Montreal was rocked by "Free Palestine" riots on Friday night while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was rocking out to Taylor Swift at a concert in Toronto. "Justin Trudeau got into the Taylor Swift groove Friday night in Toronto at the megastar's fifth concert," The Toronto Star reported. In Montreal, anti-Israel protesters smashed shop windows, set cars on fire, burned an effigy of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and even launched small explosives at police officers.
Trudeau traded friendship bracelets with fellow fans in the crowd at Rogers Centre. A Swiftie in the crowd spotted Trudeau and posted video of him dancing.
Rioters carrying Palestinian flags set of red smoke bombs while others used hammers to destroy shop windows and doors. Montreal police in riot gear used crowd crowd dispersal tactics, spraying tear gas into the crowd, and clashes between protesters and cops took place on St-Laurent Blvd. The riots began in Émilie-Gamelin Parc at nightfall. Three rioters were arrested.
Quebec Senator Leo Housakos blasted the PM on X, saying "Tonight, while Justin Trudeau is partying it up in Toronto, I was meeting with several members of the Jewish community of Montreal. Meanwhile, this is our hometown tonight. The proHamas crowd emboldened by Mr. Trudeau’s pledge to arrest the Israeli PM. Hope you had fun at the concert, though,
Justin."
Montreal has been a hot-bed of anti-Israel sentiment with protests on Concordia and McGill University campuses. On Thursday, protesters saw 85,000 students from 13 universities go on strike over their schools' investment or business relationships with Israel companies.
The students refused to attend class for two days. 11,000 of those were Concordia students raging under the banner of 11 student groups and one faculty group. They took over 12 floors. Dawson cancelled classes entirely over "concerns about the safety of students and employees on the day of the boycott."
The Coalition de résistance pour l’unité étudiante syndicale (CRUES) planned the protests to rail against a NATO conference in the city, saying that the treaty between allied nations approves of "the ongoing genocide" in Gaza. Israel has been fighting a war against Hamas terrorists in Gaza since October 7, the day that terrorists from the region flooded across the border into Israel, armed with detailed maps of civilian homes provided by Palestinian who worked in Israel on work permits, and massacred 1,200 men, women, and children. The protesters in Montreal back those who committed the massacre over the nation of Israel.
In addition to their complaints about NATO, the protesters took up the banner of the International Criminal Court, which had issued arrest warrants for both Netanyahu, his former defense official, and the current leader of Hamas. The ICC ruled that Israel has committed war crimes in defending itself against enemies that seek its eradication. Trudeau had said that Canada would comply with the warrant issued by the ICC.
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