Bambi just read in India Today (https://shorturl.at/zz6Br) about the McGill graduating student who spat on the Dean and another faculty member while waking on the stage to get her diploma. Her motivation is apparently what she wrote on her sign: “Divest from Death“. By death, she meant Israel. A couple of years ago, this sign could have been about BLM or Climate Change. Today, it is about boycotting Israel or divestment from Israeli institutions, including universities of this country.
Whether the Dean and the professor truly received her saliva on them (luckily this did not happen during the coronavirus pandemic) is irrelevant here, despite the minimization of the incident by the university administrators. With the encampment protests on the university’s private property, the latter have seemed to be coward, maybe resistant, or maybe also limited in action by the Mayor of Montreal’s apparently favourable attitude toward the demonstrators or by court decisions, etc.
The irony is that a few homeless people have joined them in the encampment. Cleverly, they thought the city and the police will leave them alone now. They finally feel protected. Bambi learned the latter from TVA News two days ago (https://shorturl.at/ogxDz). The other related irony is that, in his column of May 16, 2024, Mr. Richard Martineau joked by giving homeless people the following advice: “Message to the homeless: if you don’t want the makeshift camps you set up all over the city to be dismantled, raise a Palestinian flag above your tents”. In other terms, a Palestinian flag would make them acceptable by the authorities or untouchable, so to speak. It turned out that there was truth in his funny piece advice.
This being said, Bambi is reporting the above while finding it deeply sad to see the misery of homeless people as well as the tragic suffering of the innocent Palestinian people (paying the price of both the actions of Hamas on the tragic October 7 and the harsh yet expected response of Israel, while being used/abused by those pretending to care for them). She happens to also see the absurd entitlement of some of Canada’s protesters and this is just an example. Of course, thankfully, she also sees that many genuinely care from a human perspective (not through a woke or a conformist lens).
To come back to the story of this graduating student, Bambi finds it sad and worrisome to think that our higher education system is producing graduates with such an impolite attitude or behaviour. One day, this lady and others will become the leaders of our society and country. She hopes that they will gain more perspective, wisdom, and diplomacy in the future. Of note, she is saying so, regardless of the cause du jour. This time, this incident is about boycotting Israel. Tomorrow about what?
To conclude this post, Bambi will allow herself to borrow the wise words of the late grandma of her brother-in-law. She used to say: “Even Jesus did not rally all the people around him when he came to the world: some believed he was the Messiah. Some did not“. This means that any topic or story will result in some people cheering for it and others condemning it (and many others indifferent or without any opinion). To illustrate the latter phenomenon, Bambi will share two comments by India Today’s readers (https://shorturl.at/zz6Br): the first was “Take away her degree. Don’t tolerate this. Shameful gesture needs to be punished“. The second is “Great for the students who have the integrity and courage to stand up against zionazism, unlike the Modi”. And you, what do you think of such ways of protesting or expressing a political opinion, regardless of the latter? Is this expression healthy and wise? And, if not, what could have been done alternatively or elsewhere?
