Outrage over ‘Punch a Zionist’ tweet
McGill student politician denies he’s pro-violence
MONTREAL • A McGill student politician who encouraged people on Twitter to “punch a Zionist today” is facing calls from Jewish groups and fellow students to resign.
Igor Sadikov, an elected representative of students in McGill’s faculty of arts, made the comment Monday night but it only became widely known Thursday.
Both B’nai Brith and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs condemned the tweet and raised concerns about the climate faced by Jewish students on McGill’s campus.
Harvey Levine, B’nai Brith’s Quebec regional director, called the tweet “absolutely deplorable, unacceptable and 100 per cent antiSemitic.”
Reuben Poupko, Quebec co-chairman of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said the tweet clearly crossed the line. “It’s not only an egregious violation of the norms of campus life, it also constitutes a criminal act,” he said. “It’s a call for violence.’
The demands for Sadikov’s resignation were endorsed Thursday afternoon by the Arts Undergraduate Society, on which he serves as a representative. “As executives, we do not hold the power to directly impeach a member of our team,” the AUS said in a statement on its Facebook page. “That said, we have formally requested Igor’s resignation, particularly due to his encouragement of violence.”
Sadikov, a third-year student of political science and math, said by email that he has not decided whether to step down. “I regret the poorly thought-out format I used to phrase my opposition to Zionism and colonialism and the harm that the tweet has caused,” he said.
His message, which he deleted Thursday afternoon, was intended to express “opposition to the dispossession and colonization of Palestinian land and to the mistreatment of Palestinian people,” he said. He said he does not condone or advocate “violence on the basis of membership in any identity group.”
Simon Paransky, a McGill law student who helped bring the tweet to the public’s attention, said Sadikov is active in left-wing campus politics and in issues related to Israel and Palestine.
“It’s appalling that a student representative is calling for violence against a certain group of people,” Paransky said. “And it is not an isolated incident. It is happening in a context of increased hostility to students on campus, mostly students of Jewish faith but also students of non-Jewish faith who are allies of Jewish students.”
Last year, the Students’ Society of McGill University voted in favour of joining the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, but the vote was overturned in an online vote. Paransky said that following the BDS debate, some Jewish students experienced harassment on campus.
The student newspaper the McGill Daily, for which Sadikov was previously news editor, has an editorial policy of not publishing articles that “promote a Zionist worldview.”
The BDS debate and the student newspaper’s stance led the New York-based Jewish publication Algemeiner to rank McGill fourth last year on a list of North America’s 40 “worst” campuses for Jewish students.
Paransky said he suspects Sadikov’s tweet was a reference to the “punch-a-Nazi” meme that circulated after American far-right activist Richard Spencer was punched on camera last month in Washington.
“The climate at McGill has not been friendly for those who identify as Zionists in the past several years,” Paransky wrote on Facebook. “However, this tweet takes it to a new level. This student should not be permitted to wield power for even one more day. Regardless of his politics, inciting brutality or implicitly likening Jews to Nazis is repulsive.”
Sadikov, who said his father is Jewish and mother is half-Jewish, denied that his tweet was anti-Semitic. “This tweet was not an attack against Jewish students, but on the adherents of a political philosophy that has detrimental impacts on Palestinians on a daily basis, and one which, as Jewish people, we should not support,” he wrote.