In a recent op-ed by Koby Michaels, the case against adopting BDS at UBC was made. Grossly selective and imprecise in its analysis, the author, and those others opposed to BDS, fail to consider several things. The call to push for divesting from Israeli products at UBC, made by SPHR, is an important one and should be supported by all those committed to issues of social justice and anti-oppression.
The claim made by Michaels that “Palestinians don’t like the BDS movement” is so inaccurate in that BDS is an initiative of Palestinian civil society. Coordinated by the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the initial call had the endorsement of more than 170 Palestinian organizations.
Another claim made throughout Michael’s piece is that BDS spreads anti-Semitism. Not only does this do a great disservice to Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid, but it also homogenizes all Jewish people as supporters of Israel. Groups such as the local Vancouver chapter of Independent Jewish Voices, to the larger U.S.-based Jewish Voice for Peace, to transnational ones such as the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, all support BDS. To deem the movement as anti-Semitic, then, is to contribute to the erasure of these groups.
In another letter sent recently to The Ubyssey by Ariela Karmel, Karmel writes that conflict can only end through dialogue and that “BDS succeeds in shutting down dialogue.” But it is precisely for the reason of unequal relations of power between Israel and Palestinians that so-called “dialogue” initiatives are harmful. They often address only personal narratives rather than systemic relations of power, thereby decontextualising and depoliticizing the conflict. These initiatives are central pillars of Israel advocacy on university campuses, the most recent example being the new Open Dialogue initiative at UBC.
Michaels' piece also argues that the AMS should take a stand on “complicated international issues,” based on “Canadian and UBC’s values.” But as UBC and Canada itself stand on stolen Indigenous land, where this settler colonial state emerged from genocidal conquest of its Indigenous population, what values would these be and how would they aid in our understanding of this conflict? With Israel’s foundation too as a settler colonial state, should there be any reason to approach the conflict in this way?
Where at least nine student unions across Canada have adopted BDS, it is time UBC did too. As Anuja Bose, an activist from UCLA says, student and labour organizing in the States has recently been making connections with incidents of police brutality against black people in the U.S. to the repression of Palestinians in Gaza. In this way, more and more groups are aligning with the Palestinian cause, indicating a broad-based movement against state violence.
300 Canadian academics supported sanctions against Israel in 2009, including many professors at UBC. It is time we, the students of UBC, also looked towards adopting BDS on our campus. Let us act differently than in 1987, when the majority of UBC students voted not to divest from apartheid South Africa.
Urooba Jamal is a fifth-year International Relations major and co-founder/editor of The Talon.