How Pro-Israel Lobby Groups Are Involved in Judicializing McGill Pro-Palestinian Actions

This article was originally published by Pivot. 

Amid the genocide in Gaza, McGill University has become the scene of a legal standoff, pitting, on one side, a growing majority of students demanding that their university cut ties with Israel, and on the other, McGill administration and a minority of Zionist students, frequently supported by pro-Israel lobbies. In recent years, this battle has been fought primarily in the courts, through a series of injunctions.

Last March, students in the Faculty of Law voted in favour of a motion for an academic boycott of Israel in a referendum. Almost immediately, an Israeli student filed and application for an injunction in Superior Court, which was ultimately rejected a few days later.

“This case has a strong sense of déjà vu,” wrote Judge Luc Morin in his decision. The decision was based on a recent ruling by the Court of Appeal in a similar case: McGill students had voted in favour of another policy to boycott Israel, which led to another request for an injunction aimed at blocking its ratification.

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For several years, and even before October 7, 2023, students have been calling on McGill University to end its agreements and ties with Israel, a request that the university’s administrators consistently denied.

Students have employed various forms of pressure: adopting policies via a referendum, issuing strike mandates, holding sporadic demonstrations, and setting up an encampment.

Almost without exception, the organizers have been taken to court, in some cases by the university administration, but also by other students backed by pro-Israel lobbies and lawyers. Pivot has identified at least 19 civil proceedings, mainly requests for injunctions. Most of the time, as with the injunction targeting law students, the plaintiffs do not succeed.

Generally speaking, their arguments invoke the protection of the Jewish religious minority against actions perceived as discriminatory and dangerous.

On the other hand, defence attorneys describe these lawsuits as SLAPP suits (strategic lawsuits against public participation), a legal tactic aimed at intimidating and financially exhausting pro-Palestinian students, which has the effect of restricting freedom of expression by attempting to conflate antisemitism with criticism of Israel in case law.

Timeline

Boycott policies

In March 2022, undergraduate students voted in favour of a “Palestine Solidarity Policy,” primarily aimed at having the Student Society of McGill University (SSMU) pressure the university to end its investments in companies complicit in apartheid in Israel. McGill strongly opposes the policy — which had received 71 per cent of the vote — calling it unconstitutional and discriminatory.

In April 2022, the SSMU announced that it did not intend to ratify the policy. In July, however, a lawsuit was filed by Jonah Fried, a Zionist student, asking the Superior Court to rule, among other things, on the validity of a referendum on this issue and claiming that the policy was antisemitic.

In 2024, Jonah Fried’s request was finally dismissed, in part because in the meantime, another policy — intended to replace the first — was put to a referendum at McGill.

In fact, in November 2023, a few months after the start of the genocide in Gaza, undergraduate students voted in favour of a new, similar policy titled “Policy Against Genocide in Palestine” (PAGIP). Like the previous policy, this measure mandated the SSMU to pressure the administration to sever its ties with Israel.

Once again, the matter quickly ended up in court: a request for a provisional, interlocutory, and permanent injunction was filed even before the election results were known, by another student who remains anonymous.

After several months, the request for a provisional and interlocutory injunction was granted by Judge Shaun E. Finn in May 2024, preventing ratification until the courts issued a final decision.

However, Judge Finn’s decision was appealed and ultimately overturned in April 2025.

The three judges who signed the ruling viewed it as an “error of law.” They noted the “difficulties faced by the trial judge in this case, involving a difficult, divisive, and charged social context,” but “that it is legal rules and the law that must first and foremost guide the resolution of this case.”

It was this decision that was most recently cited by Superior Court Judge Luc Morin to dismiss another application for an injunction challenging the academic boycott motion passed by law students this spring.

The PAGIP was finally ratified by the SSMU on April 22, 2025. In May of that same year, the Superior Court dismissed another application from the same plaintiff who wished to continue proceedings to challenge the policy, even though she was no longer a student at McGill.

Meanwhile, other student and faculty associations on campus have also adopted motions of solidarity with Palestine. Among them, Pivot has identified at least one other motion of solidarity with Palestine, adopted by the Post-Graduate Student Society in December 2023, which was also the subject of a lawsuit filed by one of its members. According to public court documents, a ruling has not yet been issued.

Pro-Palestine encampment

As the courts hear applications for injunctions targeting boycott policies, things are heating up on campus.

On April 27, 2024, students decided to set up an encampment in support of Palestine on the McGill lawn, similar to those being organized simultaneously on other campuses in the United States, notably at Columbia University.

Almost immediately, the encampment became the subject of a first injunction request, filed by two Zionist students who viewed it as an obstruction to their academic success, right in the middle of exam period. However, the exam period had ended on the very day the injunction was filed, April 30. Had it been approved, the injunction would have allowed Montreal’s police service to intervene to dismantle the encampment.

The plaintiffs were then represented by former Conservative Party of Canada candidate Neil Oberman, who is known for his involvement in several other legal proceedings against pro-Palestinian movements.

After the failure of this first attempt, a second injunction request, still seeking to dismantle the encampment, was filed two weeks later, this time by McGill University. This request was also rejected by the Court on May 15, 2024.

McGill decided to appeal the decision but dismantled the encampment before the hearings took place, hiring the private security firm Sirco.

Restricted protests

The fall following the dismantling saw numerous student mobilizations on the McGill campus, including protests and sporadic strikes.

On October 8, 2024, as the student group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) was preparing demonstrations, the Superior Court granted McGill a temporary injunction for the first time, aimed at blocking demonstrations on campus for 10 days. Later, however, the Court refused to extend the injunction, as McGill had requested.

In the spring of 2025, the Superior Court again granted a temporary injunction to McGill, once more allowing it to ban demonstrations on campus for 10 days. The injunction again targeted the SPHR group, which had just organized a vote for a student strike in early April 2025.

The Superior Court, however, refused to extend the injunction at McGill’s request. The university attempted to appeal the decision, which the Court denied.

In the fall of 2025, McGill sought a new injunction to ban demonstrations on campus — this time an interim injunction — sparking a wave of opposition, particularly from labour unions. The unions pointed out that, although the measure was aimed at banning demonstrations in support of Gaza, it would also have restricted protests on other issues. The Zionist group Hillel Montreal, along with other student organizations, intervened to support McGill’s request.

This time, the request was rejected by Judge Patrick Ferland, who, in his decision, noted that an injunction is “an extraordinary remedy that can only be granted in exceptional cases.”

Policy Against Antisemitism

On December 5, 2024, while McGill was busy restricting demonstrations on campus, the SSMU Legislative Council adopted a Policy Against Antisemitism. The policy defines the term in a way that excludes criticism of Israel, a move opposed by Zionist student groups. These groups advocate for a definition under which any criticism of the State of Israel, including its government, constitutes a form of discrimination against Jewish people.

Here too, the policy is the subject of legal action by certain students. They are seeking a provisional, interlocutory, and permanent injunction, alleging that the policy violates the SSMU’s constitution and regulations. They also claim they were not sufficiently consulted before the policy was tabled.

On December 9, 2024, the Superior Court granted a provisional and interlocutory injunction for 10 days, preventing the ratification of the policy at a meeting of the McGill Board of Governors. The injunction was renewed a month later, on March 5, 2025, ahead of a new Board meeting.

In the meantime, the SSMU proposed a new policy, incorporating certain amendments requested by the plaintiffs. The SSMU Legislative Council adopted this version on April 3, 2025. On April 7, the same group of students again sought an injunction against this latest version.

But this time, the Superior Court rejected the request. In her decision, handed down on April 8, Judge Catherine Piché notes that the evidence submitted by the defence clearly shows that Zionist student groups were invited to participate in consultations regarding the policy, a claim the plaintiffs had disputed.

Lobby groups involved

In April 2025, student David Cobrin sought to file a class-action lawsuit, this time against McGill, for the “damages” suffered by Jewish members of the McGill community during pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus.

He accuses the university of failing to take the necessary measures to protect Jewish students, and estimates that up to 4,000 plaintiffs could join the case and receive up to $5 million in punitive damages.

According to information obtained by Pivot, the application is still under review in Superior Court.

The lawsuit is sponsored by B’nai Brith, a pro-Israel lobby group, which has also supported other legal proceedings initiated by Zionist students, notably the injunctions targeting the PAGIP.

When the Superior Court granted an injunction in that case — before the Court of Appeal overturned the decision — B’nai Brith hailed this “victory” in a press release.

“The Court recognized that we had a very credible case and that the rights of Jewish students were potentially threatened by the controversial actions of certain groups on campus,” said Richard Robertson, director of research and advocacy at B’nai Brith.

What McGill Faces

In addition to the class-action lawsuit that could be filed against it by students, McGill University is facing other pressures, particularly from donors.

On March 22, the day after the vote by students in the Faculty of Law, Jonathan Amiel, a major donor to McGill University, announced his resignation from a position on the advisory committee, as well as the withdrawal of his financial support.

“The result [of the vote] clearly shows that I can no longer support this group of students,” reads his resignation letter, published on LinkedIn. “I am withdrawing all pledges and all current and future donations intended for the Faculty of Law and the university.”

Other major McGill donors have direct ties to Israel. This is notably the case for Canadian-Israeli billionaire Sylvan Adams, the philanthropist behind a sports science research institute at McGill that bears his name.

According to information first brought to light by The Rover, Sylvan Adams stated on the Canadian Jewish News podcast that he had used his status to pressure the McGill administration to sanction the pro-Palestine encampment.

Furthermore, Pivot had revealed that the university administration had received similar pressure from Liberal MP Anthony Housefather and pro-Israel lobby groups, including B’nai Brith and the Centre for Jewish and Israeli Relations.

For Hugo-Victor Solomon, the student behind the Policy Against Antisemitism and who was involved in several other issues surrounding the pro-Palestine movement at McGill, the requests for injunctions are a way for the administration to show that it is partially responding to these demands.

“They have to show donors that they’re literally doing everything in their power,” the student said in an interview with Pivot.

“It’s not to protect students, but rather to create an image for people like Amiel, like Adams, like Housefather, and to say, ‘Look, we’re doing something to crack down and show them who’s boss.’”

What about freedom of expression?

For Solomon, the crux of the matter at the heart of courtroom debates is the definition of antisemitism.

From the plaintiffs’ perspective, the argument “has no real legal basis,” he says. “It’s a rhetorical argument: they’re trying to make Zionism a legally recognized and protected category,” just like being Jewish or belonging to any other religious denomination.

In other words, the message being put forward is “that it is completely absurd for a person who is not a Zionist to be Jewish,” explains Solomon, who is himself Jewish. “It reinforces certain ideas about what the Jewish community is and can be.”

According to this logic, attacking Zionism — by criticizing the State of Israel or its government, for example — would constitute a form of discrimination, against which it would be possible to restrict freedom of expression.

“These arguments are nonsensical, but they work because they are part of a broader context and narrative, which includes donors, B’nai B’rith, members of parliament… that’s how it all comes together. ”

Although ultimately this kind of rhetoric does not seem to have convinced the courts, it continues to monopolize their resources and forces the targeted groups and associations into costly legal proceedings, notes Solomon, who had a front-row seat to several cases at McGill.

According to him, several lawsuits filed by Zionist students could constitute SLAPP suits, aimed primarily at intimidation rather than upholding the law.

“Sometimes, the threat of an injunction is more effective than its enforcement, particularly in situations where there is an imbalance of power or class between the parties,” he concludes.

McGill University did not respond to Pivot’s requests for an interview. At the time of publication, it had also not responded to questions submitted via email.

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