PETITION TO THE UOTTAWA ADMINISTRATION TO CONDEMN WAR CRIMES AGAINST PALESTINIANS, UPDATE ITS DISCRIMINATION POLICY TO INCLUDE ZIONISM, AND DIVEST FROM FINANCIAL INVESTMENTS ESTABLISHED ON ILLEGAL SETTLEMENTS

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To:  President and Vice-Chancellor Jacques Frémont, Vice-President International and Francophonie Sanni Yaya, Vice-President Finance and Administration Jennifer Doyle, and Human Rights Office Director Noël Badiou.

This open letter succeeds several other calls to divest by academic institutions, more recently McGill University, Columbia University, among others. These calls are in response to the current and ongoing ethnic cleansing and state-sanctioned violence across occupied Palestine. In the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem, Israel’s Jerusalem District Court ruled that four families should be forcefully expelled from their homes by May 2nd, 2021 and three other families by August 1st, 2021, totalling 58 Palestinians including 17 children. The goal of the ethnic cleansing campaigns is to replace the indigenous owners of the land with Israeli settlers. In fact, the forced displacement emerges from an Israeli court hearing that ruled in favour of lawsuits launched by US-registered, billionaire-backed settler organizations to expel eight Palestinian families — a ruling that was, in itself, an unlawful application of domestic law on occupied territory. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has officially determined that the forced displacement of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah is in clear violation of international humanitarian law and therefore would amount to a war crime. The expulsions of Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah have been quickly followed by the Israeli Defence Forces raiding, bombing, and maiming Palestinian Muslim worshippers inside of the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, during the holy month of Ramadan. Many world leaders, including those with strong political affiliation with Israel, have denounced the violence perpetrated by the Israeli Defence Forces. Meanwhile, Gaza, encroached by an over a decade-long siege, has been under attack as the Israeli military fired over 1800 airstrikes on Palestinians in Gaza. The Israeli attacks have killed at least 250 Palestinians, including 66 children, 39 women, and multiple essential healthcare workers whose homes were deliberately targeted by Israeli airstrikes. The recent attacks on Gaza led to the displacement of over 70,000 Palestinians, mostly children and women, and it is the most intense escalation since the seven-week 2014 Israeli war on Gaza.

These crimes against humanity are further exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic. The Israeli judicial system is an institution that upholds and promotes Zionism, an ideology that promotes a racist and discriminatory settler-colonial project built on the ongoing persecution and marginalization of Palestinians. Today, it is manifested through the unlawful use of violence by the Israeli military and armed settlers. These tragic terrorist attacks highlight that Zionism is not a simple political ideology about which there are differing opinions on campus; it is a violent settler-colonial structure that is currently terrorizing, maiming, and killing unarmed civilians to expand Israel’s illegal settlements.

The University of Ottawa has been complicit in failing to take a stance against the forms of oppression and violence in occupied Palestine. This includes but is not limited to President Fremont’s statement embracing the defeat of the 2018 BDS motion, which he labelled as “divisive” and “ostracizing”, as well as the promotion of various exchange programs and undergraduate courses. Zionist groups on campus have actively supported the state of Israel, such as Israel On Campus and Hillel Ottawa, and condemned movements that advocate for Palestinians’ right to self-determination. In doing so, they are also promoting and normalizing the continuation and acceleration of the demolition of Palestinian houses, the expulsion of Palestinian families, and the brutal use of violence to crack down on unarmed Palestinian civilians. At one Canadian postsecondary institution, a campaign led by ideologically-motivated students is harassing students who are active in the pro-Palestinian cause, to the extent that they shared a student’s personal information on a website stating that the student were offering sexual services in exchange for monetary compensation. These ideologies are dangerous, colonial, discriminatory, hateful, terrorizing, and violent, and should have no place on our campus, especially given that the University of Ottawa is dedicated to upholding the tenets of diversity and inclusion. It would go against uOttawa’s supposed commitment to justice, safety, and anti-racism to continue allowing Zionists on campus to mobilize discourse, speeches, programs, events, and even harassments to support and maintain this harmful ideology. If uOttawa fails to actively respond to and institutionalize our demands then it would confirm what most racialized students on campus feel which is that the uOttawa administration’s creation of various ad-hoc committees, policies, and working groups are lip service meant to assuage our well-founded and immediate concerns.

Zionists on campus frequently pressure uOttawa’s administration to dismiss valid concerns voiced by Palestinian and students of color and conflate criticism of an apartheid regime with anti-Semitism. While this conflation alone is dangerous, Zionist groups off- and on-campus also consistently resort to media press releases and connections to investment stakeholders to vilify Palestinian students on campus. Some of these external connections include Canary Mission, a website dedicated to blacklisting and terrorizing students and academincs on campus who have publicly expressed criticism of Israel or support for the Palestinian right to self-determination. This website — which targeted dozens of uOttawa students, alumni, and faculty — often results in online harassment, denial of border entry, loss of jobs, and most importantly challenges to students’ mental wellbeing. We demand that uOttawa recognize any speech that advocates for the expansion of a settler-colonial state, for the expulsion of native peoples from their homes, and for the use of violence against unarmed civilians as hate speech. Any student group or student who espouses these ideologies should be held accountable by the University for their violent, hateful, and harmful speech.

The internal dynamics on campus continue to jeopardize the safety and identity of Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab students, and therefore can no longer be ignored by uOttawa administrators. It is a well-documented fact that Zionist groups on campus will utilize every method at their disposal to erase our opinions and to advocate financially and ideologically to maintain the illegal occupation and colonization of Palestine. This, in addition to the University of Ottawa’s complacency in Palestinian dispossession and suffering, makes the campus a hostile space for all Palestinian students, faculty, and Palestinian allies. uOttawa’s deafening silence is not only contrary to their aforementioned commitment to diversity and inclusion, but it also severely impairs the mental health and well-being of students with direct or indirect ties to Palestine. For instance, refugee students who fled from places of war and ongoing conflict are triggered by the news of violence. If uOttawa continues to invest in corporations supporting Israeli settlements, it is complicit in the Israeli State's internationally condemned ethnic cleansing and the ongoing violent displacementof Palestinian families. This is in direct contradiction to uOttawa’s ongoing commitment of promoting the safety and inclusion of students of colour and international students on campus, which include Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students, especially after the student-led protest in December 2020.

As such, we demand that:

1. uOttawa release a public statement condemning

1. the forced expulsions from, and demolitions of, Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem as human rights violations and crimes against humanity.
2. the state-sanctioned attacks on al-Aqsa mosque as an Islamophobic act of terror that is in violation of the international human right for freedom of religion.
3. the most recent heavy bombardment on the Gaza Strip by Israeli fighter jets, resulting in more than 250 Palestininans, including 66 children massacred and around 2000 wounded.

2. uOttawa update its current policy for discrimination to account for speech, actions, and behaviors that advocates for the expansion of the settler-colonial state of Israel

1. Defining Zionism ideologies and speech as racism specifically in their violation of uOttawa’s official policy on the prevention of harassment and discrimination

1. Zionism is an ideology that excludes and harms peoples based on race, civil status, religion, political conviction, language, and ethnic or national origin.

2. Recognize that Israel is a settler-colonial state and that Zionism is a colonial project and is therefore in direct violation of uOttawa’s promise and commitment to decolonial practices.

3. uOttawa abide by the promise made in its Transformation 2030 strategic plan of creating a campus that embraces diversity and promotes overall well-being by supporting the Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim communities that have long been neglected by the administration.

1. Creating a fund or provide financial resources for Palestinian students who are directly affected by the ongoing violence in Palestine.
2. Including Palestinian students in uOttawa’s commitment to creating dedicated spaces for students’ spiritual, social, and mental wellness needs and enhancing Student Services’ capacity to create and maintain inclusive student life.

4. uOttawa divest from all corporations, investments, and companies that fund and profit from the expansion of illegal settlement in occupied Palestine

1. Including any Israeli-based companies and any companies that support Israeli occupation and atrocities. As students have a right to know what their tuition is being used for, we demand the university to publicize and be transparent over their investments.

We, the undersigned, are undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, staff, and alumni of uOttawa. We believe in and fight for the rights of students to feel safe and condemn the uOttawa administration for not intervening in the spread of hate speech relating to the expansion of the Israeli settler-colonial project, the expulsion of Palestinians, and the violence against innocent civilians. We demand that uOttawa fulfill their mandate of ensuring a safe, non-racist, non-discriminatory environment by condemning Zionist speech on campus.

We will not forget the scenes of the children who burned to death, of the children who were crushed to death. We will not forget the heartbreaking cries of the children as their parents were being buried in front of their eyes. We will not forget the traumatized children whose celebrations turned into a tragedy that words cannot describe. And most importantly, we will not forget the silence of those who refused to take action against these horrendous atrocities.

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