Toronto (March 14, 2018) – Friends of SimonWiesenthal Center (FSWC) was pleased to learn that an anti-Israel Boycott,Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) motion put forward at the General Assembly of the Student Federation ofthe University of Ottawa (SFUO) failed to pass.  The motion, proposed at the Tuesday meeting, sought to endorse BDS as part of SFUO’spolicy manual.  While the motion initially received a slim majority of thevotes, a constitutional challenge resulted in a ruling that the motion failedto pass for not receiving the required two-thirds majority.

This comes in the midst of anti-Israel activity on campusesthroughout the country during the hate fest known as “Israel ApartheidWeek”.  A previous BDS campaign at the University of Ottawa in late 2017also failed, but the student union’s policy manual was amended to commit thestudent union “to do all in its power to peacefullyresolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

“We are pleased to see that theongoing campaign to vilify and demonize the state of Israel on campus hasfailed once again at the University of Ottawa,” said FSWC President and CEO AviBenlolo.  “We are encouraged to see that there are students from acrosscommunities prepared to stand together to counter the ongoingcampaigns of hate in order to ensure that their university campus is a respectful andtolerant environment for all.”

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Media Contact:

Avital Borisovsky
Communications Associate
416.864.9735 x 29 
aborisovsky@fswc.ca

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Follow us on Twitter at @CanadianFSWC 

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Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies (FSWC) is a top Jewish human rights foundation in Canada's organized Jewish community. It directly impacts over 100,000 people each year and 500,000+ peripherally. FSWC is committed to countering racism and antisemitism and to promoting the principles of tolerance, social justice and Canadian democratic values through advocacy and educational programs including workshops, Freedom Day, Spirit of Hope Benefit, Tools for Tolerance and the widely acclaimed Tour for Humanity. FSWC is affiliated with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organization headquartered in Los Angeles which has won two Academy Awards, has built two Museums of Tolerance (with a third being built in Jerusalem) and is an NGO at the United Nations, UNESCO, OAS, OSCE, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament. Visit us at www.fswc.ca. 

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