SPHR criticizes Azrieli Institute’s summer trip to Israel
Activities will take place despite the Canadian government’s non-essential travel advisory
The Azrieli Institute for Israel Studies is once again organizing its “Summer in Israel” trip, which was first held in 2017. This year the program has no collaboration with Concordia and any of its depatments.
The trip would cost over $1,000 per participating student and comes at a time when the Canadian government advises tourists and travellers to avoid all non-essential travel to Israel. For regions like Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria, government advisories recommend avoiding all travel to the regions altogether.
Concordia spokesperson Julie Fortier specified that it is not the university itself that is sending students to Israel, due to Canada’s travel advisory.
“The Azrieli Institute for Israel Studies has invited students to take part in a program at an Israeli university, and those choosing to do so would be doing it independently,” Fortier said. “Students are, of course, free to travel for their own educational purposes.”
According to Visualizing Palestine, a visual data tool created in 2012, Bar-Ilan University has allegedly been involved in “work with the Israeli military to develop unmanned combat vehicles and heavy machinery used to commit war crimes like home demolitions.”
A Solidarity for Palestine’s Honour and Resistance (SPHR) spokesperson, who wished to remain anonymous for safety reasons, said that the trip is another example of Concordia’s complicity in genocide.
“This administration is directly enabling the occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Neither SPHR nor any student with principle and moral will ever let this continue without standing against it,” they said.
This is not the first time SPHR has been vocal about its disapproval of trips to Israel. In August 2022, Concordia president Graham Carr travelled to Israel and spent $9,000 to visit Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv and build academic connections. Members and allies of the Palestinian community had denounced the university’s participation in the trip.
A previous version of this article stated that the summer trip was in collaboration with Concordia's department of political science. That information is incorrect. The department collaborated on the 2023 trip to Israel, not it's most recent iteration. The Link regrets this error.
