On “UMD SGA fails to advance divestment resolution”
If honest journalism means representing events fully and accurately, The Diamondback has erred. For weeks, a quote from the article has taunted me: “this university’s Jewish community came together to ask the SGA with ‘one loud voice’ to reject the resolution.”
I am a Jewish student. I cried and shook for two minutes before hundreds of my peers, begging the Student Government Association to reject the weaponization of antisemitism and demand that the University of Maryland divest from companies complicit in and profiting off human rights violations.
I know my testimony moved everyone listening, I know that is largely why the article quotes mine more than any other testimony. So, imagine my hurt as I realized the article did not make a single mention of my Jewish identity nor the Jewish identities of others who spoke for divestment.
I am not saying The Diamondback has a responsibility to quote every last word in my testimony. I am saying that if you are going to use my words, all I ask is that I am represented accurately and my words are characterized in their full context.
Several Jewish students, including myself, got up there, putting our emotions, relationships and reputations on the line to ensure that those in opposition to divestment do not get to speak for the entire Jewish community. In omitting our Jewishness, you have allowed just that.
I want to reiterate my testimony’s true sentiment: divestment does not threaten the Jewish community. The threat to the Jewish community is allowing the world to believe that Judaism means complicity in human rights atrocities, and equating divestment with antisemitism does just that.
We refuse to be defined by a state that has murdered more than 34,500 Palestinian people. We will continue to plead for divestment from companies profiting off a massacre.
Brandee Kaplan
Junior women, gender and sexuality studies major
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