Last updated: Aug. 19, 2025

Katherine Blouin

Katherine Blouin is a professor who expressed support for Hamas terrorism, spread anti-Semitism, and promoted historical revisionism and hatred of Israel in late 2023 and early 2024 during an Israeli war against Hamas. Blouin is also a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Katherine Blouin also participated in the pro-Hamas protest encampment at UofT in 2024, where she helped make a pro-Hamas display.

Blouin’s statements occurred following a series of Hamas terror atrocities and war crimes against Israeli civilians, including mass murder, torture, rape, beheadings and kidnappings, which were executed on October 7, 2023.

The Hamas terror attacks left over 1,200 Israelis dead, hundreds kidnapped and thousands wounded. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.”

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., Canada, European Union, Israel and other countries. Founded in 1987, it has killed thousands of Israeli civilians through mass shootings and suicide bombings. Hamas has also kidnapped children, families and the elderly and held them hostage in Gaza. It has desecrated [slide 7] dead bodies and launched numerous rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.

As of January 2024, Blouin was listed as an associate professor of at the University of Toronto (U of T) in “ancient History in the departments of Historical and Cultural Studies (UTSC) and Classics (UTSG), with cross-appointments in the graduate departments of History and Religion, as well as a membership in the Archaeology Center and the Center for Jewish Studies.”

UTSC is the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus and UTSG is the University of Toronto Saint George Campus.

As of January 2024, Blouin was co-founder and lead editor of a blog titled: “Everyday Orientalism.”

As of the same date, Blouin’s LinkedIn profile said she lived in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

On October 8, 2023, Blouin tweeted: “👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼” referring to a tweet published on October 7, 2023 that said: “Academia loves to decolonize everything besides occupied land. Its silence on Palestine is enough to know how decolonization has become a metaphor signifying everything besides material change and collective resistance.”

Anti-Israel activists use the term “resistance” to refer to violence and terror perpetrated against Israeli civilians and their allies. It is used to glorify and encourage anti-Israel and anti-Semitic violence. Anti-Israel activists chant slogans such as: “Resistance by any means necessary!” and “Resistance is justified when people are occupied!” in response to terror attacks.

On the same date, Blouin tweeted: “So #LandBack except for Palestine? / Noted.” Her tweet was in response to a tweet by the Premier of Manitoba condemning Hamas and showing support for the province’s Jewish community and Israel’s right to self-defense.

Also on October 8, 2023, Blouin tweeted: “👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼” referring to a tweet published on October 7, 2023 tweet that said: “Deafening silence from academics who have made careers from talking about decolonial theory and held round tables on Fanon and Said, as one of the most significant moments of decolonisation unfolds today in Palestine.”

On Saturday, October 7, 2023, approximately 2,900 heavily armed Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s border with Gaza. They executed numerous war crimes on civilians, including mass murder, beheadings of children, rape of men and women, torture, kidnappings and mutilation.

Hamas broadcast videos of their butchery on social media, often to victims’ accounts for families to see. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.” As of November 10, 2023, approximately 1,200 Israelis, the vast majority of them civilians, were murdered during the attacks. Hamas kidnapped 242 Israelis, including at least 30 children. At least 3,500 people were wounded, many severely.

A terrorist detained by Israel admitted he raped an Israeli woman when he broke into a kibbutz house during the October 7, 2023 attack. In March 2024, a former hostage of Hamas publicly stated she was sexually abused and tortured while in captivity.

For more information on the October 7, 2023 terror attacks, see the Canary Mission page on Hamas.

As of January 21, 2024, Blouin’s Twitter account featured a “pinned” tweet dated December 28, 2023, where she cast doubt on evidence showing the existence of the two ancient Jewish Temples on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. In her tweet, she wrote that “ancient historians need to speak the f**k up.”

“Temple Denial” is a form of historical revisionism and is part of a broader political effort to deny the Jewish historical connection to Israel. Its purpose is to portray Jews as foreign to the Land of Israel as well as to delegitimize Israel and Jewish sovereignty. Jerusalem’s two ancient Jewish Temples were the center of Jewish life for nearly one thousand years.

Blouin retweeted a January 8, 2024 tweet about Israel holding Palestinian terror suspects, that said: “Jews running a concentration camp. Systematic detention, humiliation, and murder. This is a disgusting revenge fantasy…”

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) highlights as one possible contemporary example of anti-Semitism: “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” The U.S. State Department adopted the IHRA’s working definition of anti-Semitism in 2016. Over 40 countries have adopted the definition as well.

On October 31, 2023, Blouin tweeted: “Current attempts at gaslighting + silencing critiques of 🇮🇱's genocide of 🇵🇸s are coherent w past attempts at shutting down resistance to colonial/racist oppression. Think: / -Theft of Indigenous Land in N America… / -Nazism / -Viet Nam war…”

On November 3, 2020, Blouin co-wrote a blog post about the casting of Israeli actress Gal Gadot as Cleopatra. The article said: “it is precisely the question of the status of Israel and Ashkenazi Jews as white settler-colonizers of a Mediterranean landscape that situates Gadot’s Cleopatra. For some, her casting is an assertion of modern claims to ancient landscapes that mirror the Israeli settlements in Palenstinian [sic] territories.”

One way that anti-Israel activists spread anti-Semitism is to claim [00:06:46] that Jews, particularly Ashkenazi Jews, do not descend from the ancient Israelites. This claim alleges that Jews are white Europeans who lack a connection to the Land of Israel.

Ashkenazi Jewry originated from an ancient Jewish community in the Middle East, whose descendants settled in Europe.

On June 24, 2025, Blouin posted on X: “‘The Israeli settler colonial project is an unjustifiable project of displacement, expulsion and genocide; US imperialism is an unjustifiable project of robbing people of their resources, dignity and sovereignty.’ - @AyyashMohannad.”

On July 4, 2024, Blouin claimed in an X post that Israel was committing “apartheid and genocide.”

Blouin co-organized a January 23, 2024 virtual event that would “address the role that scholars of antiquity, archaeology and heritage should play in opposing the genocide and epistemicide of the Palestinian people…”

On January 10, 2024, Blouin tweeted: “I just submitted the Orientalising 🇵🇸 digital archive to the ICC [International Criminal Court], in case it's of use to them. If you have any extra items to submit to the archive, send them my way. We will do a major migration + crowd-sourced update starting from later this month.”

In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) held hearings of a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. Blouin’s tweet referred to a “digital archive” she had compiled of what she referred to as “Orientalist and dehumanizing coverage and takes on Palestinians” and “othering tropes,” published on her Everyday Orientalism blog.

Blouin retweeted a January 4, 2024 tweet that claimed there was “no evidence” that Hamas terrorists had committed sexual violence in their October 7th massacre, implying that Israelis lied about any women getting raped that day.

Denial of the Hamas war crimes of October 7, 2023, among anti-Israel activists has been likened to Holocaust denial among neo-Nazis.

On January 4, 2024, Blouin tweeted that “the Zionist genocidal project follows a settler colonial roadmap that mimics the one used by the USA + Canada to steal Indigenous Land and mass kill + displace First Nation Peoples…”

In the same thread, Blouin tweeted: “The weaponization of Biblical archaeology, tourism and the Antiquities trade is at the heart of the Zionist project…”

Zionism is the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination in their own national home, and the right to develop their national culture. Zionism is a core part of the identity of most Jews.

Blouin retweeted a December 7, 2023 tweet that linked to a podcast by the Electronic Intifada (EI), titled “Debunking Israel's ‘mass rapes’ atrocity propaganda.” During the podcast, EI’s co-founder Ali Abunimah dismissed [00:12:17] reports of Hamas’s sexual violence as “hearsay” and “sensational claims.”

In October 2023, in the week following the Hamas terror attacks, Blouin signed [signatory 1375] an “Artists & Academics in Canada: Statement of Solidarity with Palestine.”

The statement said: “We understand that the events of this week did not occur in a vacuum…The whole world understood in the case of Ukraine that resistance to military occupation is justified. It is in fact a right guaranteed by international law. The militant reaction from Palestinians in Gaza on October 7, 2023, is a result of decades of cruel and oppressive treatment.”

The statement also accused Israel of “brutal massacres and weapons testing” and “war crimes” in Gaza. The statement also said: “As artists, cultural workers, and academics, we stand strong in support of the Palestinian struggle for freedom and against all forms of racism and settler-colonial violence.”

Blouin retweeted a November 18, 2023 tweet that claimed: “Israel killed its own people at the Nova Festival.”

On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists invaded the Supernova Music Festival taking place near the Israel-Gaza border, massacring 364 people and abducting 40. The body of one hostage, Israeli civilian Shani Louk, was then paraded through the streets of Gaza in a pickup truck while Gazans jeered at and spit on her. She was later murdered.

On July 3, 2024, Blouin tweeted that she helped make a pro-Hamas display at the UofT encampment. She wrote on X: “Together w students & @7seedsforchange
had the honour to participate in the making of this 🌳...”

Blouin was referring [00:00:05] to a paper mache olive tree that was erected at the encampment. The tree featured multiple inverted red triangles, a pro-Hamas symbol, underneath text that said “LAND BACK” and “EMPIRE WILL FALL.”

The inverted red triangle is a symbol showing support for Hamas and Palestinian terrorism. It first appeared in propaganda videos produced by the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, during its terror attacks of October 7, 2023. The symbol was used by Hamas to signify one of their Israeli targets.

The display that Blouin helped produce also said “INTIFADA” and had a large key, a symbol representing the “right of return.”

The term “intifada,” which translates from Arabic as “uprising” or “insurrection,” carries the connotation of violence. Palestinian intifadas waged against Israel have been marked since 1987 by hundreds of hijackings, shootings, stabbings, bombings and suicide missions.

The “right of return” is a Palestinian demand discredited as a means to eliminate Israel. International law mandates no absolute right of return and UN Resolution 194, which defined principles for “refugees wishing to return to their homes,” was unanimously rejected by Arab nations following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

On June 3, 2024, Blouin reportedly participated in an anti-Israel ceremony organized by the UofT encampment, graduation day at UofT. Protesters held the event to “honor all of those who could not graduate because of the genocide their university is funding.”

The ceremony was organized by UofT Occupy for Palestine, which according to their Instagram is a body of “Students calling for divestment from entities sustaining the attacks on Gaza + the occupation, apartheid, and illegal settlements of Palestine.”

As of May 31, 2024, Blouin showed support for the pro-Hamas UofT encampment by submitting a “support selfie” for a petition put out by UofT community members. Text beside her photo said: “DISCLOSE. DIVEST. CUT TIES.”

On May 2, 2024, UofT Occupy for Palestine (Occupy UofT) activists “stormed down” fencing around UofT’s Kings College Circle and set up a pro-Hamas and pro-BDS encampment called the “People’s Circle for Palestine.” Protesters chanted [00:02:59] for “intifada” and celebrated “resistance” [00:02:45]. Both terms are calls for terrorism. Activists chanted [00:01:28; 00:02:21] for Israel’s destruction multiple times.

After the October 7, 2023 massacre of nearly 1,200 Israelis, the inverted red triangle - 🔻- became a Hamas symbol. It appeared on large signs at the encampment and was featured in other encampment-related activism. Openly pro-Hamas marches began elsewhere in the city and ended at the encampment. In one incident, pro-Hamas activists punched a Jewish man, stole his Israeli flag and shouted anti-Semitic slurs.

Protesters occupied [00:00:17] the area from May to July 2024, despite UofT warning they were trespassing. On July 3, 2024, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice issued an injunction at UofT’s request, requiring the encampment to be cleared. Occupy UofT dismantled the encampment and wrote a statement that ended: “Long live the intifada.”