SGA Votes in Ignorance Against Israel

SGA Votes in Ignorance Against Israel
Commentary by Sanford D. Horn
September 22, 2025

The University of Maryland’s Student Government Association ignorantly voted overwhelmingly urging the University to “acknowledge Israel’s military offensive in Gaza as a genocide and call for a ceasefire.” (Diamondback, 9/18/25) The vote by the feckless SGA cast 25 ballots supporting the resolution, one abstention, and one vote opposed, by an obviously knowledgeable member of that student body.

The SGA resolution came on the heels of a United Nations report urging Israel and all countries to end the genocide. No mention of which other countries encompassed “all countries,” while, as is typical of the UN, singling out Israel. The SGA followed in the uneducated, inept footsteps of a virulently antisemitic UN, clearly without doing its own due diligence. Since 2015 the UN voted to sanction Israel 140 times, while sanctioning the rest of the world a combined 68 times - this includes only six times against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. (https://www.timesofisrael.com/un-condemned-israel-more-than-all-other-countries-combined-in-2022-monitor/)

This is the same UN that voted overwhelmingly, on September 12, to reward terrorism and terrorists with a nation called Palestine, as 142 nations voted in favor, 10 voted against, and 12 abstained. The 10 nations opposing the measure included the United States, Israel, Hungary, and Argentina. (https://www.newsweek.com/un-general-assembly-israel-palestine-two-state-solution-2129372)  A nation for the Palestinian people must never include land that is Israel, the Biblical, indigenous, eternal, native land of the Jewish people. The Jewish people did not colonize the land, as it has been theirs for more than 3,500 years. Israel is a sovereign nation affording equal rights to its citizenry - Jewish, Christian, Druze, Muslim, Israeli, and Arab. They serve in the military, the Knesset (parliament), work as judges, doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers, businessmen, and teachers. 

The land called the “West Bank,” is, and always has been Jewish land - Judea and Samaria - Judea, as in Jewish, and should never belong to anyone else. Gaza, (Israel) which had been inhabited by Jewish people, withdrew not just the living, but the dead - reintering their deceased out of Gaza in order to allow Palestinian people that land in 2005. Since then, having elected the terrorist group Hamas as its leadership, no other election has been held, Hamas destroyed the infrastructure left in place by the Jews before vacating Gaza, and in its place Hamas built hundreds of miles of terror tunnels. Gaza has beachfront land that could have been built as the Riviera of the Middle East. But instead, terrorism, murder, and destruction became the order of the day.

Consider this ceasefire the UN demands. What the UN refuses to acknowledge, and by association, the SGA, is that a ceasefire existed on October 6, 2023, until Hamas shattered it by slaughtering more than 1,200 innocent Israeli children, women, and men, many attending a music festival, others preparing to observe Simchat Torah. (Simchat Torah celebrates the completion of the reading of the Torah - scripture, and the beginning of the reading from Genesis all over again.) Hamas produced video footage of their heinous crimes against humanity - including raping girls and women, murdering pregnant women, murdering children, and the kidnapping of more than 250 other innocents. Of those 250 hostages, 48 are still in captivity, with 20 believed to be alive.

Since October 7, 2023 - almost two years after the Hamas invasion of Israel, in unprecedented actions, Israel warned civilians in Gaza, via various forms of media, to flee for their safety as the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) sought to eliminate Hamas and other terrorists. Additionally, it is Hamas killing its own people - preventing them from seeking safe havens because of the optics to make Israel look guilty in the eyes of the anti-Israel press, the UN, and other detractors. It is Hamas starving its own people - again with video proof - by hijacking thousands of tons of food and medical supplies sent into Gaza provided by Israel. Hamas then extorts its own people in an effort to fund their continued terrorist war against Israel. While Israel gives Gazan civilians warnings before strikes against Hamas, it is Hamas hiding in hospitals, elementary schools, even mosques - desecrating their own houses of worship.

The resolution voted upon by the University of Maryland’s Student Government Association, is at best shortsighted, at worst, dangerous and ignorant. In the United States of America, the greatest country on earth, we the people are entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts. Both the UN and the SGA must travel outside of their echo chambers for facts, reality, and truth.

Sanford D. Horn, Maryland, Class of 1988 - History/Government and Politics, is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN. During his time at Maryland, he served on several SGA committees (among other activities).