Next up:

Shane Martinez, talking about interlocutory injunctions. He speaks specifically about the attempts to enjoin the Al-Quds Day march, and Tafsik's attempt to prevent the Palestinian flag being raised over City Hall.

For the AQD rally:
• There was no record even of arrests at past events.
• The premise was the poster had a picture of a burning building and the words no to war, and they claimed that the building might be in Israel.

Section 2C of the Charter was upheld.

For the second matter(flag-raising):
• There was no serious that should be tried;
• the City had full authority to raise the flag and
• Canada had recognized the state of Palestine.

Tafsik repeatedly put falsehoods in their sworn statements to the Court.

Court found there would be no irreparable harm to the Jewish community in fact there were Jewish people at the flag raising. In fact it would do irreparable harm to the Palestinian Community by denying them access to a service given to other communities.

The bottom line is that even though the claims are ridiculous, you have to invest the time and resources to counter them, and you cannot assume the Court will find them as meritless as you do.

#LawAndProtest

Up now:

Stephen Ellis.

He is speaking about the attempted injunction at the 401 Overpass, and the University of Waterloo attempted injunction against their encampment, (which the university did not even have to test because the students folded as a result of the threat).

The first one was brought by B'nai Brith and it was moot as the police had already stated they were not going to allow any protests there.

The University of Waterloo threatened to sue the students for a million and a half dollars. The students responded by leaving. The admin at the University of Waterloo is still pursuing the student group.

He is also mentioning McGill, two actions that were brought to the Superior Court, claiming that Jewish students felt intimidated by the encampment and threatened by its existence. The students making the claim made no actual evidence of any imminent harm, and that was thrown out.

Contrast that with the University of Toronto where the strategy was to go with property rights, and it was upheld.

In the end, McGill ended up agreeing to disclose their Investments. Thus the students won before they left.

#LawAndProtest

4/🧵

First general question: how long have injunctions been used to suppress political accidents?

🔸️🔸️🔸️(These are not direct quotes, I am paraphrasing to try to get as much of it captured.)🔸️🔸️🔸️

🔸️SE:
Is not aware of any use of any injunctions against Palestinian solidarity prior to October 7th, 2023. Avenue Road may have been the first in 2024.

The use of injunctions implies that Zionists have lost the argument, they've lost the moral argument, and must rely on the brute force of the state to enforce this control.

This is the context of Bill c9. They do not have a leg at to stand on.

🔸️FB: Injunctions as a strategy goes back to the early 20th century against labour actions.

We've now seen police doing things I haven't done before and changing procedure, we are looking at massive invasions of privacy digital information sharing, it's really quite worrying. I think the comparison to the early 20th century is contextualizing, and it's not that different given the type of struggle.

It is the state versus people demanding change.

🔸️Audience Member: injunctions are most definitely used against indigenous communities.

5/🧵

What is the difference between universities using the injunctions and how the Court rules?

SM:
I think what accounts for the difference is the courts recognition or conceptualization of universities as being not wholly public institutions but rather kind of straddling a public and private zone and and therefore deciding things a bit differently there as we've seen.

Calling people antisemitic for organizing for Palestine runs parallel to calling people communist or agents for Russia when people are organizing for labour.

Emilio Dabed, the moderator, discusses ludicrous precedent of ignoring the fact that universities are public spaces paid for in part by the students they're suppressing.

FB:
Even then (re UofT encampment) the judge acknowledged property rights, and said that people could not live there "permanently", they had the right to protest every single day from 7:00 a.m. till 9:00 p.m.

The big gain was the Court outright stating that these student protesters are not violent and are not anti-Semitic.

What he finds disconcerting is the finding that the Charter is not necessarily applicable to University campuses.

6/🧵
(I was poking dinner and missed capturing the question. We'll have to figure it out from the context of the answers.)

SE: The courts are starting to grapple with the concept of anti-Palestinian racism, it was positive that the court said in the Tafsik's case that the raising of the flag in no way it is an issue of safety.

The people bringing for these cases rely on racist tropes that Palestinian people are violent. These appear to be being rejected by the Courts, such as the one at the University, that Jewish students are in no way under threat by the existence of the encampment.

The people who are seeking these injunctions are absolutely shameless in their lives. They are surprised when they discovered that the courts need some sort of evidence not just the tropes.

Do we see any patterns or parallels to be made between the different injunctions being sought? What lessons can be learned for future protests and community mobilization? Also how are you addressing the increasing instrumentalization of the Courts in this way?

SM:
This is just starting, as empires are shifting and changing we'll see more of this. More organizations that are adjacent to the state will become more aggressive and desperate and you will see more of these strategies.

Addressing this requires more people at the ready, between lawyers and community groups to understand what's happening and address these strategies. Because we are going to see more of it and we need to be prepared for it.

FB:
Developing our ability to defend against the use of injunctions by government and governmental actors is important going forward. We must also remember that injunctions are available to those of us who are not agents of the state and who are disempowered.

We may lose but we must always remember that there is something that is gained and to understand the strategy and figure out what tactics work in the shifting world. The tactics that the state uses against us out of desperation are tactic we should consider using. Sometimes the best defence is a good offence.

8
We're now moving to the audience questions. The first one is regarding Tafsik:

What repercussions can an organization or individual face for lying in their Court filings?

SM:
They can face criminal charges, and one would think that a police force as vested in what they term the Middle East conflict would be on top of this, but clearly they are not when it is being done by organizations such as this.

9

Don't judges get wise to ungrounded actions such as these that keep being used?

SM:
If some organizations keep getting their injunction filings being dismissed they do as being declared vexatious. I'm not sure that we're quite at that stage yet, but that is a matter of time.

SE:
I think it's going to require greater sophistication on our part to really turn the table on the system, those relying on the system to Cripple our movement. One example is to charge those who are indulging in violence against our movement.

We're working on bringing a charge against [Athena Niggenaber] who drove a snowplow through a protest, or the man who took out a nail gun and hurled racist epithets at protesters. Police did nothing.

We have to be willing to do this ourselves.

But it's not just being more sophisticated in our legal supports but also to build solidarity with workers and organizations who can defend encampments or defend protesters such as Fred Hahn at CUPE.