The University of Maryland’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter and Maryland’s Council on American-Islamic Relations are calling on the University of Maryland to cancel an event featuring three Israel Defense Forces soldiers set for Tuesday on campus.
This university’s Students Supporting Israel chapter is hosting the event, where visiting soldiers will speak to students about their experience in combat in Gaza since October 2023.
The Students for Justice in Palestine chapter and CAIR Maryland released a statement Saturday expressing their opposition to the event and the presence of the Israeli soldiers on campus. The chapter also created a petition urging the university to adopt a “‘no platform for war criminals’ policy.”
“We cannot allow war criminals to be celebrated while students at this very university are restricted from mourning Gaza’s dead,” the petition read. “Our university must choose a side: the side of humanity and justice, or to side with genocide and complicity.”
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As of Monday, about 400 students have signed the petition. The soldiers’ presence could traumatize and endanger the safety and “dignity of Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and anti-genocide students on our campus,” the petition read.
The petition also demands the university begin to amend policies to ban the invitation of speakers who are being investigated for or found to have committed human rights violations, war crimes or genocide by international courts or human rights organizations.
The International Criminal Court last November issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defense minister and Hamas military chief for accusations of crimes against humanity in Gaza. The court said their actions and restriction of humanitarian aid led to the starvation of thousands of Palestinians, the Associated Press reported.
A United Nations commission in September also ruled that Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip. Another court, titled the International Court of Justice, is set to discuss if Israel committed genocide.
“Our university must be a sanctuary for learning, not a platform for perpetrators of war crimes,” the petition read.
In a statement to The Diamondback Monday, this university confirmed the event featuring the soldiers was planned according to university policy.
Students Supporting Israel president Uriel Appel criticized pushback to the event in a statement to The Diamondback and wrote that the identities of the soldiers visiting campus have not been published.
“Calling them war criminals without knowing who they are is ridiculous,” the senior neuroscience major wrote.
He added that Students Supporting Israel hosted a similar event last year featuring two Israeli soldiers, one of which whose job was to “confirm whether buildings have civilians in them or not before bombings.”
The event comes amid an uncertain phase for Israel and Gaza amid a tentative ceasefire agreement that went into effect Oct. 10.
As promised, the U.S. drafted deal has so far led to the release of all 20 surviving Israeli hostages Hamas took captive on Oct. 7, 2023, and more than 1,800 Palestinians who Israel took captive since then, the Associated Press reported Sunday. But some terms outlined in the agreement have already been tested.
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Israel on Sunday struck Gaza and paused the delivery of humanitarian aid to Palestinians after it said Hamas had violated the terms of their agreement.
Israel is also still awaiting the return of the remains of some of the hostages. Hamas returned 13 bodies as of Monday, the Associated Press reported.
Students for Justice in Palestine’s petition also described Israel’s offensive in Gaza. The Associated Press reported Israel’s military forces have killed more than 68,000 people since Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel military forces have launched large scale strikes, bombings and attacks across Gaza and in Gaza City. Israeli attacks have destroyed schools, hospitals and homes, killing students, professors and healthcare workers in Gaza, the Associated Press previously reported.
Daniela Colombi, a member of this university’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, asked university president Darryll Pines about the upcoming event at his biannual State of the Campus address delivered at last Wednesday’s University Senate meeting.
She asked him how the university justified permitting the soldiers on campus and said it is an issue of physical safety. Colombi told the University Senate that soldiers from the Israeli military have engaged in war crimes in the offensive, and have enforced “the collective starvation of all of the population.”
“We’re wondering, as students, how … the university is allowing and honestly encouraging student groups like this to continue existing, bringing people who have physically murdered people,” said Colombi, who is also an undergraduate senator representing the computer, mathematical and natural sciences college.
Pines said he was not aware of Students Supporting Israel’s invitation to the soldiers at the time of Colombi’s question, but that student groups have the right to bring any figures — including controversial ones, he said — onto campus as long as it does not violate university policy.
“We have to have the difficult conversations with different groups of totally different perspectives,” Pines said.
