posters calling to boycott Israel
posters calling to boycott IsraelFlash 90

The University of Manitoba Students’ Union voted Thursday to strip funding and official club status from an anti-Israel group on campus.

The vote of 19 to 15 prohibits Students Against Israeli Apartheid, or SAIA, from receiving student union funding or using activity space in student-union controlled buildings.

SAIA, a group with campus branches across Canada, annually organizes Israeli Apartheid Week, a week-long series of events calling for economic, diplomatic and even academic sanctions against the Jewish state.

The two-page resolution justified the de-listing of SAIA under the terms of the Manitoba Human Rights Code, claiming that the group was guilty of “discrimination” and “harassment.”

The document also claimed that certain student union members “being Zionists, experience fear for their safety during  ‘Israeli Apartheid Week.’”

The move comes amid the continuing battle between pro-Israel and anti-Israel factions on university campuses worldwide.

Last week, the student government at the University of California (UC), Santa Barbara rejected a resolution to divest from Israel, joining several other California schools—UC Riverside, UC Berkeley and Stanford University, who have rejected Israel divestment resolutions.