Statement on MUN’s ties to Israel
On Wednesday, March 20 and on Friday, March 22, students from the engineering and HSS faculties respectively received an email sent on behalf of the university’s Scholarships and Awards Office. Within the body of the email, students were upset to find information from the Jewish Community Foundation of Montreal about scholarships to study in Israel. Promoting studying in a country currently engaging in genocide is unacceptable and deeply disrespectful to Palestinian students.
JCF Montreal is an organization that actively supports Israel and Israeli initiatives. Not only do they advertise at least 12 scholarships for students to study in Israel [1], they also support children’s camps, one of which has this excerpt about their “Israel Day” activity including an “army obstacle course”:
Israel day, organized by our Israeli and Canadian staff, gives campers the opportunity to learn about life in Israel. The day includes … an “army obstacle course.” [2]
Students from Palestine and the Middle East have been extremely troubled by the lack of support that they have seen from MUNL administration on this issue - the only statement made concerning Palestine by the university was in October 2023 painting the issue as multi-faceted [3]. Since October 7, over 33 000 Palestinians have been killed [4]. More children have died in Gaza over the last six months than all children globally in conflicts between January 2019 and December 2022 [5].
The Parliament of Canada has recently voted to support a ceasefire in Gaza and has committed to stop exporting arms to the Israeli state [6], and yet students have seen almost no action on behalf of Memorial University to support students. Since October 7, Israeli forces have bombed and destroyed at least 12 universities and 378 schools [7] - as an educational institution, students expected Memorial to take a strong stance against these violent attacks and the impact that it has on education in Gaza, both since October 7 and in the decades-long occupation and genocide that has been inflicted upon the Palestinian people by Israel.
Israel has been criticized internationally for its most recent crimes. The International Court of Justice has already found Israel to be plausibly guilty of genocide and issued them with six provisional measures to further prevent genocide in the region [8]. On top of this, the UN General Assembly has voted multiple times overwhelmingly in favour of Israel ending its siege [9].
Students expect better from this university, as it has shown support for victims of global conflicts in the past - despite MUN immediately suspending all study abroad programs in Russia following the Russian invasion of Ukraine [10], they made no statement against studying abroad in Israel and have now even advertised programs for students to travel to Israel for their studies. Any institution or organization associating itself with Israel is showing its priorities in supporting a settler colonial nation-state over Indigenous Palestinians, and for Memorial to be silent on this issue shows a concerning lack of commitment to Indigenous justice, both locally and in Palestine.
This is not the only time Memorial University has been complicit in genocide within the last few months. Students are also extremely frustrated by the Engineering Co-operative Education Office’s continuing support for companies like Kraken Robotics, which has been criticized across the country for its association with Eblit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries, and the Israeli military. Students worry that they may inadvertently be contributing to the ongoing genocide while completing their work term requirements, and are disappointed that the university has not severed ties with these companies.
MUNSU stands with students of all backgrounds and has called for a ceasefire, an end to the occupation, and justice in Palestine. We echo students’ concerns that Memorial University administration has not taken a strong enough stance on the genocide, has abandoned the student body during this extremely difficult time, and is now fully complicit in advertising pro-Israel projects.
References:
[1] https://jcfmontreal.org/grants/scholarships/israel/
[2] https://ycountrycamp.com/camp-life/the-jewish-experience/
[3] https://gazette.mun.ca/campus-and-community/time-of-crisis/
[4] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas-war-in-maps-and-charts-live-tracker
[5] https://turkiye.un.org/en/263401-gaza-number-children-killed-higher-four-years-world-conflict
[6] https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/votes/44/1/658
[10] https://gazette.mun.ca/campus-and-community/time-of-crisis/