Tom MacMillan

- Yves is Free: My Initial Thoughts - I have had time to decompress after a long day in court and an intense five-day ordeal involving Canada’s most recent political prisoner. Here are my thoughts: Yves Engler should never have been arrested. Responding to hateful and racist Zionist material on Twitter is not a crime in Canada. Challenging hate-based narratives is a noble cause. Yves Engler is a hero and deserves everyone’s support. Today in court, I watched as the prosecution struggled to find arguments to justify limiting his freedom to speak publicly about the case. The prosecution reviewed the evidence for about twenty minutes—essentially, they had 72 tweets that Yves had written in response to hate-based, anti-Palestinian content from Zionist influencer Dalila Kurtz. They also claimed that the case had been closed by police without any action taken (not even a warning) until Conservative Party of Canada candidate Neil Oberman took up the case and pressured the police into laying friviolous charges. As the prosecution presented their case—reading through the conditions they were seeking, the chronological order of events, and the nature of the tweets—the judge intervened and asked if they had considered a less restrictive set of conditions. She described the prosecution’s proposal—that he should not be allowed to refer indirectly to the influencer anywhere—as overly broad. She suggested that a solution coud be to allow Yves to name the influencer and continue criticizing the influencer’s hate speech, while protecting the influencer from alleged harassment, by requiring Yves not to tag her in his posts or respond directly to hers. Yves nodded in agreement from the prisoners’ box, and the judge suspended the hearing to allow time for an agreement to be reached. When proceedings reconvened, everyone agreed that simply not tagging the influencer—along with some other basic, routine conditions—would be sufficient. Consequently, the judge ordered the guards to free Yves, which they did about 2.5 hours later. A group of us were waiting for him outside, and he lead a few cheers for the crowd including Free Palestine! before driving off with his dad to see his young children and wife. It was a surreal debate in the courtroom today about online disagreements, but this time involving a renowned author and political figure sitting in the prisoners’ box of a criminal court, wearing handcuffs and leg restraints after five days in jail and facing four serious criminal charges. Conservative Party candidate Neil Oberman, who initiated this whole ordeal, was watching the proceedings by video link and appeared on the screen. He is the same wacko lawyer who attempted to obtain an injunction to force the police to dismantle the McGill encampment—but he failed miserably. A real loser. He lost that case because he did not have the evidence to support his claims, and he will certainly lose this frivolous, ridiculous, and completely unsubstantiated case against Yves Engler. He will probably lose the federal election as well. The police should never have given in to the pressure and agreed to pursue Neil Oberman’s politically motivated hate campaign—a campaign aimed at appearing more Zionist than his local Liberal opponent, the ultra-genocidal nutcase Anthony Housefauther. These two idiots are trying to outcompete each other as the “most Zionist candidate” in the Mount Royal district. They will stop at nothing. The Conservative Party of Canada, under the leadership of Pierre Poilievre, has adopted a radically oppressive narrative as to how people who support Palestine should be treated in this country. Conservatives are ready to destroy freedom of speech, throw people in jail for frivolous and unsubstantiated false allegations. Poilievre has even called for the deportation of pro-Palestine protesters. All of these individuals are racists, anti-Palestinian, and should never be elected to the federal government. #FreeYvesEngler #cdnpoli