The library at Ryerson University, in Toronto, Canada. Photo: WikiCommons.

Jewish students endured boos and jeers last Wednesday as they walked out of a meeting in protest of a motion proposed by Students for Justice in Palestine to vote to recommend that Toronto’s Ryerson University boycott the Jewish state, according to Canada’s Sun News.

“A video account paints a shameful portrait of bullying and intimidation on campus,” Sun News columnist Paige MacPherson wrote on Friday. “It shows a fiercely politicized room of students squeezing out a group based on their cultural identity. It’s shocking, it’s in downtown Toronto, and it’s subsidized by your tax dollars.”

“This isn’t the first Canadian campus where Jewish students are facing discrimination from the minority who promotes the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, bent on banning all things Israeli. At the University of Windsor a few weeks prior, a select number of students voted in a boycott, and saw a backlash from alumni and the university president. Similar efforts have taken place at the University of Regina, Carleton, York, University of Toronto, Concordia, Trent, and McMaster.”

The Jewish students at Ryerson held signs stating “Hate Off Campus” and “RSU [Ryerson Student Union] Represent Me Too”.

One Jewish student asked, “Does this look like a fair argument to you?” before walking out. “Because to me, it does not.”

The meeting’s moderator responded, “Yes, absolutely. It looks like a very fair argument to me, because a process is being followed.”

MacPherson wrote: “The room full of students cheered on the boycott and boo’d the protesting Jewish students. The president of the student group ‘Students for Justice in Palestine’ brought forth the boycott motion. Quorum at the meeting was 100 students. About 250 showed up. That’s all it took to decide the official position of Ryerson’s over 38,000 students.”

“Does this mean Ryerson University now boycotts Israel? Thankfully, the university is probably not run by bigots, so they’re not likely keen on pushing a bigoted agenda at the administrative level,” Macpherson wrote.

A representative from the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs was quoted as saying, “To date, Israel boycott resolutions passed by student unions have had absolutely no impact on university policy. For good academic reasons, not a single Canadian university administration has ever supported BDS. We commend Hillel and all the Ryerson students who refused to back down in the face of abject bigotry.”

Watch Jewish students standing up for themselves at the RSU meeting: