Ontario MPPs have rejected a push to stop the province from doing business with companies backing the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.

After an emotional debate Thursday while Premier Kathleen Wynne was in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on a trade mission, a private member’s bill from Progressive Conservative Tim Hudak and Liberal Mike Colle was defeated 39-18 in a free vote.

Speaking for the government, Culture Minister Michael Coteau argued the legislation would not improve security in the troubled region. New Democrat MPP Peggy Sattler called it “an attack on freedom of speech and association.”

Hudak saw it differently.

“If somebody said they weren’t going to buy from a business because the owners were gay, you would go crazy,” he said in urging legislators to support the Standing Up Against Anti-Semitism in Ontario Act.

“But somehow because they’re Jewish or from Israel, oh, it’s free speech all of a sudden? Come on.”

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East president Thomas Woodley said the bill “smears an entire movement of human rights activists by accusing them of anti-Semitism.”

The boycott movement, better known as BDS, began 11 years ago in a bid to end Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories and gain equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel.

“Palestinians have chosen this method of resistance due to the Israeli state’s historic and ongoing dispossession of their lands,” Tyler Levitan of Independent Jewish Voices Canada said in a statement Thursday.

Hudak called BDS an “insidious new face of anti-Semitism” while Colle, the only Liberal to vote in favour of the bill, said the movement is “an attack on Jewish people all over the world” by people who “try to cloud themselves in an aura of fighting for a just cause.”

Coteau acknowledged there have been “disgusting acts” towards Jewish students on Canadian college and university campuses — where many have said they do not feel safe because of growing BDS support from student unions — but said those instances are better handled under hate speech laws.

But Tory MPP Gila Martow, who is Jewish, said authorities have been ineffective in clamping down on “intimidation” of Jewish students, many of whom feel afraid to wear the Star of David, and joined Hudak in urging MPPs to support the bill.

“Boycotting Israel will not lead to the much-desired peace that people are looking for in the region,” countered Coteau, also responsible for setting up Ontario’s new anti-racism directorate.

“We also believe that shunning those who are advocating for the boycott of Israel, as this bill seeks to accomplish, will not lead to a more secure, stable and democratic region.”

Earlier this week in Tel Aviv, Wynne said “I entirely oppose the BDS movement” but added freedom of speech is “something we must vigorously defend.”

A member of Students Against Israeli Apartheid at York University warned the bill would have been open to a challenge.

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“Prohibiting public bodies from affiliating in any way with non-violent tactics such as boycott and divestment from companies complicit in Israel’s violations of international law poses a serious threat to Canadians’ charter-protected freedoms of political expression and association,” said Hammam Farah.

Hudak said he did not know whether the provincial government now has contracts with any businesses backing the BDS movement.

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