Editor’s Note: The Ubyssey verified the statements the author attributes to hagwil hayetsk's (Charles Menzies's) social media accounts by examining screen captures shared with the opinion editor. The Ubyssey also obtained documentation to verify the statements regarding divestment attributed to the university.

This article contains descriptions and discussions of violence and sexual assault. Please read with care.

Omar Bseiso is a human rights defender and undergraduate student in the Faculty of Science. He has previously engaged in independent government advocacy and research with the BC Ministry of Health and was a student negotiator advocating for Palestinian human rights during meetings with UBC’s senior administration.

On February 6, 1986, the UBC Board of Governors unanimously approved a resolution expressing its "unqualified opposition to the racial policies of apartheid in South Africa."

On July 19, 2024, almost 40 years later, the International Court of Justice confirmed that Israel is engaged in racial segregation and apartheid.

Judy Rogers, Benoit-Antoine Bacon, Miranda Lam, Natalie Chan, Amee Chande, Irene Lanzinger, Dallas Leung, Anthonia Ogundele, Ali Pejman, Leonard Schein, Byron Thom, Eshana Bhangu, Isabella Bravo, Kamil Kanji, Sandy Hilton, Anna Kindler, hagwil hayetsk (Charles Menzies), Philipp Reichert, Matthew Tan, I ask you: Do you disagree with the previous Board’s stand against apartheid?

If not, then why haven’t you done anything?

As of time of writing, and according to an assessment published in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet, Israel has killed at least 64,260 Palestinians in Gaza. United Nations (UN) agencies and independent international courts conclude that Israel has systematically and deliberately starved civilians, bombed hospitals, turned refugee camps into hundred-meter craters and destroyed every university in Gaza. Israeli forces are documented having attacked ambulances, raped prisoners, bombed fertility clinics, murdered a number of journalists and healthcare workers unprecedented in modern history, shot children in the head and burned families on IVs alive.

All as corroborated by photo, video and x-ray evidence.

Scholarly estimates now place the Gaza death toll at more than 186,000 — 8 per cent of the total population in the Gaza Strip — when projecting deaths from starvation and disease. Satellite imagery of Gaza reveals an enclave flattened and reduced to rubble, as Israel has used its AI programs ‘Lavendar’ and ‘Where’s Daddy?’ to generate thousands of Palestinian targets for assassination. My cousin’s leg was mutilated by an Israeli bomb, then amputated using dish soap and a kitchen knife without anesthetic.

And UBC is silent.

Prompted to justify the Palestine exception at UBC, administrators have claimed that “institutional neutrality” mandates that public statements pertain only to the “teaching, learning, and research mission of the university.” Yet, on February 24, 2022, UBC released a public statement condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Does this statement pertain to the “teaching, learning, and research mission" of the university?

In its advisory opinion of July 19, the International Court of Justice underscored the obligation of all parties to “abstain ... from any recognition of [Israel]’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory; and to take steps to prevent trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” Nonetheless, our university maintains its academic ties with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU), an institution operating in Occupied East Jerusalem in violation of international law.

In correspondence, UBC has repeatedly cited ‘academic freedom’ as its rationale for continuing to recognize HU's illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. But academic freedom has not stopped UBC from cutting institutional ties in the past.

On April 20, 2022, the UBC Vancouver Senate approved a motion to suspend six academic agreements with Russian government entities nearly unanimously, with only one abstention. Taking UBC’s argument at face value, are we to conclude that the suspension of academic agreements with Israeli government entities is somehow more of an infringement on academic freedom than the suspension of academic agreements with Russian government entities? Why is one acceptable and the other not?

In 2024, UBC Investment Management (UBCIM)’s disclosed shares in military equipment companies transferring arms to the Israeli government totalled $22,566,504 CAD of the university’s endowment fund:

According to the UN, nine of these companies risk complicity in “serious violations of international human rights and international humanitarian laws … possibly including genocide.” The UN’s Special Procedures, a body of independent human rights experts of the UN, has further clarified the responsibilities of institutional investors holding shares in these companies, warning of “repercussions for complicity in potential atrocity crimes.”

In 2024, UBCIM invested $7,732,580 CAD of the endowment in twelve companies contributing to illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

According to the UN, all of these companies contribute to the provision of services and utilities supporting the maintenance and existence of illegal settlements, and raise “particular human rights concerns.”

In 1986, then-UBC President David Strangway said the Board had directed its finance committee to review the federal government's report on Canadian companies operating in South Africa and will prepare “a list of companies in which the UBC's operating, endowment and staff pension funds would not invest.” According to Board meeting minutes from 1990, Strangway confirmed this list of companies is reviewed at regular intervals, and that the university “instruct[s] [its] investment people to be sure that they do not invest in those companies.”

Today, faced with a worldwide movement calling on universities to divest from firms fuelling occupation, apartheid and genocide, UBC asserts, in a July 2024 letter to divestment advocates, that it is “not legally possible for the UBC Board of Governors to direct divestment from any companies for which there are financial consequences.”

Meanwhile, a United Nations Special Committee has found Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip "consistent with the characteristics of genocide," and the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory concludes that Israel has committed “genocidal acts … calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza as a group, in whole or in part.”

Our university presents itself as having learned from its past failings. After 500 days of silence, one cannot help but wonder whether this is merely a façade, embroidered with blood and hoisted by vapid declarations about human rights. Even for the most generous bureaucrat, it remains difficult to reconcile UBC’s stated purpose — “to foster global citizenship and advance a sustainable and just society across British Columbia, Canada and the world” with its deafening silence.

A protester holds a sign that reads "Free Palestine" and "End the Occupation" during a March 21, 2025 demonstration for Palestinian human rights.
A protester holds a sign during a March 21, 2025 demonstration for Palestinian human rights. Fiona Sjaus / The Ubyssey

I have asked whether the current composition of UBC’s Board does not see Israel’s actions as worthy of condemnation. Turning to social media statements made by UBC Governor and Senator hagwil hayetsk (Charles Menzies), the suspicion that some Governors see Israel’s indiscriminate attacks on civilians as just is largely confirmed.

Among the things he has said include (hyperlinks are mine):

He is correct in a sense. The word civilian is unintelligible — unintelligible to those who see Palestinians as subhuman, Palestinian universities as terror depots and Palestinian children as terrorists — worthy not of love, but of bombs.

Bombs that fall all the while. While administrators cling to fiduciary duty and academic freedom as a blood-soaked veil for complicity, children cling to their parents' graves. While Governors trip over themselves to defend the bombing of universities, children trip barefoot in the sun, carrying their wounded siblings. And while UBC remains muted, genocide remains abound.

On December 5, 2024, Amnesty International released a 296-page report titled ''You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza,' in which it concluded that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

On December 19, 2024, Human Rights Watch released a 191-page report titled ‘Extermination and Acts of Genocide,’ in which it concluded that Israel has committed acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, including the deliberate deprivation of water.

On December 19, 2024, Doctors without Borders released a 34-page report titled ‘Gaza: Life in a Death Trap,’ in which it stated "our firsthand observations of the medical and humanitarian catastrophe inflicted on Gaza are consistent with the descriptions provided by an increasing number of legal experts and organizations concluding that genocide is taking place in Gaza.”

And all I can hear is silence.

Judy Rogers, Benoit-Antoine Bacon, Miranda Lam, Natalie Chan, Amee Chande, Irene Lanzinger, Dallas Leung, Anthonia Ogundele, Ali Pejman, Leonard Schein, Byron Thom, Eshana Bhangu, Isabella Bravo, Kamil Kanji, Sandy Hilton, Anna Kindler, hagwil hayetsk (Charles Menzies), Philipp Reichert, Matthew Tan:

When will you wake up?

This is an opinion article. It reflects the contributor's views and does not reflect the views of The Ubyssey as a whole. Contribute to the conversation by visiting ubyssey.ca/pages/submit-an-opinion.

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Omar Bseiso author

Omar Bseiso is a human rights defender and undergraduate student at the faculty of science. He has previously engaged in independent government advocacy and research with the BC Ministry of Health, and was a student negotiator advocating for Palestinian human rights during meetings with UBC’s senior administration.

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