Green Party Leader Elizabeth May with party members in 2008. Delegates of the party voted to support the BDS movement. Photo: Shaun Merritt via Flickr.com.

JNS.org – Wide opposition has been expressed by Canadian Jewish groups to the Green Party’s adoption of BDS as part of its official platform.

The vote to add the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement’s agenda to the platform was held at the party’s biennial convention in Ottawa on Sunday, despite opposition from Party Leader Elizabeth May.

“As a leader, I am disappointed that the membership has adopted a policy in favour of a movement that I believe to be polarizing, ineffective and unhelpful in the quest for peace and security for the peoples of the Middle East. As is the right of any member, I will continue to express my personal opposition to BDS,” May said in a statement after the convention.

Former Green party candidate Richard Zurawski also called the vote “destructive for the party,” the Globe and Mail reported.

“The BDS movement, which seeks to censor and blacklist Israelis, is fundamentally discriminatory and utterly at odds with Canadian values,” said Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) CEO Shimon Fogel.

Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies president and CEO Avi Benlolo said the vote “shows the party has been infected by a vicious strain of anti-Jewish hate.”

B’nai B’rith Canada CEO Michael Mostyn also said the party has “chosen to embrace the policy position of shills for 9/11 conspiracy theories and terror apologists, rather than side with the democratic and environmentally friendly state of Israel,” the Canadian Jewish News reported.