University of Toronto student union claims Kosher food is pro-Israel
The group's statement comes amid an ongoing campaign to secure Kosher food on campus for Jewish students at the University of Toronto.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFA man wearing a T-shirt of the BDS movement holds a Palestinian flag during a protest against the ‘Tel-Aviv sur Seine’ beach attraction in central Paris last summer(photo credit: AFP PHOTO)
A Jewish University of Toronto student who wrote to the university’s Graduate Students’ Union (GSU) in support of an ongoing campaign by Hillel to bring kosher food to campus, only to get the response that GSU “[doubts] the Executive Committee will be comfortable recommending this motion given that the organization hosting it [Hillel] is openly pro-Israel.”The email added that any efforts to bring kosher food to campus may be against “the will of the membership,” in reference to the GSU’s adopted motion of supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which campaigns for various cultural, economic and political boycotts of the Jewish state.The GSU responded on Facebook, saying that any board member can submit a motion on the status of kosher food on campus, without an indication that the Executive Committee is willing to change their stance on the issue.“Shamefully, the GSU has been permitted for years now to cultivate a hostile attitude toward Jewish graduate students at U of T,” B’nai Brith Canada CEO Michael Mostyn said in response to the controversy. “The U of T Administration must act against antisemitism on campus – fine words are simply not enough.”B’nai Brith also sent letters to officials at the university, requesting that they condemn the GSU’s stance on the kosher food initiative, as well as ensure that the formal complaint against the BDS committee is done in a timely manner, in order to provide access to kosher food on campus.The University of Toronto’s GSU is the only student union in Canada that maintains a special committee aimed at supporting and encouraging BDS. A formal complaint against the BDS committee has been sent to U of T’s Complaint and Resolution Council for Student Societies (CRCSS), which is still under review. The complaint notes that the existence of the BDS committee within a student government body representing all students, via tuition fees, violates U of T’s anti-discrimination policies.Like many universities in Canada, there has been an ongoing battle to protect the rights of students to “opt out” of paying part of their tuition to organizations and student unions that engage in BDS and other politically controversial movements.The University of Toronto has had a history of anti-Israel activism on campus. In 2005, the university became the first school to host Israeli Apartheid Week, which has since morphed into an annual week-long series of events held around the world.