Students at the University of Ottawa, Canada’s capital,
have voted down a motion to endorse the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions (BDS) movement.
The motion was amended to remove all language related to
BDS, and replace it with a statement of support for peace between Israelis and
Palestinian Arabs.
StandWithUs Canada welcomed the move on Sunday.
The motion was first brought up on Friday, hours before
many Jewish students stop working in order to observe Shabbat, said StandWithUs
Canada in a statement.
The Student Federation (SFUO) at the university came
forward with a motion to endorse a number of social justice causes, with item
47 being that the SFUO will support the BDS movement and take a
“pro-Palestine stance”. This came shortly after the SFUO tried to
revoke the club status of Hillel Ottawa and the Israel Awareness Committee.
Within 36 hours, students mobilized to fight the inclusion
of a campaign of hate against Israelis in a motion about social justice. Rotem
Fellus, a StandWithUs Canada Emerson fellow and an executive member of the
Israel Awareness Committee said, “As a Jewish and Israeli student
attending the University of Ottawa, I was shocked to see this discriminatory
motion brought forward right before Shabbat. I am proud of how our community
mobilized on such short notice to defeat this hateful campaign.”
“BDS has no
place in campaigns for social justice. Its inclusion in SFUO’s motion harms not
only Jews and Israelis, but all communities that face discrimination in
Canada,” said Zina Rakhamilova, Canadian Campus Director at StandWithUs.
“No one
benefits from this campaign of hate, which only serves to harm students while
fueling more injustice and conflict between Israelis and Palestinians,”
added Rakhamilova.
