The Ontario branch of the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) passed a motion to boycott Israel at their annual general meeting earlier in August.
The national representative for CFS Ontario (CFS-O), Anna Goldfinch, said member unions CFS-O unanimously passed a motion to condemn the actions of Israel in Gaza, including the bombing of two universities.
Goldfinch said the motion calls for the Canadian government to stop supplying arms to Israel and to end the Canadian-Israeli free trade agreement, among other requests.
Goldfinch said it is up to CFS-O member unions to decide how to carry out their campaign on campus.
“There is local autonomy for each member students’ union to decide how they want to carry out that campaign on their campus, however the decisions at . . . CFS-O general meetings represent a collective decision of all member locals of the federation,” Goldfinch said.
Maddy Porter, vice-president (student issues) for the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) said via email that CUSA was not present at the CFS-O annual general meeting and did not vote on the motion in regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Porter said CUSA encourages an inclusive and fair dialogue.
“Overall, it is not within CUSA’s mandate nor is it appropriate to so heavily weigh into complicated matters of foreign policy. We are here to positively serve the Carleton campus,” Porter said.
The president of Carleton’s Israel Awareness Committee, Lorne Geller, believes that the CFS-O’s stance on Israel will polarize an already divided campus.
“I don’t think a decision made in a board room in Ontario is going to affect what goes on in the Middle East. I don’t think it’s really worth anything,” Geller said. “It’s just going to add fuel to the fire so to speak and I just don’t think it’s productive in any way. If the goal is peace I don’t see how this advances it.”
Geller said a more effective way of campaigning for peace is to start by bridging the gap between Jewish and Israeli students and Arab and Palestinian Students.
“Peace starts with us,” Geller said.
Rana Nazzal, a member of Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) Carleton said she is pleased to hear that the CFS-O has voted to support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement.
SAIA has run their own divestment campaign at Carleton targeting investments that Carleton has in Israel and routinely releases a report on the topic, according to Nazzal.
Rana said SAIA Carleton ran a divestment campaign in 2011-12 that pushed for student body referendums which passed in the Graduate Students’ Association but failed to actually be struck by CUSA.
She said she is not sure that Carleton students will feel the benefits of the CFS-O motion because CUSA isn’t paying CFS fees and is “somewhat disconnected” from the organization.
“I think the most important thing is that we’re starting to see a culture of people realizing that this is super important and that it’s not something to be afraid of,” Nazzal said.
Ben Stone, a history and political science student at Carleton disagrees with the boycott.
“It’s particularly unfair because a lot of the universities in Canada, when they do work with Israel, it’s not so much with the Israeli government. They do work with the universities,” Stone said.
“Those universities don’t promote war, they don’t promote what happens in Gaza, they’re simply in that country.”
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