You have the opportunity to leave and leave now.
So one of the narratives about the student protests that
started in New York and then spread across North America
is that outsiders are backing them.
Take New York City Mayor Eric Adams's claim about tents,
for example. Why is everybody's tent the same?
Was there a fire sale on those tents?
There's some organizing going on.
You know, there's a, well,
conservative organizing effort. And what's the goal of that organizing?
To him, there was some outside force involved in supplying
protesters.
It helped drive this question.
Is somebody or something actually funding the protests and how
much do they even cost?
So we Fact Check this for ourselves to see what's
happening here in Canada.
So far we've seen at least 11 pro Palestinian student
protests on campuses across the country.
Generally they want their schools to disclose all investments and
divest from companies the groups say support Israel's actions against
Palestinians.
Some also want the schools to cut ties with Israeli
institutions.
CBC reporters on the ground have said the protests are
mostly student LED,
but count alumni, faculty and community members in their ranks.
Students from different schools are starting to support the encampment.
These students say they've got a lot of supplies and
they have a lot of energy solicited donations.
I saw some parents coming by with,
you know, pots full of food.
Now, outside protesters have bolstered numbers at times.
So I went down to the University of Toronto encampment
on its second day to see for myself.
From what I gleaned, the protesters were largely students.
I've talked to a professor who's been observing.
He's a member of the Jewish Faculty Network.
So you've actually seen students.
You've taught? Oh, yes, many.
Yeah. There's also this idea that,
you know, this is somehow being funded by
groups linked to Hamas and other types of dark money.
Who's paying for this? There's no evidence that I've seen,
no credible evidence that there's any kind of
organizing like the ones you mentioned that have been funding
this.
And you've see, if you wait at the gate,
you see people from the community coming
and donating food. So let's talk money and supplies,
what these protesters are asking for and what it appears
they're actually getting.
We looked into how student groups and encampments in Montreal,
Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver were fundraising.
All of asked primarily for physical donations initially.
Food, clothing, batteries, kitchen supplies.
Five student groups we found asked for money the E
transfer cash.
Three of those were for potential legal defense funds,
while one accepted cash donations at a medic tent.
We asked them about where those money donations are going.
Two responded
UT. Occupy for Palestine said E transfers pay for food
and extra supplies that haven't been donated
and in staff. A student group at the University of
Ottawa said it was collecting money for supplies at the
encampment,
which were coming from all angles,
mostly from community members who donate to help Our cause.
Critics are also alleging the student protesters are part of
a conspiracy involving secret money and links to Hamas.
It centers on the National Students for Justice in Palestine,
one of the main pro Palestinian campus groups in the
US with chapters and allies in Canada.
It's been accused of direct links to Hamas,
but to be clear, neither US nor Canadian law enforcement
has charged any of its members for supporting Hamas.
Another allegation the protests are financed by billionaire George Soros.
The far right uses the stereotype of a wealthy Jewish
patrons secretly funding perceived left wing causes
like the BLM protests of 2020.
Democrat Party has gone so far left that nobody knows
what to do.
It's become radical resistance. You ever see their signs resist,
They'll go to a person holding a sign who gets
paid by Soros or somebody.
The irony of these latest allegations is that Soros is
a proud Jewish American and a Holocaust survivor.
The argument is that Soros is open.
Society Foundations has paid to start the encampments,
but they're setting grants awarded in 2022,
two years before the encampments were even conceived.
The grants also come with a description from OSF,
none of which specifies student protest funding.
Open Society Foundations told us it has funded a broad
spectrum of US groups that have advocated for the rights
of Palestinians and Israelis,
and says their funding is both publicly disclosed and fully
compliant with US laws.
McGill and U of T have both claimed people unaffiliated
with their schools are causing problems at the protests.
Some call that the outside agitator.
So the concept of the outside agitator is one that
we see over and over again in American student history.
I spoke to Angus Johnston,
historian of student activism and professor at City University of
New York.
Non violence is the answer.
If you go back to the Civil rights movement,
if you go back to the Vietnam War movement,
the idea behind the accusation of an outside agitator is
at its heart,
the idea that the community that is rising up,
the community that is engaging in this organizing,
wouldn't be doing it if not for being spurred on,
manipulated pressure from outside.
It seems like whenever there's a mass movement that are
that's disagreed with,
these things are quick to come out.
I can assure you
I have very little money
and I'm putting my life on the whole.
I'm putting my life on hold to be here.
Did anyone, you know, pay you or influence you to
come here yourself?
Or of course not. I am
even appalled that you ask.
I'm sorry because that's again,
I'm here on as a moral obligation to the Palestinian
people.
I haven't been paid in any sort of way.
And remember the 10th theory?
MP Kevin Vong insinuated the ones that you've T were
part of a broader conspiracy that cost
$400 each. And last night there was about
120 of us who stayed overnight here at the Sinkaman.
And your tents, where are you getting them from?
My understanding is that they were purchased at Walmart
I Costco the cheapest option.
I'm I'm not sure some of them have been donated.
Some of them were purchased by community members.
In fact, I had already googled cheap tents,
which took me to an Uber Eats link for this
model
from Walmart delivered to you for
$48. They're not expensive tents,
and the idea that, oh,
we can see that they bought a bunch of the
same kind of tent and that is evidence of some
sort of a conspiracy.
Well, what you do is you go on Amazon and
you find a good cheap tent and then when you're
going to check out,
you click 6 instead of one,
you click for however many tents you have enough money
to buy.
It's it's not a conspiracy,
It's just the logical way to do this.
I put the question of dark money directly to that
student organizer.
Think ultimately like we've had just an outpouring of,
yeah, supplies that are being donated and people are purchasing
with their own funds,
whether or not they're being funded.
These types of protests, they're cheap.
We're talking about expenses on the level of hundreds of
dollars,
maybe a couple of 1000 if you've got a really
big movement that's lasting for a while,
and talking about a an amount of money that either
can come from the students themselves
or can readily be raised from just local supporters.