Letter from Dr. Stuart Kamenetsky to University of Toronto Senior administrators on the harassment of Jewish Students on October 7

October 7, 2025

Dear University of Toronto Senior Administrators:

Today, a group of Jewish students peacefully commemorating the savage murder of Jews on October 7th 2023 were bullied, harassed and threatened by a hateful mob. The Jewish students were members of the UTM Jewish Student Association (JSA), a registered student club who requested and got permission to table a commemorative display to share with the community the collective pain of the Jewish people for what has become the worst

pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust. They sat peacefully behind a table covered in yellow with various exhibits (see attached picture) and were supported by a member of Hillel, Ontario. While this event was planned to take place from 1:30-3:30 pm at the hall between the CCIT building and the library, campus police, who were informed about this event in advance, decided to move it to Davis, between Tim Horton’s and the four lecture

halls, a common spot for such tables. I’ve been supporting (on and off) the activities of the JSA since October 7th, 2023. A JSA student who is in one of my classes told me about this event. I immediately offered to attend and support, and encouraged others to do the same. When I arrived at around 1:45 pm things were peaceful. Several students stopped by and asked questions. Some of them were naïve and others were a bit confrontational but overall, this was a typical peaceful tabling event until two students (one male and one female) came by and were quite agitated and looked for verbal confrontation. They challenged the JSA students as to whether or not Oct 7th even happened, whether or not babies were burnt and whether or not women were raped, etc. They moved on to assert that Zionists are colonizers and that Jews have no right to be in Israel at all and that Israel is a fake state. JSA students answered patiently and the agitators left. At that point, I advised the JSA students to not get into arguments and just assert that as Jews we are marking the two year commemoration of a horrific massacre and that there are other venues and other opportunities to debate politicly. Shortly after (perhaps 2:45 pm) they returned with a large group (perhaps 30-40 agitators) who approached us looking initially for verbal confrontation. It started with questions with unsatisfactory answers to them after which they raised their voices shouting anti Zionist slogans at the students and I. They yelled “shame, shame” and one of them targeted me noting that I was older and likely a professor.

Campus police stepped in to separate between us. The same young man tried to get the officer to let him get closer to me claiming that he couldn’t hear me. The officer would not allow this and before you know it, several officers escorted us out of the area through a hall leading to the student services area. Quite a few people were present or in close vicinity including the acting Dean of Student Affairs, the Director of the Career Centre and others.

Reflecting on this a few hours later, this was among the scariest experiences of my life (please note that I served in the IDF for three years fighting terrorists in Lebanon in the 1980s). The mob was full of hatred. It seemed to me that if they could have physically attacked us, they would have, It felt like they wanted blood, and the police acted

accordingly. The JSA students were traumatized, some crying, some shaking, all in disbelief that this could happen. One of them may not be writing a test scheduled for tomorrow.

They are afraid to come back to campus as many in the mob took pictures. I’m afraid to come back to campus. And this is the second time for me, the first being shortly after Oct 7, 2023, when 2500 students signed a petition against me after I posted a Charlie Hebdo anti-Hamas caricature on my Linkedin page. I subsequently had police protection for most of that term (see Universities in Crisis | Opinion: There is no academic freedom for Jewish faculty at the University of Toronto).

So, at the end of the day, as someone who has alerted the senior administration repeatedly since 2019 and published articles criticizing UofT’s mishandling of the anti-Israel/

Antisemitic crisis – nothing has changed:

• Members of the Jewish community are traumatized by such events and are afraid to come to campus.

• Free speech seems to be for the antisemitic mob and not for anyone else, certainly not Jews.

• Despite the university being warned and alerted (in this case, that October 7th is certainly not a day to allow hateful groups to celebrate the “martyrs” that beheaded, burnt and raped Jews) – in the holy name of “free speech” they were allowed to hold hateful events and are emboldened to step up their hateful activities that go against everything the university stands for.

• Even the UN, which has been obsessed with its one-sided criticism of Israel, states that “There are historical precedents showing that hate speech can be a precursor to atrocity crimes”. Like we saw in Manchester on Yom Kippur – it’s just a matter of time until a Jewish student, staff or faculty member is murdered at our university.

Israeli Consul, Idit Shamir, gave a powerful address at Beth Tzedek Synagogue October 5th, commemorating the October 7th massacre (under unprecedented security). She looked

directly at the elected officials in the room including Toronto’s Mayor and Ontario’s Premier and accused them of weak leadership. What took place today at UTM was due to weak leadership at the UofT over many, many years. I witnessed this as did many others. The phrase "It starts with the Jews, but it doesn’t end with the Jews" is well known. While Jewish persecution is a problem, its part of a larger issue of intolerance that will eventually affect everyone and is the sign of a decaying society. I hope that this event at UTM today is a wakeup call.

Stuart B. Kamenetsky, Ph.D

Professor, Teaching Stream

Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences Institute for the Study of University Pedagogy University of Toronto Mississauga