McGill student council once again in turmoil

Jewish member loses board seat over BDS issue

As it tries to implement a ban on the anti- Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions protest movement, student government at McGill University is in turmoil.

The latest flashpoint was the vote of a general assembly to kick a Jewish student off the board of directors Monday night, with no debate or argument, after he was identified by BDS supporters as politically active in support of Jewish causes.

Noah Lew, a third- year student who j oined t he board of the Student Society of McGill University after being elected as vice-president finance of the Arts Undergraduate Society, was one of a dozen board members who were up for ratification by a vote that was open to all students in attendance at Monday’s general assembly.

“I was initially very shaken,” Lew said of the vote that denied him a seat on the board. “It was an extremely tense and emotional room, and more than anything it was overwhelming. I was also very sad.”

He said there was applause from the people who voted against him.

Earlier this year, he had been publicly identified in the protest literature of a group called Democratize SSMU, which aims to thwart the implementation by the current president of a decision taken last year that BDS was discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional.

In its writings, Democratize SSMU identified “layers of corruption” within the student government, alleging favouritism in appointing board members, then singled out three Jewish members of the board “who are all either fellows at the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee, an organization whose explicit mandate is to promote proIsrael discourse in Canadian politics, or primary organizers for the anti-BDS initiative at McGill.”

“Essentially what they did is accuse (Lew and two other Jewish students) of exercising undue political power, of being corrupt,” said Jonathan Glustein, a fourth year political science and economics student who was also targeted in the ad. He is an SSMU board member, but his term is about to end.

Democratize SSMU later apologized unreservedly, for being “insensitive to antiSemitic tropes of Jewish people as corrupt and politically powerful.”

“Now that the anti- Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement had been decisively defeated at McGill, we see its acolytes stooping to more basic forms of anti- Semitism,” said Mi- chael Mostyn, chief executive of B’nai Brith Canada. “The McGill administration needs to continue to speak out, and to ensure that there is no place for targeting Jews in student politics.”

David Naftulin, a secondyear student in political science, who is Jewish, described the general assembly as a “mobilization race,” in which the Democratize SSMU supporters tried to “hijack” the vote.

Unlike in past years, when directors were ratified as a bloc, this year the Democratize SSMU supporters brought a motion to divide the vote. The first five went smoothly, with such overwhelming approval that a specific count was unnecessary, until they got to Lew, the only Jewish director.

The vote went 105 against, with 73 in favour and 12 abstaining.

“My Jewish identity was now public, and a target was placed squarely upon me by the McGill BDS movement,” Lew wrote in a Facebook post that has been widely circulated.

“I have no doubt from the information circulated about me and campaign run against me prior to this vote that this was about my Jewish identity, and nothing more.

“I was blocked from being able to participate in my student government because I am Jewish, because I have been affiliated with Jewish organizations, and because I believe in the right to Jewish self-determination.”

Naftulin said the vote seemed like an “extremely anti- Semitic act, a political witch hunt, under the thin veil of anti-Zionism.” Jewish students then walked out in protest.

The McGill BDS Action Network did not reply to a request for comment.

IT WAS AN EXTREMELY TENSE AND EMOTIONAL ROOM.