No BDS, No Campus Animosity

LettersMichoel Zajdel — Published November 25, 2014 | Updated November 25, 2014 at 9:24am

There are numerous reasons I will be voting “no” in the upcoming election regarding whether the CSU should boycott Israel.

First, if students vote to support the boycott, the CSU would have the right to forbid Israeli speakers from coming to Concordia, to withhold funds from Israeli clubs on campus and to discontinue the exchange program that Concordia has with an Israeli university.

More importantly, should the BDS movement be approved, many students will feel threatened and unwelcome on campus.

Universities should be places where students feel a sense of community and connectedness to their school.

However, because the issues surrounding the BDS movement are controversial and may cause conflict among students, allowing the CSU to support the BDS movement detracts from Concordia’s sense of connectedness and unity.

Universities are not the place where the BDS movement should be discussed. Students should express their support for or against the BDS movement through appropriate means, by writing to their elected representatives, through demonstrations, etc.

Just to prove how divisive this issue is, I recently lost a Muslim friend of mine after she found out I was not supporting the BDS movement. There is a time and place for everything. This is neither the time nor the place.

The BDS movement is one-sided because it ignores the crimes that Hamas—the internationally-recognized terrorist group—has committed against Israel in violation of international law.

Hamas’s crimes against Israel include attacking civilians by shooting rockets at populated areas (like schools and hospitals), using human shields, disguising combatants as civilians and shooting missiles from within populated areas (such as mosques and schools).

Finally the BDS movement is immoral because it focuses disproportionately on Israel while ignoring countries that are guilty of far greater injustices, such as North Korea, Syria, China and Saudi Arabia.

In addition, by focusing solely on Israel, attention is turned away from human rights abuses that are far greater than what Israel is alleged to have committed.

Indeed, ISIS has killed, raped, and injured tens of thousands of people, and President Assad of Syria has killed approximately 200,000 of his own people.

Although no country is perfect, by focusing solely on Israel, we are committing a disservice to what the concept of human rights stands for.