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As it happens, there is a web page that exhaustively tracks BDS achievements. It contains such triumphal entries as “Andreas Oberg, Swedish guitarist, cancels gig in Tel Aviv, heeding BDS activists’ appeals,” and “Ten talented young harpists bow out of the International Harp Contest.” But for the most part, the entries consist of gestures similar to the York student-federation vote, which is to say: rhetorical attacks from activist groups, unions and academic organizations with no power to influence trade policy.

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In what B’nai Brith called a “precedent setting move,” the University of Manitoba Students Union voted Thursday to strip the group Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) of official club status.

The motion bars SAIA from receiving student union funding or using activity space in student-union controlled buildings.

The motion was adopted despite an opinion by the student union’s lawyer, who argued that it could leave the union open to litigation.

“However, council disagreed with the advice provided by our legal counsel and voted by 19 to 15 to support the resolution,” said Bilan Arte, president of the students union.

SAIA, a group with campus branches across Canada, annually organizes Israeli Apartheid Week, a weeklong series of events calling for economic, diplomatic and even academic sanctions against the Jewish state.

The two-page resolution justified the delisting of SAIA under the terms of the Manitoba Human Rights Code, claiming that the group was guilty of “discrimination” and “harassment.”