The University of Maryland will allow the anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine to take over a massive chunk of its campus on October 7, the anniversary of Hamas’ slaughter of 1,200 Israelis.
Rabbi Ari Israel, director of the university’s Hillel chapter, told The Daily Wire he expressed concerns about the event to university leadership. SJP held a similar event on Tuesday, the university’s second day of classes, setting up 15,000 flags in the center of campus to “honor the 150,000+ martyrs who have lost their lives within the past year,” and holding speeches against “the zionist entity,” according to an SJP flier.
The October 7 event is likely to be similar, and set to take place on the same section of campus.
Not even Hamas claims 150,000 people have been killed since Oct. 7 — the terrorist group alleges that 40,000 Palestinians have been killed— but SJP says it uses a higher “estimate” because “the health ministry has been unable to keep count of the dead.”
“We are approaching 11 months of genocide against the Palestinians,” the Maryland chapter of SJP said on Instagram “It has been almost a full year of genocide and terror as death tolls continue to rise.” In its declaration of views, the university’s SJP chapter “unequivocally states that the Zionist state of Israel has no right to exist.”
“The zionist entity has committed some of the most egregious criminal acts of our century” the group added.
Israel told parents of Jewish university students that “we did voice our concerns with senior UMD leadership” and “apprised them of the emotional load SJP’s callous behavior will bear on our Jewish community if they protest on the greatest Jewish day of mourning and tragedy since the Holocaust.”
The University of Maryland SJP chapter did not return a request for comment from The Daily Wire. Spokespeople for University of Maryland President Darryll Pines did not provide SJP’s application materials for reserving the space, or explain Pines’ justification in allowing it to proceed.
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Gerard Filitti, a lawyer for the Lawfare Project, which fights anti-Semitism on campus, wrote to Pines demanding the university cancel the event. According to Filitti, the event violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bars federal funds from being spent to encourage discrimination.
“No campus should permit SJP or any similar organization to hold any kind of event on October 7th,” Filitti wrote. “Doing so gives the university’s tacit approval to the celebration of Hamas’ violent and despicable actions on that day,” and tells “Jewish students, faculty, and staff that the university is condoning the celebration of the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.”
Filitti also noted that the SJP event highlights how American universities discount the needs of Jewish students.
“Would any university allow a student organization to burn crosses on its campus to celebrate the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.? To celebrate the anniversary of 9/11 by calling for new Al Qaeda attacks? We all know the answer to those questions is an emphatic no,” he wrote.
In 2022, when the Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies and College of Arts and Humanities invited the ambassador to Israel, Michael Herzog, to speak, Maryland’s SJP chapter said it “wholeheartedly oppose[s] the event” and said “The University of Maryland should stand in morality by disallowing Herzog’s presence on our campus.”
Five days after Hamas’ terror attack, the national SJP held a “Day of Resistance,” and issued a statement calling the attack a “historic win for the Palestinian resistance. The group further called for “armed confrontation with the oppressors.” The Anti-Defamation League has said SJP supports terror and violence and called for “dismantling” Zionism on college campuses.
College campuses have become hotbeds of anti-Semitism since Oct. 7, in large part, thanks to the actions of SJP. George Washington University banned its SJP chapter after the group projected “Glory to our Martyrs” on a campus library named after a Jew. Bard College’s SJP chapter printed a poster adorned with images of paragliders, a reference to how Hamas terrorists crossed the Israeli border to massacre civilians. The chapter also said it “unequivocally supports the Unity Intifada.”