In the wake of the Hamas assault of October 7, journalists indignantly called out feminists for not addressing this violence sufficiently. The same critics have had little to say about the countless overlooked and ignored examples of sexual violence perpetrated against Palestinians in Israeli prisons and by IDF soldiers before and since that day.

Liberal law purports to give everyone the right to think what they like, say what they like. Capitalism makes sure that this admirable goal can never be fully attained. John Galsworthy, writing in the The Forsyte Saga, captured this very nicely: “If a man had money, he was free in law and fact, and if he had no money he was free in law and not in fact.”

Ecuador has historically spurned investor-state dispute settlement, a provision that allows companies to sue countries for alleged violations of trade agreements. This means companies can take states to court if their profits are put at risk by government policies. Since 1986, Ecuador has been forced to pay $10 billion for alleged breaches of its obligations to foreign investors.

Students from all four Montréal universities came together over the last week to express their solidarity with the Palestinian people and pressure their institutions to cut ties with Israel. Following the lead of the camps protests in the United States, they set up an encampment on the grounds of McGill University on April 27.

It would appear that requiring foreign-funded organizations to register with the government is acceptable as long as it is Western states doing the requiring. But when the tables are turned, and it is Western-funded institutions that are being obliged to register, suddenly foreign agent laws turn out to be threats to democracy that are incompatible with fundamental values.

The genocide in Gaza is the moment of moral conscience for this generation, as Vietnam was in the 1960s. As Derek Sayer writes, Israel’s violence and the repression on American university campuses are intimately connected. It is time we lifted our heads from our everyday evasions and diversions, our compromises and complicities, and started to listen to the kids.

Over the past six months, newspapers and television shows in the US have generally written about Israel’s genocidal violence using passive voice. Even on social media, the ax fell on key phrases; for instance, despite his professions of commitment to free speech, Elon Musk said that terms such as “decolonization” and phrases such as “from the river to the sea” would be banned on X.

We are seeing opposing world views play out in clashes between police and professors and their students across American college campuses. It is a harbinger of encampments that have already started to sprout here. Let us hope that authorities and institutions do not see fit to trample upon free speech and academic freedom, mistaking a call for life for its opposite.

Israel’s Western backers know they are losing. They know that, despite the carnage the Israeli military is unleashing on Gaza, it is not any closer to defeating Hamas. They know that Israel is quickly becoming a pariah state, and as its global reputation sinks like an anchor, it’s dragging down Western credibility with it.

There are many shameful periods in American history. The genocide we carried out against Indigenous peoples. Slavery. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya. The genocide in Gaza, which we fund and support, is of such monstrous proportions that it will achieve a prominent place in this pantheon of crimes. History will not be kind to most of us. But it will bless and revere these students.