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National Post

'You can't be openly Jewish at TMU': Jewish students at Toronto Metropolitan University say they're now isolated, harassed

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. Article content 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. Article content 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. Article content Article content 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. Article content He began to feel very isolated on campus as a Jew. Article content '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. Article content 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. Article content Article content '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. Article content Article content '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.' Article content 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.