University of Michigan Student Body To Vote on Anti-Israel Resolution

The student body at the University of Michigan will vote on an anti-Israel resolution next week supporting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement and accusing Israel of genocide. Assembly Resolution 13-025, the result of a petition signed by more than 1,000 students, takes issue with an October 10 statement by the university’s president, Santa Ono, who condemned the “horrific attack by Hamas terrorists on Israeli citizens.” The resolution says that Mr. Ono’s failure to include “Palestine” or “Gaza” in his remarks caused “entire student populations to feel unseen and otherized,” and that “acknowledging Israel as a victim of violence should not be separated from acknowledging Palestine as a victim of settler colonialism.”While the damage from Mr. Ono’s statement is not reversible, the petition says, the school should stand “against apartheid regimes and speak for all people suffering violence and oppression across the world regardless of conflicts of interests held by the university and its endowment.” The referendum is to be presented to students and voted upon between November 28 and November 30. The university has faced criticism since the October 7 attacks for fostering antisemitism. In the past month, hundreds of students at the University of Michigan have participated in walkouts, sit-ins, and protests calling for the school to divest from Israel, as the student-run Michigan Daily reported.Despite the wave of antisemitic incidents at the school, the resolution is facing backlash and a petition for the university to “shut down” the “pro-Hamas referendum.” “On November 28, the University of Michigan campus community is set to be presented with a vicious referendum that takes the position of Hamas and absurdly accuses Israel, which is attempting to rescue the hostages and liberate the Gazan people, of a ‘genocide,’” the petition reads. It also calls on the university’s president and the administration to “ensure that this hateful, slanderously antisemitic referendum never goes in front of the student population.”The petition notes that Hamas’s attacks took the lives of more than “1,400 men, women, and children,” with 80 percent of their bodies showing “signs of abuse or rape.” Following the attacks, Jewish people have faced a “nightmarish rise of antisemitism on American university campuses and throughout the West,” the petition adds.Other petitions have called for the university to “halt antisemitic actions” and enact mandatory classes teaching Israel’s history. A “concerned relative” of a Jewish student at the University of Michigan called for signatures on change.org, saying, “I am deeply disturbed by the rampant antisemitism on campus. My niece has witnessed posters of Hamas captives being torn down, flags representing Israel and the U.S. being burnt, and verbal assaults on Jewish students. This is not an environment conducive to learning or personal growth.The petition also brings up the student ballot “accusing Israel of genocide.”“No such ballot was enacted accusing Russia of the same when they invaded Ukraine,” the petition reads. “And let’s remember that Israel does all it can to get the civilian population to leave the area — warning them AND Hamas of where they are targeting. Russia did not do the same.”A representative of the University of Michigan was not immediately reachable for comment.Correction: 2018 was when an antisemitic incident reported by Fox News occurred at the University of Michigan. The incident incorrectly appeared in an earlier version.

University of Michigan Student Body To Vote on Anti-Israel Resolution

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