Behind the scenes of Canadian universities’ ties to Israel

 

Divesting from corporations selling Israel arms is OK but cutting ties with Israeli universities is a bridge too far. That’s been the reaction to Canada’s student uprising against genocide even though Israeli universities assist that country’s military.

There are student encampments at McGill, Dalhousie, Western, Guelph, University of Toronto, University of British Columbia, University of Ottawa, UBC Okanagan, Vancouver Island University, University of Manitoba, University of Winnipeg, University of Victoria, University of Windsor, Université de Sherbrooke and Université du Québec à Montréal. Queen’s, McMaster and Ontario Tech students dismantled their two-week long encampments after the administrations’ agreed to a pathway towards divestment while Thompson River college agreed to discuss divestment over fears an encampment might be established. The University of Calgary and University of Alberta sent cops to immediately dismantle their students’ encampments.

The student encampments have generated significant media attention eliciting countless mentions of Israel’s genocide and sympathetic historical comparisons to student mobilizations against apartheid South Africa and the US war in Vietnam. In its first handful of days the McGill encampment alone generated as much corporate media attention as the 30 weekends in a row of mass protests in Montreal, including a march of 50,000.

Amidst the attention there has been sympathetic coverage of students’ call for their universities to divest from corporations, such as Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems, selling Israel weapons. There’s also been some, though less, supportive coverage about divesting from firms complicit in Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. But the encampments’ other central demand — ending their universities’ partnerships with Israeli schools — has received little sympathetic coverage even though it’s easy to show how Israeli universities assist a military subjugating and slaughtering Palestinians.

To enable their students to participate in the Gaza holocaust Israeli universities paused classes for nearly three months. As part of restarting classes, the academic institutions came to an agreement with the army to preserve the interests of over 50,000 students and faculty in the military. The universities granted various benefits to reservists killing Palestinians. Hebrew University (HU), for instance, launched an “Enhanced Financial Package for Our Students Serving in the IDF”.  (more...)

Behind the scenes of Canadian universities’ ties to Israel