The photograph shows six young people in keffiyehs, some with their faces covered, sitting outside reading quotations from Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong.  The poster has been circulated by the McGill University chapter of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), which is a recognized club at the Montreal university.

“The Summer Youth Program,” the poster reads, “Launching 06.17.2024.”

One is holding a machine gun.  Another has a rifle.  

The poster is still on the Instagram account of SPHR McGill. When it appeared last week, it caused a firestorm, and headlines around the world.  The Jerusalem Post called it “Camp Intifada.” Britain’s The Guardian observed how the poster “featured masked guerillas.”

A federal cabinet minister, very close to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (himself a McGill alumni), issued a statement condemning the poster. “Enough is enough, this is hate speech and incitement to hate, pure and simple,” Immigration Minister Marc Miller wrote on X. “De-escalation at McGill has clearly failed. This needs to end!”

Many questions arise.  Who is SPHR, the group that is promoting the “Summer Camp?” What is the camp’s program? Who are the people in the photo on the poster? Is it legal to seemingly advertise a “camp” like that? What, if anything, are the authorities doing about it?

First off: who is Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR)? 

SPHR is a club recognized by the student union at McGill. It was founded more than two decades ago, and is supported by the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU), in the past via funds it receives from student tuition. The SSMU describe SPHR on their web site as “a student-led club that champions the Palestinian liberation struggle settler-colonialism, apartheid, and genocide based on principles of anti-colonial solidarity. We also advocate for the rights of Palestinian students in the face of racism, misinformation, harrassment [sic], and surveillance at McGill, as well as campaign for the end of the University’s complicity in the colonization of Palestine.”

But SPHR McGill – like SPHR “clubs” found at several Canadian universities, like Concordia, Western, Lethbridge, Calgary, McMaster, Queen’s and the University of Ottawa, among others –  isn’t really what it claims to be.  SPHR is really just a front for another, more openly-extremist group: Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

SJP is one of the most powerful anti-Israel – and antisemitic – groups in the world, with chapters at universities and colleges across Canada, the United States and overseas.  Founded at UC Berkeley in 2001, SJP has been linked to extremism and terrorism from the start.  Since the October 7 massacre by Hamas in Israel, its leadership and membership have become more and more open in their support for Hamas, for which SJP provides public relations in North America.  

In Canada, SJP/SPHR voices applauded the atrocities of that day.  At McGill, SJP/SPHR posted this online on October 8: “MONTREAL: ALL OUT FOR PALESTINE – Last night, the resistance in Gaza led a heroic attack against the occupation and has taken over 30 hostages …Their march toward liberation is as monumental as their rockets – the resistance will free the prisoners who have been facing a fascist attack by the occupation and liberate our land from the fangs of the enemy. The resistance has set a new precedent for the Palestinian struggle – our right to resist the occupation, to defend the land, and to free our prisoners are the utmost priorities. We call on our people in Montreal and in the far diaspora to celebrate the resistance’s success, to uplift their calls, and to march this Sunday Oct 8 at 2pm at Dorchester Square.”

McGill’s provost condemned the club’s celebration of the October 7 and hostage-taking, just as its president, Deep Saini, condemned the “Summer Youth Program” poster: “This is extremely alarming…It has attracted international media attention, and many in our community have understandably reached out to express grave concerns — concerns that I share.”

But, despite all the protestations, the SJP chapter calling itself SPHR remains a recognized and supported club at McGill University.

Next: what is the “Summer Camp” program?

In their explanation, rife with errors, SPHR/SJP write: “We pledge to educate the youth of montreal [sic] and redefine McGill’s ‘elite’ instutional [sic] legacy by transformining [sic] its space into one of revolutionary education. The daily schedule will include physical activity, Arabic language instruction, cultural crafts, political discussions, historical and revolutionary lessons.” The camp would be offered by students, community members and McGill faculty, SPHR/SJP say.  

The first week will focus on “the history of the Palestinian resistance.” The second, “the ongoing Nakba” – Nakba being the Arabic word for catastrophe, and what Hamas has said is the “natural extension of the Palestinian people’s right and resistance.”

Week three will be focussed on “different fronts of the movement.” The final week is about “media after October 7.” It is worth noting that the SPHR/SJP chapter at McGill called Hamas’ slaughter of 1,200 men, woman, children and babies on October 7 “heroic,” quote unquote.  The university and the student union insisted that SPHR/SJP remove “McGill” from their name after that.  But, as noted, they have allowed it to remain a recognized club – and do not disclose how much funding it has received via the university and the student union in the past.

Who, then, are the six people pictured on the poster for the camp?

The photos are members of the Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), when the PLO was considered a terrorist organization.  The photo was taken in Jordan in 1970.  The group are showing interest in Mao Zedong’s words, presumably, because the Chinese Communist party supported the PLO at that time.

Asked by the media about the image of masked gunmen advertising a “Summer Camp,” a co-ordinator of Concordia’s SPHR/SJP chapter, Zeyad Abisaab, shrugged, saying people should stop focussing on the photo. “It’s a space for people to learn. It’s an educational space,” he said of the camp.

Two final questions, then: is it legal to advertise a camp where the use of weapons is promoted? And what, if anything, are the authorities doing about it?

These questions are the easiest to answer. The only place where firearms training is legal in Canada is with accredited Canadian Firearms Safety courses, approved by the RCMP. Since 1977, no one – other than the police or the military – may possess automatic weapons, full stop.  Sentences for those convicted of possessing a light machine gun like the one in the “camp” photo range up to ten years in federal prison.

Finally, what are the authorities doing about the SPHR/SJP “Summer Camp,” with its wilful promotion of hateful words and images?

Nothing.  Nothing at all.  Camp started this week.

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It’s the tale – the tell – of the tape.

You’d think after Rodney King, the anti-Israel cabal would know: everyone carries a camera and a camcorder in their pocket, these days. And, if you do something bad – cursing at an elderly Jewish woman, say, or vandalizing a sign for a Jewish religious group, or peering through the windows at a Zionist writer’s home – you’re likelier to be caught than in 1990.

In the very next year, 1991, Rodney King was nearly beaten to death by four Los Angeles police officers, at gunpoint, during a traffic stop. Someone videotaped the beating, which put King in the hospital for days. The four officers were charged with multiple offences because of the tape, then acquitted by a jury without a single black person on it. Riots started, and dozens of people died in the aftermath.

So, videotape evidence of hateful acts have become pretty important since Rodney King.

Ask Soheil Homayed and Hussein Salame, of the Canadian sales firm YESA, for example. A few days ago, these two hulking men showed up at a pro-Israel rally outside the big shopping mall in Belleville, Ont. They started to curse at an elderly Jewish woman, who looked to be about 90 pounds soaking wet. Here’s what they said to her, while someone else recorded the exchange off to the side.

Homayed, holding up his phone and apparently filming the woman, sneers at her: “You support genocide!” Salame, standing beside him in a YESA hoodie and sunglasses, repeats the allegation, then says: “You stand for murder!”

Both yell “F— Israel” a few times, and someone, possibly another person, seems to tell the Jewish woman to “go back to Israel.”

The elderly Jewish woman is completely unfazed by Homayed and Salame, who tower over her.

“We’re not bothering you! Go over there,” she says, pointing at a group of pro-Palestinian protesters who have set up down the block.

Homayed and Salame curse at her some more and then slouch away.

Since they were wearing YESA insignia and employed there, we contacted the company.

“Both of these gentlemen received corrective and disciplinary actions of a serious nature,” a spokesperson said, refusing to say what the “serious nature” discipline was.

She wouldn’t say if they had been dismissed, either, although photos of the two men are (for now) not found on the YESA website. Asked about the apparent “go back to Israel” comment in emails, Homayed did not respond.

Another incident was also caught on tape. on Monday.

Just 24 hours after 50,000 Jews and allies marched up Bathurst St. in Toronto for the UJA’s Walk With Israel, two masked men appeared on Bathurst. One was holding a Palestinian flag. As cars and trucks go by, they commenced vandalizing a sign promoting a pro-Israel event hosted by the Jewish Charity Chabad Ontario.

A resident happened to be at the corner of Bathurst St. and Wilson Ave. and started filming. In the resulting video, the pair can be seen crossing out the word “Israel” with black marker and drawing an inverted red triangle below it, along with the words, “Free Gaza.”

Why the red triangle? Because it’s a symbol of Hamas. Hamas use the red triangle to identify Jews who have been marked for a targeted killing.

So, one day after 50,000 Jews celebrated being together, anti-Israel types show up to literally promote assassination of Jews. In broad daylight.

Facts Matter, a group that opposes anti-Semitism (and which was founded, in part, by this writer), notified Chabad Ontario and the Toronto Police Service, who are now investigating.

Final example of video evidence, closer to home: while I was at the Walk With Israel event, an unidentified man was caught on tape peering in windows at remote and unlisted rural home – and, later, moving in and out of the home of a “neighbor” who has publicly accused Israel of genocide. The OPP are investigating that, too.

Moral of the story, for Canadian Jews and their allies: always keep your phone close, and always be ready to capture some video.

You never know when it might come in handy.

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 One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.

Twenty years ago right about now, my brother Kevin called me from Kingston General Hospital to tell me that our father was dead. “He is with Nanny and Pappy,” Kevin said.

I rushed to the hospital and ran up the stairs and stood at the doorway of the tiny room in which Dr. T Douglas Kinsella MD, OC, had died, very early on June 15, 2004. It was a small room, and my father had refused an offer to put him in a larger one, in the very building where he had saved and healed lives many years before. Better that someone else use it, he had said. He was like that.

I couldn’t look at him, but I couldn’t not look at him. No one spoke. I loathed Father’s Day after that, because I had lost mine.

Through the window of his room, if you were at the right angle, I recall you could see shiny, tiny white sailboats bouncing on Lake Ontario, like little flickers of light. I felt angry at the sailboats, that morning. Why couldn’t they be still? Didn’t they know this great man who had died? How could they not know? Why were they not in mourning, as we were?

Because he was a truly great man; he was. When I was young, I assumed that everybody had a Dad like that. But I eventually learned that they didn’t, and that my brothers and I were very, very lucky.

What a man he was. What a giant in our lives he was!

He came from a poor Irish family in Montreal. As a boy, he overcame rheumatic fever, and decided that he would become a doctor to help those who experience that affliction, and other afflictions. He served in the military, won distinction at Loyola and McGill, and he married my Mom – this radiant, boundlessly-beautiful, dark-haired artist from the East End – and they raised us four boys in Montreal, then Dallas, then Kingston, then back to Montreal and then on to Calgary. He published papers and books. He won awards. He received the Order of Canada.

Some nights at the dinner table, when it got quiet, he’d offer the same piece of advice to me and my brothers and my best friends: love people, and be honest. He always followed that advice, without fail. Me, not so much. I think about that whenever I think of him, too.

And what would he think of the life I have had? That is something that every son wonders about every father, whether they admit it or not. I certainly do. And what would he think of two of my sons, or two of the women I lived with? Would he think less of me, or them?

Even though it has been 20 years, I can still hear his voice; I can still see his handsome face. And, like so many sons of so many departed fathers, I would truly give anything to spend an hour with him again. To ask him what he thinks, to ask him what to do.

About my fight against bigots and haters, seemingly everywhere in these dark days, I think that he would tell me to keep going, but to be careful. About my writing and art, he would tell me to never let those things go, I think, because they offer a bit of life after death. About those I loved and now despise – he would tell me to forgive.

Father’s Day, my father’s final day: I have no acquired wisdom to pass along to you, even after 20 years have slid past. Just the obvious, the thing that you have heard one hundred times: that life goes by so quickly, like a bit of cloud on a blustery day. It arcs across the sky and is gone before you know it. So, cherish every moment of joy. Hug those you love. Dance, sing, laugh. Forgive, if you can.

A couple of nights ago, I was on the 401 and signaling to go into the slow lane and exit at Cobourg, when I saw – in the corner of my eye – a truck barreling towards me at what look like double the posted speed. I swerved and he missed me by maybe a foot; I almost felt it on my skin, it was so close. I exited, and this madman continued rocketing up the 401, moving in and out of traffic until he was out of sight. I hoped he didn’t hurt anyone.

It was only when I stopped that I realized I had come pretty close to getting killed by him. And, when I thought about it – maybe a bit shaky,  certainly a bit breathless like I was at the door to that hospital room 20 years ago – I thought I came within a foot of seeing my Dad again.

And I regretted that I had lost that chance, because he is an angel now – on this, my Father’s Day.

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Their heroes take hostages.

So, now, they’re doing likewise.

Right now, today, that’s what us happening at California State University in Los Angeles: a pro-Hamas gang – after illegally occupying university property for weeks – have taken hostages. As I write this, somewhere between 50 and 100 “protestors” have blocked the ground floor exits at the Student Services Building at CSU, and set up barricades around the building.

They vandalized the inside of the building, stolen equipment, and used trashed vehicles to set up a barricade at the front of the building.

And they took hostages, just like their Hamas heroes in Gaza.

The school’s president, Berenecea Johnson Eanes, was “sheltering in place” in her office on the eighth floor on Wednesday and Thursday. And an unknown number of staff were being held inside the building, too. Meanwhile, outside the building, university employees were told to leave, quickly, because of the potential danger.

CSU spokesman Erik Hollins said: “I can confirm that there are still a small number of administrators in the building. We are working through options to bring this fluid situation to the best resolution possible.”

Across Canada and the United States, there are dozens of illegal occupations of university campuses like CSU. They claim to favor divestment of dealings with Israel. But – after a certain number of assaults of Jews and Hitler salutes and displays of Hamas symbols – everyone knows that just isn’t true, anymore.

After witnessing months of well-funded, well-organized “protests” at places of so-called higher learning, we all now know the truth: if you are wearing a mask at an “encampment,” chanting about genocide by the Jewish state, you are an antisemite. Full stop.

So who is overseeing this antisemitic madness on North American campuses? Who is really running the Jew-hating show at Canadian campuses like U of T and McGill, and American campuses like CSU and Columbia?

Picture a flowchart, with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the centre. It is the ringleader. It is the not-so-hidden hand. And it has hundreds of chapters across Canada and the United States, and now controls antisemitic and anti-Western activity at those campuses.

SJP’s activities are overseen by a shadowy group called National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP). The NSJP was created by something called American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). SJP is the offspring of NSJP, in effect, and NSJP is the child of AMP.

And AMP, as described in pleadings filed in the state of Virginia a few weeks ago, is “Hamas propaganda division” in North America. Anyone watching the insanity at places like CSU and McGill – which also saw a university building occupied a few days ago, until Montreal police drove them out with batons and rubber bullets – isn’t surprised by that. SJP, NSJP and AMP are pretty open about what they do, and how they do it.

But AMP, the grandparent of all this, is very, very circumspect about its ultimate parentage: it is a creation of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is behind every Islamic terrorist organization on Earth.

The Muslim Brotherhood created a Palestine Committee in the U.S. in 1988. That committee was itself made up of several organizations, like the Holy Land Foundation, the Islamic Association of Palestine and the American Muslim Society. All of them, it turned out, were working directly with Hamas on public relations efforts in North America.

But they all got caught. They were found criminally and civilly liable for aiding and abetting a terror group. They were shut down.

And then, just a few years later, a new alphabet-soup of pro-Hamas organizations rose out of the ashes of the old ones. They were led by most of the same people, at the same offices, doing the same things: AMP, NSJP, SJP. Except, this time, they’re being careful. They’ve learned their lesson.

Lane Kendall is a researcher and academic in the U.S. and has worked to untie the new web of pro-Hamas front companies and organizations. In an interview, Kendall said: “If you look back far enough into how SJP came to be, it connects directly to the Muslim Brotherhood. And the Muslim Brotherhood is very much a terrorist organization that is at the foundation of every terrorist movement in the Middle East. Without the Muslim Brotherhood, the SJP doesn’t exist. So that’s why we all should be concerned about SJP – because they’re very much in bed with, and funded by and organized by, the same people that are funding and organizing Hamas and Hezbollah.”

But why do terrorists bother with privileged, inexperienced white college students in the U.S. and Canada? Says Kendall: “The organizational power of students is underestimated. I’d be willing to bet, for example, that the Liberal Party of Canada depends very heavily on young voters. And if the Liberal Party has to cater to young voters, and all of a sudden young voters have the same policy that terrorist organizations have? Well, now you have terrorist organizations able to directly influence policymaking decisions at the highest levels.”

And, now, they’ve become so bold – and so indifferent to the rule of law – they’re taking hostages and shutting down public institutions. Concludes Lane Kendall: “We need to get to the bottom of the funding and the control of these organizations. Right now.”

Will we? Or will it take another hostage-taking – or a killing – to force us to finally act?

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