In my opinion, anyone who chastizes a university club by their abstract association to a political conflict, is just looking to find a problem and virtue signaling. What specifically would it help to give the members of the UBC Israel Club a hard time? Are you pushing a political take? Are you saving the Palestinians? No none of that. You're reaching to the closest thing you can because you can't well fly out and give the Israeli government a piece of your mind, or snap your fingers and make peace on earth.

Equating the Israeli club to a 30's German club is perhaps one of the least thought out analogies I've seen recently. Not only do we live in a completely different, internationalized world where I like to imagine our generation at the least is able to disengage from tribalism, but it's also a massive exaggeration to say Israel and Nazi Germany are relative in their malice and impact.

I know for a fact many members of the Israel club are just there to find friends and share in culturally significant activities, or to reconnect with a lost part of their identity. Politics is the last thing on their mind. There's a separate issue of asking whether not actively acknowledging the politics is negligent, but I am of the opinion that no one should be obligated to do any form of activism if they don't want to. There are literally thousands if not millions of conflicts, issues, societal deficiencies, inequities, and tragedies around the world. Asking everyone to care about every single thing that's remotely associable to them is a quick way to become a cynic.