To have Judith Taylor tell it, anti-Israel activists around the world “have hit the streets in defence of Palestinians,” only to have their rights assaulted.

Taylor, writing in a January 16 opinion column in The Toronto Star entitled: “Paltry are the forms of protest we have today and they are under threat,” argued that as pro-Palestinian activists attempt to make their voices heard, “university presidents are being pilloried by the rich for allowing student protest. Street activists are being arrested and pressed with serious charges, suspended from work. Workers are having their email perused and being subject to other forms of intimidation.”

While Taylor is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, her commentary read more as creative fiction writing. Taylor’s writing evoked a nostalgic, romantic vision of counter-cultural protesters daring to stand up for what’s right, but the reality could not be more different and ugly.

Much of what Taylor describes as “student protest” is thinly veiled (or not veiled at all) glorification of Hamas terrorism, vilification of supporters of Israel, and overt attempts to intimidate and harass anyone who disagrees with the contention that fundamentalist Islamic terrorism is a legitimate form of resistance.

A notorious letter signed by law students at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) in October stated that the signatories “support all forms of Palestinian resistance and efforts toward liberation,” clear and unmistakable support for Hamas’ genocidal massacre which took place less than two weeks earlier.

Taylor wrote that “street activists are being arrested and pressed with serious charges, suspended from work.” Regrettably, she does not specify to whom she is referring.

Had she done so, readers could make their own decisions about whether charges against anti-Israel activists are justified. Is she referring to vandals who defaced an Indigo store because the owner, Heather Reisman, is a prominent Jewish supporter of Israel causes, or to the arrest made of an individual who waved a terrorist flag during an anti-Israel demonstration in Toronto?

At anti-Israel rallies in Toronto and beyond, protesters have expressed support for Hamas’ genocidal violence against Israeli civilians and physically attacked those who dare to disagree with them, including the case of an Iranian-Canadian man, Salman Sima, who walked through an anti-Israel rally holding a Canadian flag. He was violently assaulted for doing so.

Describing these dangerous behaviours as the work of “street activists” simply beggars belief.

Anti-Israel activists have shut down roads, accosted Christmas shoppers in shopping centres and explicitly threatened the lives of members of the general public, all in an attempt to intimidate. But Taylor’s commentary, in Orwellian terms, describes them as “activists” who work to “confront power.”

These “activists,” many of whom are potentially being paid to protest, as exposed in a recent newspaper investigation, have a right to express their views safely, but when anti-Israel activities cross into glorification of terrorism and violence, physical assault, threats and vandalism, those are not protected rights.

Taylor demanded that levels of government guarantee “the protection of free expression,” deliberately ignoring the litany of anti-Israel protests and rallies across Canada where demonstrators have blocked roads and harassed members of the public, all while police officers stood by and did nothing.

When members of the public complain to police about anti-Israel demonstrators illegally blocking roads, they are told by police that they “can’t arrest 500 people.”

For an academic in sociology who wrote that she has “devoted my life to understanding how vulnerable people make claims against the powerful,” Taylor seems to be unable to distinguish the powerful from the weak.

Outside the realm of sociology, and in the real world, those who can break the law unimpeded and without consequence are not the weak; they are the strong, no matter how Taylor attempts to flip reality on its head.