The Comment Factory

Two weeks into a belated semester and students at York University in Canada have already begun a new season of political brouhaha as pro-Israel and Palestinian student demonstrators faced off Thursday afternoon. Thursday’s protests followed an incident the night before when a large group of students, many wearing Palestinian keffiyehs and shouting anti-Israel slogans, disrupted a press conference where another student organization planned to announce their plans to push a recall election on the York Federation of Students (YFS) executive. In a conflation of issues, students supporting Israel have declared their dissatisfaction with the YFS, stating that the Federation does not represent their views. Pro-Israel students point to a recent YFS resolution expressing support for the people of the Gaza Strip during the the recent Israeli incursion. But these students insist that their largest complaint against the YFS is the Federation’s support of the CUPE strike that shut down classes at the university for months.

After gathering 5,000 student signatures toward a petition calling for a recall of the York student government executive, petition organizers as part of a “Drop YFS” coalition planned to announce this success at a press conference last night. But that conference never happened. “A large group of students attempted to force their way into the room” where the conference was to be held, said Matthew Harris, a political science student at York University and a vice-president of the York Jewish student club.

“They began shouting and screaming that they weren’t being let in, that it was racist, that there were only whites inside,” Harris said, alleging that a YFS vice-president Krisna Saravanamuttu tried to push in between students and get in in order to stop the press conference from starting. “There was probably about 75 to 80 students out in the hallway,” he said. The press conference was cancelled. “It was way too loud and it was disturbing,” he said. Members of the “Drop YFS” coalition moved upstairs to the Jewish Student Center and were followed by a crowd of chanting protesters. One pro-Israel student described “pro-Palestinian thugs gathered outside the Hillel office, some covering their faces with keffiyahs, chanting hateful statements and using intimidation” in a description posted on Facebook. Matthew Harris described Jewish students “barricaded” inside the room.

Campus security and Toronto Police were called and students were escorted safely out of the building. Harris alleges that the York Federation of Students hopes to obfuscate the reasons behind the petition calling for the recall of the executive by connecting it to the issue of Israel and Palestine. He asserts the Federation tried to paint those circulating the petition as pro-Israel lobbyists trying to usurp control from a pro-Palestinian council. “[The student government] tried to convince students that it wasn’t about undergraduate representation, but rather that it was about the Gaza issue,” Harris said. But “it had much more to do with the YFS’s support for CUPE during the strike,” Harris said.

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At a rally in solidarity with Palestinians on Thursday, a member of the York Federation of Students refuted Harris’s account. “Ever since these individuals involved in the Drop YFS coalition started their campaign there has been an increase in racism and many other forms of discrimination on our campus,” said Krisna Saravanamuttu, the YFS vice president for equity. Saravanamuttu described the gathering that disrupted the press conference Wednesday night as a protest against “racism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and sexism that we’ve seen on our campus in the last two weeks.” The protesting students simply wanted to be a part of the pres conference, Saravanamuttu said. “They just wanted to have their voices heard,” he said.

“There was no anti-Semitism involved with yesterday’s protest. It was a peaceful demonstration,” he said, adding that no one blocked access in or out of the Jewish student center. Saravanamuttu said that most people believe that the Drop YFS campaign is a response by pro-Israel student groups to a YFS resolution denouncing the recent Israeli incursion into Gaza. Approximately 150 students gathered in York University’s student center Wendesday at 2:00 p.m. to show support for Palestinians in Gaza in a rally that had been planned prior to the previous night’s turmoil. About 100 students gathered in a counter-demonstration, waving Israeli flags. The two sides were separated by campus security officers. No one was reported injured.