University of Michigan Cancels Precedent Setting Anti-Israel Vote

The University of Michigan has canceled a controversial student vote on the conflict between Hamas and Israel.

Jewish groups and Israel supporters contend it was an anti-Israel resolution that labeled the country a genocidal apartheid state.

Resolution AR 13-25 asked students at the Ann Arbor campus to approve "University accountability in the face of genocide."

The university stopped the vote late last week after the pro-Palestinian Tahrir coalition sent an email to the entire student body urging approval of the resolution. Administration officials called that a violation of university rules and tainted the voting process. 

If students had voted and approved the anti-Israel resolution, it may have set a precedent for similar votes at other colleges and universities.  

The son of a Hamas founder, Mosab Hassan Yousef addressed students before voting began, saying he could not believe activists asked students to make the choice.

"A mob that force such a respectful educational institution to vote on such a thing is absurd," he insisted.

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The resolution referred to Palestine as "a victim of settler colonialism" and it called on the University of Michigan to "recognize the millions of people undergoing genocide in Gaza." 

The petition also called for the university to revisit its decision against forming a committee to investigate the ethics of its investments in apartheid regimes.

Protestors made similar demands at the height of the BDS or Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment movement against Israel.

Yousef called the apartheid allegation idiotic.

"We have 1.6 million Arabs in the state of Israel. That's a huge percentage. They have representatives in the parliament, the Israeli Knesset, Arabic language. Arabic is an official language in the state of Israel," he noted. 

And Yousef contends Hamas, not Israel, is committing genocide. He reminded the audience of the Oct. 7 terror attacks and that the Hamas charter advocates the destruction of the state of Israel.

"It all begins with killing Jews...This is what motivates them. But to go and ethnically cleansed more than 20 communities, killing everything in your way and everything is documented. This is what Israel suffered on October seven, and this cannot be compared to the war of victims in Gaza," he said. 

The Geneva Convention describes genocide as "a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group in whole or in part." One aspect of genocide is the forcible transferrence of children from one group to another.

The Hamas kidnapping of Jewish children and holding them as hostages fits the genocide definition.

Yousef urged students to engage in dialogue and conversation to discover the truth about Hamas and its goals.

"In the middle of our institutions, educational institutions, we've been invaded by Hamas ideology, by the name of Palestine, and by the name of revolution. Who cares? Antisemitism is Nazism and it's rejected. It should be rejected on this campus should be rejected everywhere in the United States," he said. 

Read 'Son of Hamas' Tackles University Antisemitism, Exposes Hamas 'Holy War' to Wipe Out Jews