- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/20346074
The president of McGill University says officials have called for police assistance after pro-Palestinian protesters refused to dismantle their encampment on the university’s downtown Montreal campus.
“Having to resort to police authority is a gut-wrenching decision for any university president,” Saini said. “It is, by no means, a decision that I take lightly or quickly. In the present circumstances, however, I judged it necessary.”
Lawyer Neil Oberman, who represents McGill students Gabriel Medvedovsky and Raihaana Adira, is set to ask a judge for a provisional injunction against the encampment on Tuesday afternoon.
The injunction request, expected to be filed at the Montreal courthouse at 2 p.m., will target groups currently protesting on campus, according to Oberman. McGill University is named as an interested party in the case.
Let’s be honest, the whole divesting from Israel, although sounds impactful, will have zero effect on Israeli companies, nor their government. The value of those Israeli stocks will likely not be affected long term, since a dip in price will likely result in an instant buy from many hedge funds and private equities, since they are essentially priced under the market price. Ironically, a non-trivial number of those funds receive their money from states like Saudi Arabia, who supports Palestine. So while those states publicly claim their support for Palestine, they are indirectly invested in Israeli firms (e.g. 10% of the Shlomo group is owned by the Saudi), and divesting would simply result in those investors to gain a bigger position on Israeli companies by buying the dip, increasing their stakes (and consequently their position) wrt the Israeli corporate system.
That is still okay, let the Saudis or whoever else fund Israel rather than Canadian institutions.