NOTE: Kudos for David Matas for speaking out!
TORONTO – Anti-Israel activities on campus are driving Jewish students away and interfering with their education, said a noted human rights lawyer.
David Matas, honorary national senior legal counsel for B’nai Brith Canada and an internationally recognized expert in refugee, immigration and human rights law, spoke to the Jewish Tribune by phone from Winnipeg hours before he was given the University of Manitoba’s Distinguished Alumni Award for Lifetime Achievement.
In his acceptance speech, Matas expressed disagreement with the university’s decision to allow Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) events to take place on campus this year.
“If you create a poisoned environment within a closed community, it ruptures the community and undermines and destroys the university,” Matas told the Tribune. “That’s what we’ve seen with incitement to hatred against the Jewish community in other universities: these places become hostile environments for Jewish students and we see Jewish students quitting or not going because of this. It’s a blow against higher education for the Jewish community because it’s driving these people away from these institutions through this incitement to hatred, and intimidation and threats and, in some cases, violence.” Please CLICK HERE to keep reading
