An update on the antisemitic incidents at York, U of T & McGill
TORONTO – Last week, a slate of antisemitic incidents took place on Canadian university campuses at York, the University of Toronto, and McGill University – all within days of one other.
You likely heard all about the brazen and hateful anti-Jewish slogans that were chanted at the rally at York University last week, where York students supported a direct call for violence against Jews and Israelis by chanting, “Viva, viva, intifadah!” According to some attendees, some anti-Israel activists at the rally even chanted “Jews back in the ovens,” a horrifying reference to the millions of Jews who perished in the Holocaust.
You also likely heard that the rally was met with condemnation from political leaders from across the spectrum, from Prime Minister Trudeau to Ontario Premier Doug Ford. For members of the Jewish community, these statements, alongside several accurate media reports, were welcomed.
For Jewish students on campus, however, they did not receive the same support from their peers or elected leaders. On the contrary, the hateful targeting of their Jewish identity has continued to this day. It’s as if the hateful York rally never ended.
Rather than issuing a balanced and objective press release that took Jewish concerns into account, the York Federation of Students (YFS) released an astoundingly prejudiced narrative of what transpired at the rally on Nov. 20. In its release, the YFS failed to mention how Jewish counter-protestors were heavily outnumbered and that antisemitic tropes and slogans were chanted.
Meanwhile, following the rally, the student union of U of T Scarborough (SCSU) introducing a conspicuously timed motion that, if passed, would deprive Jews of their right to publicly support their indigenous homeland on campus. It would also force Jewish students to abandon a vital aspect of their religious identity and bar U of T Scarborough students from engaging in open and honest dialogue about Israel, a clear and vicious assault on their freedom of speech and expression.
We at Hasbara Fellowships Canada were proud to work with our Fellows at U of T, Scarborough, as well as other campus allies, to highlight the discriminatory nature of the motion, which was to be debated at the SCSU Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Wednesday night. However, the motion was not presented and will be brought up at the next AGM.
Not even 24 hours after the SCSU meeting, on Thursday the YFS held its own AGM, during which a motion was passed calling on students to mobilize and protest when any “representatives of the Israeli state” speak on campus. Ironically, in its attack on the freedom of Israelis to speak, the YFS had the chutzpah to claim its motion was in defence of “the right of students to speak freely.”
What is important to understand is that this does not mean Israeli speakers are being barred from York University. What it means is that the YFS will support groups such as Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) in hosting anti-Israel demonstrations. And to that, we say let them. Following the Reservists on Duty event hosted by Herut Canada last week, more and more Canadians are opening their eyes to the pernicious and hateful agenda of BDS and anti-Israel activism in general. The more we expose their blatant bigotry, the better.
Which leads us to the toxic antisemitic culture at McGill University, where this week a student named Jordyn Wright was reportedly subjected to antisemitic discrimination (as if the McGill Daily weren’t enough) by members of McGill’s student government, the SSMU. According to Jordyn’s account, she was “personally singled out” by the SSMU for planning to participate on a Hillel Montreal trip to Israel. Please read her brave account of what transpired here.
As proponents of free speech and human rights, Hasbara Canada strongly believes in the right to all students, pro- and anti-Israel alike, to speak and have an open dialogue about the issues. What we will not stand for, however, is the promotion of hatred on Canadian campuses. In our view, when chants of “intifadah” are repeated on campus, that is hate speech, not free speech. When a Jewish student is subject to “thinly veiled and blatant antisemitism,” that is hate speech, not free speech.
We have communicated our position to York University President Rhonda Lenton, noting that it is because of incidents like this that we strongly urge York to formally adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism, so anti-Israel activists will no longer be able to foment hatred on campus under the guise of “human rights activism.”
In the wake of such hateful incidents, our mandate to educate and empower student leaders to fight for Israel on campus, build bridges with non-Jewish and non-Israeli groups, and teach others about the diversity and democracy of Israel, has never been more vital. Thank you again for your continued support.
P.S. It appears the pro-BDS U of T Graduate Students Union (which was recently embroiled in controversy over its lack of support for kosher food on campus) is hosting an event called Defend Freedom of Speech on Palestine! Ironically, the union claims that, “Regardless of your view on Israel-Palestine, the issue here is the right of all to freedom of speech” – despite the fact that student BDS activists across Canada continue to deny freedom of speech for all pro-Israel students and speakers on campus, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. Hypocrisy much?
