Federal Judge Says University Must Let Anti-Israel Group Hold Oct. 7 Event

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 7^th because of anti-black racism.

Patricia Perillo, the University of Maryland’s vice president of student affairs, said in an affidavit that “In late August, 2024, my team and I became aware of a new, more angry, aggressive and violent tone to the messages the University was receiving, centered around SJP hosting an event on campus on October 7. For example, on August 26, 2024, an individual emailed University President Darryll J. Pines, who is Black, advising that if the University was going to permit SJP’s event to go forward, ‘then my Klan Rally with sheets and a noose are also approved.’”

The writer of the email in question raises the specter of KKK rallies to highlight how Jewish students would feel if SJP was allowed to proceed with its plan to mark October 7 by covering campus with Palestinian flags. The university’s filing seems to willfully misread the email.

Judge Messitte’s ruling makes clear the actual context, saying that a letter from Jews said they found the October 7 event “disgusting” because it was like “granting permission to white supremacists to burn a cross on campus on the day commemorating the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”

The Daily Wire previously reported that Pines misrepresented ChatGPT output about Palestine as “faculty scholarship” in order to rebuff a Jewish critic, and threatened to call the police on a Jewish resident for sending emails criticizing the school’s handling of anti-Semitism, all while claiming that the October 7 event itself was protected by free speech.

Judge Messitte wrote that “SJP has held more than 70 events on campus since October 7, 2023, including meetings, protests, sit-ins, and demonstrations, all without significant disruption or conflict.” He said if Maryland really did fear violence it had other options, such as bringing in extra security or installing metal detectors.

He said the First Amendment and precedent make granting an injunction an easy legal call. The free-speech group FIRE lauded the judge’s decision, saying “Students have a First Amendment right to speak on their public campus on October 7th, and UMD’s effort to delay that speech to a day that’s more convenient for them was, plain and simple, unconstitutional.”

SJP has itself tried to proscribe Jewish students’ free speech. When the Institute for Israel Studies invited the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Michael Herzog, to speak on campus in 2022, SJP issued a statement saying that “students and community members of good conscience” should “wholeheartedly oppose the event.”

And in a “statement of views,” the SJP chapter said in July that “UMD SJP unequivocally states that the Zionist state of Israel has no right to exist,” and that Palestinians have “the right to resist.”

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