The Electronic Intifada 25 February 2025
Yves Engler raises his fist following his release on Monday. (Alex Tyrrell via X)
On 20 February, police in Montreal jailed the prominent Canadian journalist and activist Yves Engler. The reason? He criticized a pro-Israel commentator on X.
Engler – who has been released after spending a few days behind bars – is a longtime opponent of Israeli apartheid and supporter of Palestinian rights.
As a student at Concordia University in 2002, he was suspended for his role in a protest against a visit by Benjamin Netanyahu, then a former Israeli prime minister, now a fugitive from international law. The protest resulted in confrontations with pro-Israel visitors and some property damage.
Netanyahu responded by accusing Engler and his fellow students of supporting terrorism.
“They’re supporting Saddam Hussein,” said Netanyahu. “They’re supporting [Yasser] Arafat, they’re supporting [Osama] bin Laden.”
Nevertheless, the protesters successfully stopped Netanyahu’s speech.
Since the onset of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Engler has tirelessly confronted Canadian politicians about Ottawa’s participation in the killing of Palestinians through arms sales and economic ties to Israel, and diplomatic support for the Israeli government.
Among others, he has personally confronted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, foreign minister Mélanie Joly, another government minister Pascale St-Onge and Jeremy Levi, the anti-Palestinian mayor of a Montreal suburb.
Engler has written 13 books on Canadian history and foreign policy, including Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid, published in 2010, in which he exposes the Canadian government’s longtime backing of the Israeli settler colony at the expense of Indigenous Palestinians.
The posts for which Engler was arrested last week were reported to police by pro-Israel commentator Dahlia Kurtz. Engler had criticized Kurtz’s anti-Palestinian writings, including her calls to deport Palestine solidarity activists.
In response, Kurtz accused Engler of harassment, leading to his jailing by Montreal police.
After police called Engler and informed him of his impending arrest, he went online to refute the accusations of harassment. “On dozens of occasions I’ve responded to Kurtz’s racist, violent anti-Palestinian posts on X,” Engler wrote in a post on his website titled “I’m being charged for responding to anti-Palestinian hate on X.”
He added: “Over the past 15 months Kurtz has become a leader in Canada’s fascist movement … Kurtz openly calls for state violence against those challenging Canadian complicity in genocide.”
Engler stated: “I’ve never met Kurtz. Nor have I messaged or emailed her. Nor have I threatened her. I don’t even follow her on X (Twitter’s algorithm puts her posts in my feed).”
Free and democratic?
After Engler was informed of the charges, a letter-writing campaign garnered thousands of signatures from people urging Montreal police to drop the charges against the prominent Palestine solidarity activist.
When police learned that Engler had written about his looming arrest, they leveled more charges against him.
In a subsequent post titled “Police angry at my writing about ridiculous charges, so add more,” Engler wrote: “Initially the Montreal police accused me of harassing an anti-Palestinian media personality because I posted about Israel’s genocide. Now they are charging me for harassing the police for writing about the charges leveled against me.”
He added, “The police investigator also announced that they will be holding me overnight out of fear that I may ‘recidive’ (relapse). In other words, I might once again write about the absurd charges leveled against me. Guilty as charged.”
The next day, Montreal police jailed Engler.
Alex Tyrrell, leader of the Green Party of Quebec, accompanied Engler during his arrest. Tyrrell described Engler’s jailing as “a shocking attack on free expression and democratic rights and criticism of Israel in Canada – a country that’s supposed to be a free, democratic society.”
Engler’s appalling arrest is nonetheless indicative of the Canadian state’s broader crackdown on Palestine solidarity. The repression intensified after Israel launched its genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.
Since then, Canadian police have violently dispersed anti-genocide protests, including student encampments at universities across the country, and conducted militarized raids on the homes of solidarity activists including Charlotte Kates and the Indigo 11 – who had taken action against the Indigo bookstore chain over its owners’ support for the Israeli military.
Students have been suspended for publicly expressing support for Palestinian rights, while at the University of Toronto, police and the administration allowed far-right Zionist groups to march through the campus and intimidate students. Journalists at mainstream outlets have lost their jobs for pro-Palestine social media posts.
And during all this, politicians across party lines demonized protesters, described their anti-genocide activism as “illegal” and spread disinformation about their supposed anti-Semitism.
Since the beginning of Israel’s genocide, the Canadian government’s support for Israel has not wavered – in fact, it has been reinforced, despite the interim genocide ruling against Israel in the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants against Israeli leaders, and mass opposition to Israeli and Canadian policy from Canadians themselves. The arrest of Engler for social media posts criticizing a supporter of Israel shows how far the Canadian state is willing to go to repress pro-Palestine sentiment in this supposedly free and democratic country.
Owen Schalk is a writer from Manitoba. He is the author of Canada in Afghanistan: A story of military, diplomatic, political and media failure, 2003-2023 and the co-author of Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy with Yves Engler. He is a columnist at Canadian Dimension magazine.
