DISCORDIA (2004)
“you DISGUST me!” — “LIKEWISE.”
In September 2002, a ‘riot’ broke out at Concordia university, a place I would study at only a few years later. The clash was the result of the international student group Hillel inviting Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to their dedicated pro-Isreal members on campus. When the rest of the student body learned of this plan, a multitude of left wing, Arab, and Palestinian student groups joined forces to protest his presence. The clash led to two broken windows in the main building and some broken furniture. The cops beat and pepper-sprayed the protestors and arrested 5 students. Ultimately Netanyahu stayed in his Ritz Carlton hotel room only a few blocks away and was unable to speak at the planned event.
In 2004, filmmakers Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal released their documentary Discordia about the event and its aftermath. Using a combination of news footage and exclusive interviews with various organizers, they document the fallout within the halls of the university. The university suspended all Middle Eastern activities for two months. The student union eventually banned Hillel, while the leaders of the protest faced suspension and criminal charges. Global TV aired a hit piece labeling the leader of the SPHR as an anti-semite. And while all sides are represented equitably in this documentary, the film’s moral compass is clear. “There’s no way that we can allow this war criminal on campus” explains the student union VP Aaron Maté in the film’s opening scene.
In 2002, at the time of the protest, Netanyahu was building his comeback campaign after being ousted as leader of Isreal’s Likud party following a series of mounting corruption scandals. During his tenur as Israel’s Prime Minister between 1996 and 1999, he derailed the Oslo peace accords by refusing to restore any rights to the Palestinians. He expressed that doing so would mean capitulating to the organized suicide bombings that terrorized Israel, though by refusing to negotiate at all, he accelerated the desperation of an entire population and left them few options. Just days after Netanyahu was chased out of Montreal, he appeared before US congress to encourage the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass distruction. “If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region” he stated.
The media distortions around the Concodria protests back in September 2002 are similar to the distortions told about the Maple Spring student protests here in 2012. Then, students were demanding affordable education from the corrupt Quebec government, but media coverage seized on a singular broken window to dismiss an entire movement, a movement that would eventually destroy the reputations of two major political parties in the province. These same distortions are being used to dismiss the massive pro-palestinian & anti-NATO student-led protests here in Montreal two weeks ago. Broken windows dominated the headlines in Canadian media, painting Quebecers as annoying troublemakers once again. The actions of one ‘spoiler’ was enough to fuel cries of anti-semitism, allowing the Quebec government to deny their own complicity in an ongoing genocide.
I reached out to William Wilson, a photojournalist in Montreal who’s been covering protests for 10 years, to hear first hand his experience at the protests. During the march, he and a friend were targeted by a police officer and pepper sprayed directly in the face. “Those big cans of pepper spray, they’re kind of like a paint can… I wasn’t warned ever. He was never like ‘bouge’ [move] or anything, it just happened. He knew I was a photographer. It was completely malicious.” After this, the protest escalated. Protestors threw rocks at cops dressed in riot gear, and a few broke windows on the north side of the conference building (where the NATO summit was being held). The cops retreated at first, but came back with force, shooting tear gas pellets down multiple streets and then charging at whomever was left.
“It was a disgrace as usual,” said Wilson, “like the people who are still there [after the tear gas] are almost always just the people who can’t run as fast, or the people who are suffering from tear gas or they’re already injured. … There’s some photos I have of three young women, one of them was crying a lot, and clearly in distress. And one officer… started absolutely wailing on them… He’s doing like a full 180 swing with a windup. … They were screaming “stop, stop, stop” … Once I heard the screaming, I ran over and started shooting. And I have like 15 photos, and maybe a couple seconds where I just kept my finger on the shutter. So you can see at least three or four swings — windup, impact, windup, impact. … He’s putting so much force into this hit. … I’ve spoken to [the women], I’ve sent them all the photos, they all were hospitalized. One of them had surgery on her hand, another one had broken bones.”
Despite initial headlines of cars being torched, the truth was very different. “I didn’t see a single instance the entire night,” Wilson told me, “other than the Netanyahu effigy, of any protesters lighting any fires. … The protesters wouldn’t fucking light some random dude’s car on fire. If they were to light a car on fire, it would be a cop car.” Wilson confirmed what many suspected, that the tear gas pellets and canisters were the reason parked cars exploded into flames. “The tear gas is just so indiscriminate and so destructive,” he continued. “Like they probably tear gassed thousands of people that night who weren’t a part of the protest and everyone who was in their houses or apartment buildings and businesses along the way.” Later when the mayor and police spoke to the media, they specified that only 20 to 40 of the 800 protestors were troublemakers, and that there were a few professional vandals that caused trouble. “Oh, where’s this money at?” quipped Wilson during our conversation. “What do you mean? Who’s getting paid? … You guys were fucking beating the shit out of 100% of the people, you were using tear gas against 100% of the people. Those riot charges don’t discriminate. Like, I was a fucking journalist. Was I a professional vandal because I was there? Is that why I got pepper spray?”
I felt compelled to revisit Discordia 20 years after its release because the ICC has finally issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu. I first started writing this in an airport terminal, as silent newscasts calling for Netanyahu’s arrest played on every TV. That day protesters flodded the same Concordia building as they did back in 2002, facing off with cops and israel-supporters. I continued writing this in my friend’s kitchen on the other side of the country while opportunist pundits claimed that my Montreal hometown was ‘burning’. And the media once again behaved as if broken windows deserve equal outrage to the ongoing violations of human rights.
Discordia is free to watch on the National Film Board’s website, and presents an intimate look into one very specific incident. Concordia University continues to preach education and discussion while also allowing the police to attack students. In September, they allowed the police to harass and attack students during a planned walk-out. The increased police presence on campus led to more protests, and on October 31st police used Concordia’s art installation room to actually detain students. The November 21st protests, and the police response, are the same as it ever was. “It’s the same cops,” Wilson emphasized when we spoke. “It’s literally the same guys. Like I recognize them and they recognize me and they’ve been doing the same thing that they did in 2015 when I first started doing this.”
This was where this article was supposed to end, but a few nights ago, anti-facists activists who were protesting a neo-nazi band were attacked in the street by the police. On an Instagram post, Wilson explained that the police “attacked the crowd completely unprovoked with batons and pepper spray, once again pepper spraying me at close range for absolutely no reason.” When I reached out to him with concern, he explained “they did the exact same thing, same officer in the command.” The community has since released a detailed account of all the injuries from the night of the 21st, citing officers number 5451 and 7854 as the ones who inflicted the most violence.
Discordia is as relevant today as it was back then. As long as our institutions protect austerity and genocide, people will be protesting in the streets. I take comfort in looking at the collective actions of the past — it reminds me that many others have been doing this work for a long time, and that there is more work to be done.
BC — December 2024
- BDS Coalition — CDPQ has at least $14B of Quebec pension contributors and recipients public pension money invested in Israeli war crimes
- CBC — Students hold pro-Palestinian strikes and protest across Quebec
- CTV News — Montreal mayor says Friday pro-Palestinian protests were taken over by ‘professional vandals’
- CTV News — Second Cup takes back Montreal franchise over hateful incident
- City News Everywhere — Montreal police chief expects additional arrests following anti-NATO protest
- MSN — Cars burned, windows smashed at pro-Palestinian, anti-NATO demonstration in Montreal
- The Montreal Gazette — Quebec condemns Nazi reference at pro-Palestinian protest in Montreal
- The Montreal Gazette — Violent protests expose crisis of confidence in leadership
- NFB — Discordia
- The New York Post — How Montreal became the antisemitism capital of North America
- The New York Times — Kerry Reminds Congress Netanyahu Advised U.S. to Invade Iraq
