Ethan Elharrar remembers having a single month of normal college life at Toronto Metropolitan University. He was anxious about leaving Montreal for Toronto, living on his own for the first time in a new city, beginning a new program. He was nervous but excited.
He chose TMU because it offered the only degree in the country with “hands-on experience” for graphic communications management. September 2023 went smoothly; he bonded with his roommates and adjusted to TMU’s downtown campus.
He was at home for a brief stay in Montreal on October 7 when Hamas terrorists broke through the border fence with Israel and ignited a brutal conflict that still burns today. “At the beginning, we had a week of people actually feeling sorry for us and then it just turned,” he told National Post.
Over the coming months of Elharrar’s first semester, he began posting on social media about the Israelis abducted by Palestinian terror groups, and was kicked off a private Instagram group chat with over 100 classmates in his program.
He began to feel very isolated on campus as a Jew.
“I went in with people hating me right off the bat and me not being able to make any friends who are non-Jewish in my classes or in my program,” he said. Elharrar recalls walking into classrooms and seeing “Free Palestine” written on the boards. When he joined others in holding a vigil honouring Israeli hostages and carrying posters with their images on campus, “random people just came and spat on us,” he said.
Screenshots shared with the Post show graffiti proclaiming, “Long live the resistance” in chalk above an inverted red triangle, a symbol used by Hamas to identify Israeli soldiers in their propaganda videos. He saw banners demanding “Zionists get off our campus.” Elharrar said he was stalked on his way to a Toronto Blue Jays baseball game in April by an anti-Israel activist who, he believes, recognized him after TMU’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) group shared his image on social media.
“Shame on you, you TMU Jews, you commit genocide!” he recalls the twenty-something screaming at him. The man followed him until Elharrar caught a streetcar. He filed a police report against the man.
“You can’t be openly Jewish at TMU, unfortunately,” the soft-spoken second-year with flowing black hair parted down the middle confided. “You can’t openly wear your Magen David. You can’t openly wear a hostage pin because you will still get looks, even if it has nothing to do with Israeli politics. You will still get people looking at you.”
One of the few spaces where Elharrar, a
StandWithUs Emerson Fellow
, made friends was in the safety of TMU’s small Jewish community of students and campus groups. A few weeks after October 7, he joined the fraternity AEPi. He met Liat Schwartz, a member of the Jewish sorority ZBO, who also came to TMU in September 2023 after a gap year in the southern Israeli city of Eilat.
Schwartz similarly remembers the early days of her fall semester gelling with a group of friends at TMU. But then, “there was a huge flip post-October 7.”
“They all dropped me. They were very anti-Israel. It was awful. I just started anew. I had no friends. I still don’t have any friends in my program.”
After the Hamas-led atrocities, Schwartz said she was “scared to speak out” in her child and youth care program. She told the Post that during one lecture, a professor spoke about the Holocaust but incorrectly told the class that “only four million died,” which she corrected publicly. “I kid you not, she started laughing at me.”
The incident and the tensions on campus post-October 7 left her fearful of publicly identifying as Jewish at TMU. “I feel like I can’t wear my Star of David on campus,” she said. Asked why she felt that way, Schwartz elaborated, “You get stares if you wear it” and recalled a friend having their kippah ripped off.
“TMU is committed to preventing and addressing all forms of violence or threats of violence in accordance with university policies,” university spokeswoman Jessica Leach wrote the Post, providing a list of services students could access, including counselling, student care and faculty support networks for employees. “At TMU we care deeply for the physical safety and wellbeing of all faculty, staff and students, and value a relationship built on trust and integrity with our community. We believe, as a community, that we have a shared responsibility for each other’s well-being.”
Schwartz began posting messages supportive of Israel following the October 7 attacks, but said she didn’t become involved in campus politics until September 2024, when she joined Students Supporting Israel (SSI), a pro-Israel
student group
with chapters across North America. Elharrar explained he initially “stayed behind the scenes running social media” for SSI on campus because he “wasn’t comfortable being public yet.” He joined shortly after Schwartz.
The group has a history with Students for Justice in Palestine.
In 2016, an SSI member introduced a motion to commemorate Holocaust Education Week, but student union members triggered a walkout to obstruct the vote. “Guys. Lose quorum,” then-union president and SJP leader Obaid Ullah wrote in a
private WhatsApp
group later publicized by the school paper.
More recently, SJP TMU hosted an event
expressing solidarity
with Georges Abdallah, a member of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Faction,
convicted in France of killing
an Israeli and an American diplomat. SJP also closely collaborates with Palestinian Youth Movement, a group
explicitly supportive
of the October 7 atrocities perpetrated by Hamas.
SJP TMU has not responded to the Post’s request for comment.
Schwartz and Elharrar felt TMU administrators routinely disregarded complaints they raised about what they saw as growing hostility to Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus.
“It’s not like there’s been pushback from the administration. There’s just been silence,” he said. Elharrar was frustrated that Jewish students’ complaints often went unanswered. They never got straight answers, he said, often getting “vague responses” asking them to reach out to someone else.
“The silence is really saying a lot,” Elharrar said.
He explained that TMU leaders were particularly unhelpful after TMU’s SJP group distributed stickers of masked militants carrying rifles and wearing green headbands — similar to those worn
by Hamas
— at an Iftar dinner
in March
. Escalating his concerns to the university on behalf of SSI, administrators told him it was a student union matter and that he should report the incident to them.
“Many student clubs, societies and groups at TMU are not sanctioned by the university,” Leach wrote the Post on behalf of TMU. “Rather, they are reviewed, approved, and sanctioned by the student government, the Toronto Metropolitan Student Union (TMSU). The TMSU is a wholly separate corporation from the university with its own governance structures and by-laws, and is accountable to the student body. We encourage you to reach out to them with any questions regarding the standing of the SJP.”
In March, Schwartz, the president of SSI on campus, wanted to bring two Israeli military reservists to speak about their experience in Gaza fighting Hamas. Following procedure, she contacted a university representative who requested she formally submit a request through a TMU portal. Over the coming weeks, she had conversations with the representative and a member of the university’s risk management team. The proposal was ultimately rejected, citing security concerns, and SSI was forced to relocate to a Hillel Ontario space off-campus.
However, SJP got wind of the event and blockaded the building’s entrance, forcing Schwartz to shuttle her guests through the back door for their safety. “I thought it would be a great opportunity … because of how much antisemitism is on campus and that it’s important to share our narrative when other clubs can share theirs,” she told the Post.
Hillel TMU, a group centred more broadly around Jewish life on campus, defended its decision to host the event in early April and called on university leaders to prevent such obstructions in the future.
“When the university denied SSI access to host the program on campus, Hillel Ontario swiftly stepped in, opening our doors as an organization committed to supporting the world’s only Jewish state,” the group wrote the Post in a statement. “In spite of an angry, hateful mob outside, the lecture went ahead and provided a valuable educational experience to a room full of students— Jewish and non-Jewish allies alike.”
“Hillel will never shy away from its commitment to the safety of Jewish students, and we call on TMU and local law enforcement to ensure that those who harass and intimidate Jews are held accountable for their actions.”
A few days later, Schwartz discovered that a group picture taken after the event by SSI was edited by SJP TMU. The new graphic had inverted red triangles placed over the guest speakers and was shared on Instagram. The image provoked troubling comments viewed by the Post.
“Maybe sjp tmu can bring in Hamas fighters to rape students! That would be a fitting rejoinder,” one wrote. “The evil of Z!0nism has surpassed N@zism. We must all speak out against this. Learn what Z!0nism is and tell everyone,” another chimed in. Schwartz said that many of her classmates liked the photo in which her face and Elharrar’s were clearly visible apart from a narrow black box covering their eyes.
“The red triangle is not an innocent graphic. It is a well-known symbol used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in propaganda materials to mark individuals as targets for attack. Its use has been directly linked to incitement, threats, and glorification of violence,” SSI TMU wrote
in a statement
following the incident.
“By sharing this image, SJP TMU effectively elevated their campaign of harassment into a symbolic call to violence or murder. This goes beyond campus discourse – it is dangerous, threatening, and should be condemned without hesitation.”
The image was
later edited
to remove the Hamas iconography, but the post still remains active and
pinned atop their account
, demanding SSI be removed from campus. The group also refers to “the Zionist regime of so-called ‘Israel,’” language reminiscent of an open letter signed by
TMU law students
immediately after the October 7 atrocities, declaring “‘Israel’ is not a country.”
“The university has made clear our expectation that TMU students, community members and their guests conduct themselves and express their views in a manner that demonstrates respect, civility – and ideally empathy – in keeping with the university’s values, and in ways that are free from discrimination, racism, hatred, threats of violence, and violence,” university spokeswoman Leach told the Post by email.
“This matter has been reported to the offices of Human Rights Services and Student Conduct and is under review. To be clear, the SSI event in question was not sanctioned by the university, was not held on campus, and was not hosted by an officially recognized student organization.”
Such statements, made despite explicit use of Hamas imagery, left Samantha White, an SSI executive, worried about the university’s priority protecting Jewish students. Dealing with TMU leaders about such matters was “a never-ending circle,” she said, where the response frequently was: “We can’t really say anything to them because it was off-campus.”
“They always have excuses for it,” White said, explaining that the university rarely disciplined SJP. “The woman who was dealing with us was like, ‘Well, who was the triangle on? Was it on a student or was it on a guest speaker?’”
The difference felt like splitting hairs to Elharrar. “It doesn’t really make a huge difference. It’s still a threat, even to speakers that we bring to Hillel.”
White said she feels strongly that administrators would not ignore similar threats made against other marginalized groups, such as Black or Indigenous communities. “But, because we’re Jewish, and because we’re such a small minority, that is always overlooked. They don’t give a crap,” the undergrad said.
Between rising anti-Israel sentiment and growing hostility to SSI, White said she no longer feels physically safe on campus.
“They don’t want to have Israel; they don’t want us on campus. Where do we go?” she said. She viewed SSI’s mission to “get the narrative (that) anti-Zionism is antisemitism” and “to allow Jewish students to have a welcoming campus environment,” filling an intellectual vacuum on campus. “ It feels like it’s everyone against us.”
Coby Sadeh, the president of Hillel TMU, shared White’s fears that Jewish student safety was not taken seriously on campus. He echoed White, Schwartz and Elharrar’s experience that complaints to administrators from Jewish students frequently “have gone with little follow-up.”
“I feel that there’s a culture of antisemitism on our campus that is very clear to Jewish students and our allies. It is my belief that the school is aware of this culture and isn’t taking a strong enough stance against it, which allows this culture to manifest,” Sadeh told the Post.
Sadeh recalled a similar laundry list of bad experiences post-October 7 which the three SSI leaders all encountered to varying degrees: he’d been stalked, expelled from class group chats, and ostracized from university life outside the narrow sliver of the Jewish community.
“I feel othered and isolated on almost a daily basis,” he wrote. “At the same time, it’s reaffirmed my Jewish identity and connected me more to my Jewish community. I feel very disappointed that my university experience had to turn out this way, however, I’ve managed to find meaning in other places that enrich my experience on campus.”
His description of the bipolar nature of campus life since October 7, both rewarding and challenging, resonated with Elharrar. Throughout the latest semester, as SSI vice president of outreach and engagement, he often organized informational booths in the university’s glassy student centre, encouraging discussions about the Israel-Palestinian conflict and current events. The conversations were mostly constructive, exploring questions like peaceful coexistence, he said. But the pros don’t offset the cons for him.
Rather than pushing himself outside the “Jewish bubble,” as he envisioned attending TMU would help him do, it pushed him into a Jewish ghetto. Elharrar feels TMU has flown under the radar for most Canadians, lost in the headlines about protests and encampments at McGill, York and the University of Toronto. He maintains TMU is no different: “I would say TMU is one of the worst antisemitic campuses in Canada.”
He now regrets his decision to attend TMU and warns Jewish high schoolers thinking about attending to weigh all their options.
“ If I knew it would be this bad, like moving away from home and having to deal with antisemitism every single day, then I probably wouldn’t have gone to TMU,” he said. “I probably would’ve figured my stuff out and stayed in Montreal.”
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