https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/university-torontos-jewish-problem-richard-l-cravatts/
As if to confirm the depth of its anti-Israel animus, the Student Union of the University of Toronto at Scarborough (SCSU) passed a poisonous motion during its virtual November 24th meeting stipulating that the student union “reaffirm its commitment to the BDS movement by . . . rais[ing] awareness about Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestine and war crimes against Palestinian peoples;” in light of this, the union decided the University must “refrain from engaging with organizations, services, or take part in events that further normalize Israeli apartheid . . ,” and even ban speakers from campus who “support the military occupation of Palestine.”
More insidious was an item from an original motion passed in 2013 that will require that any kosher food brought to campus must be sourced from firms that do not support “Israeli apartheid,” not to mention the creation of a pernicious “BDS List” that will serve to blacklist organizations that support Israel.
This recent vote is the latest in a long campaign of anti-Israel, anti-Semitic actions at the University of Toronto, activism which has created a hostile climate for Jewish students, a situation which has not gone unnoticed. In June of 2020, for example, B’nai Brith Canada’s League for Human Rights, together with two U of T professors, Stuart Kamenetsky and Howard Tenenbaum, produced a lengthy and substantive report, “Confronting Antisemitism at the University of Toronto: A Path Forward,” written for the University’s president, Meric Gertler. That report, which fastidiously reviewed a long list of anti-Israel events and their deleterious effect on Jewish students, went largely ignored by the university’s administration, troubling in light of the many bigoted events cataloged in the report.
At this particular university, specifically, the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) has the dubious distinction of being the only student union in Canada with a committee dedicated solely to promoting the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and in 2019 outrageously rejected Hillel’s request to recognize the “Kosher Forward” campaign to have kosher food offered on campus since, as the Union decided in their grotesquely anti-Semitic way, Hillel is pro-Israel and therefore kosher food should not be allowed.
What is next for the purge of anyone who might be considered pro-Israel? No Jews allowed in cafeterias that use Soda Stream products? The removal of Jewish names from endowed professorships or campus buildings if those benefactors supported Israel? Will “Open Hillel” centers—those renegade Hillels which allow pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel dialogue and events to take place in their spaces—be allowed to remain on campuses but conventional, pro-Israel Hillels not?
