A crude anti-Zionist remark allegedly made by Black activist Kwame Toure at a meeting sponsored by the Black Student Union (BSU) of the University of Maryland February 5 has sparked tension between Jewish and Black students on the College Park campus. About 50 Jewish students held a protest rally last week, demanding that the university administration, the Student Government and the BSU repudiate the purported statement by Toure, formerly known as Stokely Carmichael, that “the only good Zionist is a dead Zionist.”
The rally ended with a candlelight march to the home of University President John Toll, where an unlighted candle was left “to be re-lit only when Jewish student concerns were respected.”
Rabbi Robert Saks, director of the Jewish Student Center, said he was trying to find out whether Toure actually made the statement attributed to him, or other anti-Zionist or anti-Israel statements. If he did, Saks said, he personally would protest to the Student Government Association, the student affairs office, Chancellor John Slaughter and the University Board of Regents.
AN INCITEMENT TO VIOLENCE
“I take that (the statement) as an incitement to violence,” Saks said according to the campus newspaper Diamondback. “I consider it an outrage that the president of the Black Student Union and other students attending gave him (Toure) a standing ovation.”
Slaughter, addressing the Student Senate before the rally, said “just because Toure spoke here does not in any way mean that the University condones his ideas or even that the BSU condones them.” BSU vice president Ed Martin rejected a demand by the Jewish Student Union for an apology. “We at BSU apologize for nothing and no one,” Diamondback quoted him as saying.
Protesters at the Jewish students’ rally were joined by a Jewish Defense Organization (JDO) contingent from New York headed by its leader, Mordechai Levy. Levy claimed that Jewish students were assaulted physically as well as verbally, a charge not confirmed by other student sources. But Jewish students expressed concern over a swastika drawn on the door of the Jewish campus monthly, Mitzpeh, about three weeks ago.
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