has been tweeting anti-Israel vitriol for seven months, has generously offered to cover their legal expenses.
To be frank, you can’t make this stuff up.
