Tony Keller, Globe and Mail, May 6, 2024
On Sunday night, I took a walk around the self-proclaimed “People’s Circle for Palestine.” King’s College Circle, at the centre of the University of Toronto’s downtown campus, was a hive of activity. The administration fenced off the area in a bid to prevent it becoming an encampment, but the fencing is now at the service of the protesters, allowing them to control the area inside, which is the size of a couple of football fields, and keep others out.
At the gate at the north end, there’s a constant flow of people coming and going. Almost everyone is masked. There are masked sentries at intervals inside the fence, and more masked people outside. As I did a lap of the perimeter at 11 p.m., protesters were busy stapling blue plastic tarps onto the fence, creating six-foot-high privacy screens.
It’s basically a gated community.
This protest and others like it are the latest manifestation of the long-running BDS movement – the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel. The aim is to persuade governments, businesses and universities to apply economic pressure on Israel. The model is the 1980s movement to divest from apartheid-era South Africa. The protesters want economic tools to be used against Israel, which they almost always refer to as an “apartheid” state. …SOURCE