Call on the Rutgers Student Assembly President to Block the BDS Referendum |
On October 7, 2023, over 1,200 men, women, and children were brutally massacred by Hamas terrorists who violated Israel’s border. It was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. More than 250 innocents were taken hostage, and more than 130 remain in captivity nearly five months later. As Israel continues to fight an existential war against the genocidal terrorist group in Gaza to bring back its hostages, universities across the country have seen an unprecedented rise in anti-Semitism, and Rutgers has not been spared.
Recently, the Rutgers University Student Assembly (RUSA) voted to hold a school-wide BDS referendum during the upcoming RUSA election (March 25-29). The campus community is currently set to be presented with a vicious petition, backed by radical student groups, that takes the position of Hamas and absurdly accuses Israel, which is attempting to rescue the hostages and liberate the Gazan people, of “apartheid” and “genocide.” This is a vile affront to the victims and survivors of the actual massacre.
RUSA President Jack Ramirez can veto the decision and block the referendum, which demands that Rutgers University adopt the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement by divesting its endowment fund from companies that do business with Israel and calls on Rutgers to terminate its partnership with Tel Aviv University. BDS activity on college campuses has been linked to an increase in anti-Semitic activity on campus and only inflames tensions in already dangerous environments for Jewish students.
Hamas and its supporters have waged a long-term, well-funded campaign to delude Americans into accepting their attempt to portray Israel as somehow uniquely “illegitimate” as a state. Combined with the broadest wave of antisemitism in the West since the 1940s, the Jewish community is being made to feel deeply unsafe, marginalized, and othered, particularly in the university context.
Call on RUSA President Jack Ramirez to act now to ensure that this hateful, slanderously anti-Semitic petition never goes in front of the student population. With the level of rhetoric against Jewish people and Israelis that has already been permitted in this environment, popularizing such malicious and clearly false claims and granting legitimacy to the anti-Semitic BDS Movement will only serve to inflame an already traumatic situation. |
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