University of Maryland Student Gov’t Teams Up With Anti-Zionist Group to Pass 4th Anti-Israel Resolution This Year

The University of Maryland, College Park’s student government on Wednesday passed its fourth anti-Israel resolution in just this academic year alone, cementing a governing partnership with the extremist group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

Every member of the Student Government Association (SGA), notwithstanding one who abstained, supported the latest measure with a voting tally of 19-0-1, The Algemeiner has learned from sources close to the situation.

Previous resolutions, which include one passed on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, amassed as many as 28 votes but failed to achieve unanimous approval.

The latest measure calls on the school to divest from a range of defense contractors for working with Israel in accordance with the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate the world’s lone Jewish state on the international stage as the first step toward its elimination. Leaders of the movement have repeatedly stated their goal is to destroy Israel.

“[The University of Maryland’s] investments may include companies such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Elbit Systems, Caterpillar Inc, and RTX Corp, all companies that in some form or another, supply weapons, surveillance, technology, or infrastructure used in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and have been linked to human right’s violations in other regions,” the resolution states, seemingly admitting that its supporters are not certain of the contents of the university’s investment portfolio. “This framework shall apply to the investment of all USM-controlled funds subject to Maryland law.”

October’s Yom Kippur vote, which Jewish students could not attend, accused Israel of “apartheid and occupation.”

Other resolutions at the University of Maryland (UMD) lodged discredited claims of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” against Israel, parroting atrocity propaganda confected by Hamas to influence the public’s perception of the war in Gaza prompted by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.

In the days leading up to Wednesday’s vote, Jewish and Christian groups castigated the student government for what they described as being so easily captured by extremists who flagrantly signal their contempt for Jews by perpetrating hate incidents and using Jewish holidays as an occasion for promoting the destruction of the Jewish state.

“As a movement, we are trying to combat antisemitism. It is difficult when we have groups like BDS and UMD’s own student government outwardly discriminating against Jewish students,” said Christians United for Israel (CUFI) and Students Supporting Israel (SSI) in a joint statement, posted on the Instagram social media platform, on Saturday. “They have screamed at Jewish students and cornered them in rooms until police had to get involved. UMD’s student government is not interested in dialogue. They tell their followers not to speak with Israelis.”

They continued, “This form of extremism is hateful and discriminatory. We are calling for awareness and action from UMD to put an end to this.”

On Thursday, SSI president Uriel Appel told The Algemeiner, “The only surprising thing about SGA’s blatant attack on Jewish students on our campus is their zealous persistence on the matter.”

The University of Maryland, College Park’s SJP chapter is one of the most radical in the country. After the Oct. 7 attack, it held a “vigil” for Palestinian terrorists and other events which appeared aimed at pitting the Black and Latino communities against Jews. In its public statements, it has rejected a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and called for the destruction of the Jewish state.

“UMD SJP unequivocally states that the Zionist state of Israel has no right to exist,” it said in a statement issued in July 2024. “Beyond being an apartheid state, the system of Israeli apartheid is a symptom of the fact that it is a settler-colonial ethnostate that seeks to use apartheid to facilitate its genocidal intent and ultimate goal of displacing indigenous Palestinians from their homeland.”

Student governments at other major universities are also pushing anti-Israel measures, as antisemitic incidents remain at high levels on campuses across the US.

As reported by The Algemeiner last week, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s (UNL) student government approved a BDS measure pushed by SJP. The student government, facing public scrutiny, ultimately amended the resolution to remove any mention of Israel and rename it the “Divest for Humanity Act.” The measure demanded divestment from armaments manufacturers “complicit in the genocide and atrocities worldwide.” It passed by a wide margin after being doggedly argued against by Jewish students who were subjected to unfounded allegations about links to Israel.

SJP exalted its passing as a victory for its mission to foster a climate in which pro-Israel support in the US is untenable.

The vote came days after a right-wing social media influencer and University of Miami student upbraided her Jewish peers in a tirade in which she denounced them as “disgusting” while accusing rabbis of eating infants.

“Christianity, which says love everyone, meanwhile your Bible says eating someone who is a non-Jew is like eating with an animal. That’s what the Talmud says,” the online influencer, Kaylee Mahony, yelled at members of Students Supporting Israel who had a table at a campus fair held at the University of Miami. “That’s what these people follow.”

She continued, “They think that if you are not a Jew you are an animal. That’s the Talmud. That’s the Talmud.”

The Talmud, a key source of Jewish law, tradition, and theology, is often misrepresented by antisemitic agitators in an effort to malign the Jewish people and their religion.

Mahony can also be heard in video of the incident telling one of the SSI members, “Because you’re disgusting. It’s disgusting.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.