Ezra Levant reports from FIT on April 26th, where pro-Hamas protesters demanded divestment from Israel and chanted extreme slogans like "From the river to the sea" while dismissing questions about China or Iran. He alleges fringe groups like Naturai Karta, linked to foreign funding (e.g., Iran), amplify anti-Semitic rhetoric. Meanwhile, Marco Van Hoogenboss, convicted under Canada’s Critical Infrastructure Act for the 2022 Coutts protest (blocking cross-border traffic with potential 10-year sentences), criticizes Premier Danielle Smith’s weak response and urges continued crowdfunding support via truckertrials.com. Both cases reveal organized protests exploiting public spaces, blending ideological extremism with legal battles over free speech and government accountability. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, our third and final report from New York City on how Hamas hate marches have colonized universities.
We'll visit the Fashion Institute of Technology and give you a report from the scene.
It's April 26th.
This is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious thug.
Ezra Levan here for Rebel News.
I'm actually at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, where, I don't know, I guess in the last hour or so, a group of pro-Hamas supporters stormed into the lobby of the Fashion Institute of Technology and have set up an echo camp of what's at Columbia.
The anti-Semites therein want the university or the institute to cut all ties with Israel and they put Israel in quotation marks.
I spoke to some of the kids outside who really didn't have a clue what was going on.
They didn't know much about Gaza or Israel.
I asked them what they had to say about the Uyghur genocide.
Those are the Muslims in Western China who are literally put in concentration camps.
They don't know any of that.
They prefer to chant.
But there are organizers.
We know in Canada that, for example, Iran has 700 agents in Canada actively pumping up an anti-Semitic protest.
Let's see what the fuss is about around here.
Many of the people protesting are not students.
Not surprisingly, they wear masks.
I think the funniest moment of the day, and I've only been here for about an hour, is seeing people with flags, flags that aren't even the Palestinian flags.
What country's flag is this?
What flag is this?
Palestine.
Is this a Palestine flag?
Are you sure?
Hi.
Do you know what flag this is?
I'm not sure, but it's not the Palestine flag.
She says it's not the Palestine flag.
Did you just pick it up or did someone give it to you?
It was given to me.
I don't think that's the Palestine flag.
What's the protest about?
Palestine and the eviction of two students and the firing of an RA.
Do you live here in New York or did you come here from another place?
I dorm here.
Where are you from originally?
Mexico.
Oh, Mexico.
Are you going to boycott class or is it just sort of like a one-day protest?
I'm hoping it goes for more than one day.
Is it expensive to be a student here?
Absolutely, yeah.
It's expensive?
Are you worried that you're going to miss out on your education?
I mean, absolutely, but there's things that are more important.
I'm glad people are showing up and supporting.
And why are you glad people are showing up and supporting?
What are they supporting?
Help me understand.
I just got here one minute ago.
The students of FIT are protesting for free Palestine.
They're under a devastating genocide right now, and it's about time the whole city stands up and is loud about something so horrible.
And what should be done?
A lot of universities, including FIT, have connections to Israel.
They should divest all of their money and all their associations with Israel.
There are charges against certain students for protesting and they should drop those charges.
Everybody should be loud and help this finally come to an end.
Can I ask how much tuition is here?
I have no idea.
It depends if you're in-state or out of state.
If you're out of state, if you're out of state, it's about $15,000 a semester.
If you're in-state, $5,000.
So you're from Mexico, so that would be like, what, 30 grand U.S. a year?
About.
I'm from Canada, so that's like 50 grand Canadian.
And you say you're from Mexico, that's a lot of money.
It is a lot of money, yeah.
Are your folks helping you?
Not anymore, no.
Not anymore?
How come?
My father lost his job.
Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
Are you on a scholarship or something?
Not right now, sadly.
Well, you're taking a bit of a risk.
You know, if you're not going to go to class, I guess.
You're worried?
No.
So cut ties with Israel.
Should it cut ties with any other countries that, for example, aren't liberal democracies or just Israel?
How about Iran or China?
China is not a liberal democracy.
Should FIT cut ties with them?
No, no.
First and foremost, focusing on Israel right now.
Now, in China, there's a group of Muslims called the Uyghurs.
They're in that province called Xinjiang.
They have actual concentration camps where Muslims are interned.
Does that warrant sanctions or should FIT still deal with them?
I'm not going to speak to that.
I think we're focusing on the genocide that's happening in Israel specifically right now.
In Israel or is it a genocide in Israel or is it in Gaza or where is it?
It is in occupied Palestine in the West Bank as well as Gaza.
There's a genocide in the West Bank?
There's not a genocide, but yet, and hopefully there won't be, but there are similar atrocious crimes going on and the land is occupied by Israel.
Are you a student here?
I'm not.
So you just came down because you heard the protest?
Yeah, and I know several students that attend, but I'm not a student myself.
Are you with a group of some sort?
No, no, no.
We want nothing.
We say, how many?
He will say pay.
How many kids can be killed today?
They tried to bury us, but we're just the seed.
Fit administration, you will not scare us.
You will not suppress our voices.
We will just be louder.
Let Gaza live.
Protesters' Empty Mantras00:03:54
Slogans.
And as I said before, whenever I ask some of these protesters any substantive questions, they just don't know the answer.
And they resort to these mantras, but mainly what they do is they don't talk.
There's a strange delegation of any intellectual responsibility to some professional communicators.
And, you know, people googled what rebel news was and they started saying, don't talk to them, don't talk to them.
That's so unusual to me as someone who spent a life trying to persuade the world of my point of view.
I mean, I used to be in politics.
I had rallies.
I actually briefly ran as a political candidate.
I write opinion editorials or I make opinion videos all the time.
So much of my life is trying to convince the world of my point of view.
I might be wrong, I might be right, but boy, I've got a lot to say.
What's different about these protesters is they don't have much to say.
Slogans that are typically written by the organizers are all they have.
They delegate their thinking to a few spin doctors.
I find that not only civically irresponsible, but I think it gives the game away.
These are just thrill hunters.
These are just people moving with the pack, looking for a sense of purpose and community and finding it in this snake oil being served up by woke extremists on the left and in some cases foreign-funded agitators.
I can't help but think of other movements where impressionable young people were weaponized, whether it's the Hitler Jugend or the young pioneers in the Soviet Union.
I think that's what we're seeing here.
The same madness, the same chanting.
I don't know.
It's just very eerie, an echo of history.
But do you think these kids know any history?
Hi, what's your name?
Anthony Frieda, professor here.
And I was here the moment that they stormed in the building.
I have video of it if you want it.
But some of my students are in there.
And it started out as a peaceful protest, but they obviously had it planned where they were going to storm past security.
So they all just diverted and stormed.
There was no security.
And they just went right into the museum building and took it over.
And here we are.
And are you yourself blocked from entering now?
Yeah, nobody can get in.
And were you teaching a class today?
Yes.
How do you feel about this?
Well, I'm, listen, I'm all in favor of free speech, but this is something else.
You're taking over an institution, and you're preventing people from working, and it's obviously not your property.
So it's trespassing, and it's also ideologically, I'm not in agreement with my students, but I agree with their right to protest.
Now, we were at Columbia yesterday, and I think there's sort of a spectrum of protesters.
Some are, like you say, peaceful protesters who want political change, but then there's language that refers to genocide, and then there's language from the river to the sea, and then globalized to Intifada.
Like, there are some people who are, I saw a video yesterday, I didn't take it, but people saying go back to Poland to the Jews.
Like, they were basically...
Disemitism in some of the rhetoric.
Here as well?
Here as well, of course.
They're saying, I mean, I work at FIT, and they're saying FIT is the same as the KKK, so it's obviously absurd.
This is a very liberal fashion school, so to say it's the same as KKK is such extreme rhetoric, and it's, to me, that's hate speech.
Do you know if some of the folks in there, I think you implied that many of the people in there are not actually students.
Anti-Semitism at FIT00:11:58
Did I hear you correctly?
I think most of them are, but from when I was here, when they stormed in, some of them were not students.
Oh, my opinion is that what you can see, my opinion, is that those people are, I can see a total ignorance.
I'll just give you one example.
I was talking to one man and I asked them, well, what are you protesting about?
And he said, you know, resistance against occupation.
And I said, okay, well, October the 7th, was it the resistance?
He said, yeah, of course.
And then I just showed him a video reel from October the 7th that was filmed in Gaza.
This 24-year-old girl, Shanny Luke, well, she was murdered.
She was killed.
And her naked body was defiled.
And you can see people spitting on her body, like kicking her dead body.
And I just asked him, is this resistance to occupation?
And he replies, well, first of all, I don't believe it.
I said, what do you mean to believe it?
Those are films.
And he's like, I don't give a shit.
So that's all.
So basically he said, I think all what you need to hear about is like, it's like they don't care about justice or anything.
They just use side.
When you show him a murdered girl who's been spitted on, all of a sudden he doesn't give a shit.
That's all you need to know about this.
Well, that's my opinion.
We'll be free.
Can I support it?
We support what?
Why do you support it?
Because the warning to stop.
They have to stop killing people.
That's why I support.
I think a lot of people would agree that the violence has to stop, but are you afraid of supporting a terrorist group against a democratic country?
They're a conflict.
They're going to have to solve the problem in a peaceful way, not just killing each other.
They cannot continue on doing this anymore.
Would you agree that the war started on October 7th when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel?
It began like a long time ago.
It's not like just started last October 7th.
But that's not true.
What I know of, like I know a little bit of a history, but then what I know of is that war is what was going on all the time, but then it just, yeah.
What do you think of the anti-Semitism being focused on New Yorkers, students who attend here?
No, this is not about anti-Semitism.
Well, the Jews, some of the Jews here say it is.
That's their opinion.
That's an anti-Semitism activity here.
So if the Jews feel targeted and harassed, they're just being too sensitive.
Have you met any Jewish students here being harassed?
The fashion industry in New York has a Jewish history.
The Shemada business, I think Calvin Klein's an alumnus here.
What is it?
I don't know if you know any Jewish students.
How have they felt about either, I mean, it's too early to say what they think about today.
It just happened minutes ago.
What have they said about the last six months, I guess?
Some of my Jewish students are hesitant to speak about it, but they're very dismayed about it because they feel like it's very one-sided.
And a lot of the people who are protesting are sort of ignorant about the history and the issues and very myopic.
And it's just inflamed rhetoric.
And it's ironic because they're using hate speech to decry what they see as hate speech.
And they're advocating genocide of Jews because they are against genocide of Palestinians, supposedly.
Now, I was at Columbia yesterday, and they're very disciplined, the protesters.
They won't talk to media.
They refer media to official spokesmen.
And my theory is that a lot of these students actually have no idea what they're talking about.
They're repeating mantras, repeating chants.
I spoke to one protester who had never heard of Uyghur Muslims in China.
And when I told her a few things, she couldn't care less.
I think there are some naive folks, but I think there's some organizers, some sort of funders.
Who do you think that top echelon is?
Because the ordinary students I talk to are, I don't think they have any depth here.
They're clueless.
I think this is orchestrated sort of a TikTok, you know, astroturf rebellion that it's just, it's fashionable right now.
And it's popular just because it's popular.
And they have no idea what they're talking about.
But they want to be part of this so-called rebellion against the colonizers and oppressors and the same old Oppressive dynamic that there's always a victim oppressor mentality, and they see Israel as the oppressor and the Palestinians as the oppressed.
How do you think it's going to end?
I don't know.
I spoke to the police and they said this is a private school, but it's really not because SUNY is a SUNY school.
It's a public New York school.
So they said it's up to the school to extricate the kids.
So I don't know.
It's going to be some kind of standoff or they're planning on staying there until their demands are met.
And their demands are absurd.
You can see them on the sign over there.
So the demands are not going to be met.
So I don't know what's going to happen.
One of the grossest things, and this is typically an Iran move, is that there's an extremely small sect of Jewish, a fringe Jewish group that when they're asked to, they come and purport to represent, purport to represent Jews.
You can see the ultra-Orthodox back there with anti-Semitic comments.
Why would you come and shame your fellow Jews?
Aren't you a Shunda for the Goyim?
How much have you been paid to be here and be a Jewish anti-Semite?
How much are you paid, sir?
How much are you paying for?
Who pays you to be here to be a Shunda for the Goyim?
How much money will you take to be an anti-Semite?
How do you feel about being an anti-Semite?
Murderist!
Murderism!
How much are you paid to be here?
Get outta here!
How much are you paid to be here?
Who pays you?
Murderer!
Zionists!
Murderer!
Zionists!
Murderer!
Murderer!
Shame on you, pay you!
Iran!
Murderers!
Shame on you!
Shame on you, murderer!
Who pays you?
Murderer!
Who's paying you?
Who's paying you to be here?
Who's paying you to be an anti-Semite?
A Jewish anti-Semite.
A Jewish anti-Semite.
Shame on you.
What's your name?
Shame on you.
Shame on you.
I'm here at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and it looks like I've got a bit of reaction.
Same on you, same on you, same on you, same on you, same on you, are you a student here?
Shame on you, shame on you, shame on you, shame on you, shame on you, shame on you, shame on you.
There's an extremist sect in Judaism called the Naturai Karta, who, for reasons that are inscrutable to me, they don't believe in the state of Israel.
They're 0.001% of the Jewish community.
There's a handful of them in London, England, a handful in New York, and a handful in Canada.
I've got to think that their total numbers are under a thousand.
But one of the ways they make money is they rent themselves out to anti-Semitic protests to say, hey, no, no, no, Jews hate Israel too.
It's bizarre.
It's a betrayal of their Judaism.
And it's at the behest of the Iran government.
They don't come out here for free.
They don't come here as part of a religious activity.
This is how they make money.
And whenever you see those Naturai Karta protesters, it's a signal that the protest itself is funded by Iran.
I used a Yiddish term on them, Shunda for the Goyim, which means a disgrace to the Jewish people in the eyes of the world.
And I think they might have been surprised that I knew a little bit of Yiddish.
I think what's interesting about this is that the Fashion Institute of Technology, from what we heard, that one student from Mexico, it's about $30,000 US a year or 50,000 Canadian, which is a startling thing for people to walk away from and throughout their career if they're expelled or suspended.
But of course, why would that happen if the institution itself has been colonized like the students?
If the dean, if the president of the university is as compromised as the students.
Again, I can't help but looking at the Shirley Goodman Resource Center, the name of this building behind me, without even Googling.
I know that that's a Jewish philanthropist.
And as I said, at Columbia, pearls before swine.
Do not interact with the media.
It's a protest without words.
Just chants.
free free the fashion institute free the fashion institute free the fashion institute free the fashion institute free the fashion institute what's so interesting to me is i follow a couple of analysts and critics who study maoism including xi van fleet
a Chinese American who went through the cultural revolution of Mao Zedong.
And of course, Dr. James Lindsay, who's an expert in Marxism and queer theory today.
And I look at this mob and their cult-like chants and their lack of any policy depth and their youth and the fact that they're misfits and they're demonizing things and that they're being managed.
And all I see is Mao's Red Guard, the young know-nothings who want to destroy everything.
I should tell you, half of their chants are against Israel and Jews, but the other half are against America.
This is Marxism whose deep roots have gone into academia and who are being supplemented by foreign nationals.
It's worse in Canada and the UK, where there's many more foreign students from countries where anti-Semitism is endemic.
Here I have to say it's mainly privileged, luxury kids attending an expensive private fashion school who have decided that this is the way to be fashionable and modern and edgy.
All I can think of are Mao's Red Guard holding their little red book and chanting.
Sentencing and Ideology00:12:16
They don't know a damn thing about what they're talking about.
In this case, some of them were even flying the wrong flag.
But what they lack in understanding, they make up for in enthusiasm.
This will end in blood.
For more on this subject, go to DeportHamas.com.
I think that this is a caution.
There's a way to be able to make your point known.
There's a way to be able to advocate, but you can't block critical infrastructure.
I caught up with Marco Van Hoogenboss, one of the Coup 3 defendants that was issued a guilty verdict last week in Lethbridge, Alberta.
Robert Kreujik here in Calgary, Alberta, reporting for Rebel News.
are expecting her to speak out in this manner.
For her to deflect and to weaken her position for whatever the reason is is wrong.
So it's surprising and it's frankly a bit disgusting.
Marco Van Hoogenboss, George Jansen, and Alex Van Herck participated in the 2022 Couts protest and blockade, which essentially overlapped in terms of timeframe with the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa.
The two demonstrations were broadly opposed to edicts, mandates, orders ostensibly issued in the interests of so-called public health by different levels of government to reduce COVID-19 transmission.
There were times during the demonstration in Coutz that cross-border traffic between the U.S. and Canada at the Coutz-Sweetgrass border crossing linking Alberta and Montana was completely blocked.
I invited Van Hugenboss to share some remarks in response to comments made by Premier Danielle Smith regarding his conviction and those of his co-accused.
I also asked him to forecast somewhat what laid before him.
The jury made their decision.
It was a guilty verdict on Tuesday night.
We obviously are expecting the sentencing could be up to 10 years in prison for those three men.
That'll come this summer.
They did make their decision rather quickly.
Were you surprised by that?
They made it about a couple hours.
It was, what I would say is that the legislation that we have in place for Critical Infrastructure Act, it doesn't matter what your ideology is or what your cause is or what your political perspective is.
You simply cannot block critical infrastructure.
We're running two fundraising campaigns in relation to this ongoing story.
First is for the defense costs, the lawyers' fees for the three men, George Jansen, Marco Van Hugenboss, and Alex Van Herck.
You can donate at coots3.com and keep in mind that lawyers do not work for free.
They are definitely not cheap.
And this fundraiser is being administered by a partner organization we work with, a nonprofit, the Democracy Fund.
So if you do donate, you'll be issued a charitable receipt against your donation.
Yeah, Robert, last week, Tuesday at 8.45, 9 o'clock, all three of the Couth 3 were convicted.
They were found guilty.
Steps moving forward, we have a July 22nd arraignment date.
At that time, there will be a sentencing date set, and there'll be, in some way, a bit of a mini trial where the Crown and the defense make submissions to the judge, to the justice, to the court, and then it'll be up to the court to determine reasonable sentencing in relation to the prosecution, the trial.
So we still have a bit of a fight ahead of us in relation to sentencing, but for the next three months, largely uneventful.
And I imagine after our arraignment, it'll still be three, four months before sentencing will actually occur.
So I watched this interview, at least a portion of it, with Premier Danielle Smith.
And Danielle Smith was asked about these convictions about this trial.
And her remarks were basically that critical infrastructure shouldn't be blocked.
Do you have any response to her response?
Any thoughts you want to share about her remarks or other politicians' remarks or absence of remarks?
Yeah, I've been asked about this interview a few times now.
I've actually done some interviews in relation to it.
I don't support Extinction Rebellion gluing themselves to the bridges.
I don't support days of action that shut down our railway lines.
And I don't support inconveniencing neighbors and farmers and those who want to get goods transported by shutting down borders and highways.
It was with Rachel Emmanuel with True North.
And the question was specific.
The question was specific to the conviction of myself and my two co-accused.
Unfortunately, the Premier completely deflected.
I feel that she wanted to answer in a certain way and she might have attempted to, but very quickly she deflected and she provided a non-answer which referred to the Critical Defense Act which the previous administration, Jason Kenney's administration, put in place.
And I'll be honest, that legislation was applicable to what we had done.
But unfortunately, I don't think being found guilty in relation to that act was stringent enough in the eyes of Jason Kenney or previous Justice Minister Tyler Chandra.
So instead we were charged with mischief over 5,000, which has a much more, much significant impact.
It's possibly a 10-year jail sentence, the max.
Her comments overall were, like I said, a complete deflection, inappropriate to some degree, and a very big disappointment.
I understand that Daniel Smith cannot interfere in the judicial process.
Nobody has asked her to interfere in that.
She hasn't interfered in that.
Her comment on a proceeding post-tense would not be considered interference.
She was asked for a comment in relation to the conviction of three individuals and one of those individuals that is an individual she knows by name.
So it became a little personal for me.
But what I don't understand is she would have been better off with no comment than with the comment she did provide.
She referred legislation that had nothing to do with our prosecution.
She brought up the context of blocking critical infrastructure in relation to ideology.
Coots was not an ideological protest.
Coots was a protest of individuals, Albertans, Canadians, white-collar, blue-collar, folk from all corners, from all backgrounds, from all religious backgrounds, ethnicities, etc.
They were there for one reason.
They were there in relation to the messed up ideology of government.
They were there because government had lost their freaking mind.
So for the Premier, who ran on this post-COVID anger to answer in this manner, it's frankly unacceptable and disgusting.
There's an argument to be made that the blockage of critical infrastructure was implemented by the government itself and that that was done on ideological bases.
Now, as far as other politicians, elected officials, or even just appointed officials, have any of them privately or publicly remarked on this, contacted you, shared some support, or offered some sort of critiques of what they saw as the prosecution?
Well, let's go back.
I've been involved in municipal and provincial politics for a long, long time.
I was a six and a half year municipal politician.
I was involved in the leadership review for Jason Kenney, the leadership race that Daniel Smith was part of, multiple AGMs, general elections.
I have many friends, many friends and connections in the political world.
Yes, I've had many reach out.
Some during the prosecution.
I've been in contact with many over the last 20 months leading up to my trial.
And I've had some that have reached out due to some of my, maybe in relation to some of my sharp critical analysis of the situation on social media platforms.
So to say that I've had no contact with those elected to represent us and represent me as well, that would be false.
I've had many good conversations, but it's to me what's said in private is easy and confident.
It's about the position you take publicly that matters.
Her re-entry into politics was a significant redemption story for her.
She ran to her redemption story involved holding government accountable.
And to now be that government and to weaken her stance and to change course on that when she took significant heat from media.
People are expecting her to speak out in this manner.
For her to deflect and to weaken her position for whatever the reason is is wrong.
So it's surprising and it's frankly a bit disgusting.
Okay, now final reflections on the trial itself.
Even though there's still some outstanding disputes regarding sentencing, anything that you want to share with the audience regarding what you may have contemplated in the past week since the verdicts were rendered?
Well, there's no surprise on my part in relation to my conviction.
There was some surprise regarding the lack of evidence and the little evidence in relation to my co-accused.
And unfortunately, it was a guilty verdict across the board.
I will say this.
We can't appeal until sentencing, even if we would like to.
It's not something we can do.
A lot of people have mentioned appeal.
There is no grounds and there is no reason to appeal at this point.
Those who sat through these proceedings will know that.
All the commentators and all the opinionists or all those who hold strong opinions or have views on a corrupt process, if you weren't in that courtroom, I'm sorry.
Your opinion isn't exactly relevant.
You didn't observe how transparent Justice Keith Yamauchi was.
We couldn't have done this with our phenomenal defense team.
I mean, phenomenal.
Michael, Ryan, Alan, and Matt, phenomenal team, phenomenal defense.
They fought for us.
And last but not least, none of this was possible without the support of Rebel News.
Rebel, along with the Democracy Fund, crowdfunded and supported the cause and has been there from day one and continues to be there for us.
So for all those who have supported us, check out Coots3.com.
If you haven't already supported the cause, you still can.
That is one way to help us in our fight.
Many individuals ask me, how can we support you?
How can we assist you, Marco, post-conviction, post-verdict, as I continue to speak out and as I can continue to hold government accountable?
Right now, my response to that would be coots3.com.
Thank you.
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