A federal judge on Tuesday said that the University of Maryland must allow a pro-Palestinian group to hold a rally on October 7, the anniversary of Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel.
“Even if pro-Israel groups see October 7 as somehow sacrosanct, it is at least fair argument for pro-Palestine groups to see the date as sacrosanct as well, symbolic of what they believe is Palestine’s longstanding fight for the liberation of Gaza,” U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte wrote in his injunction blocking the university from canceling the event.
“SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine] says it chose October 7 specifically because October 7 marks the beginning of what it calls Israel’s most recent ‘genocidal campaign’ which, SJP claims, has resulted in the death of over 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza. … No other date, as SJP sees it, can make the point of their mission quite as forcefully as October 7; to SJP, it is unique. That, in the Court’s view, fortifies SJP’s claim of irreparable harm.”
Even though he ruled the event must proceed, Judge Messitte noted that SJP “has picked a particularly controversial date to hold an event to commemorate Gaza War dead, to decry what it terms Israeli ‘genocide’…on October 7, a day when it has been widely reported that Hamas fighters invaded Jewish settlements near Gaza, killing some 1,200 occupants, torturing others, and taking some 250 hostages.”
The University System of Maryland banned all events on October 7 after University of Maryland President Darryll Pines came under fire for defending SJP’s planned event. The group, backed by lawyers from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), sued the university system after it said SJP would have to hold its event on a different day.
In response to the lawsuit, the university suggested that it cancelled events on October 7th because of anti-black racism.
