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“I was initially very shaken,” Lew said of the vote that denied him a seat on the board. “It was an extremely tense and emotional room, and more than anything it was overwhelming. I was also very sad.”

He said there was applause from the people who voted against him.

Earlier this year, he had been publicly identified in the protest literature of a group called Democratize SSMU, which aims to thwart the implementation by the current president of a decision taken last year that BDS was discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional.

This was about my Jewish identity, and nothing more

In its writings, Democratize SSMU identified “layers of corruption” within the student government, alleging favouritism in appointing board members, then singled out three Jewish members of the board “who are all either fellows at the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee, an organization whose explicit mandate is to promote pro-Israel discourse in Canadian politics, or primary organizers for the anti-BDS initiative at McGill.”

“Essentially what they did is accuse (Lew and two other Jewish students) of exercising undue political power, of being corrupt,” said Jonathan Glustein, a fourth year political science and economics student who was also targeted in the ad. He is an SSMU board member, but his term is about to end.

Democratize SSMU later apologized unreservedly, for being “insensitive to anti-Semitic tropes of Jewish people as corrupt and politically powerful.”

“Now that the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement had been decisively defeated at McGill, we see its acolytes stooping to more basic forms of anti-Semitism,” said Michael Mostyn, Chief Executive Officer of B’nai Brith Canada. “The McGill administration needs to continue to speak out, and to ensure that there is no place for targeting Jews in student politics.”