Maastricht University cancels Jewish students' meeting, citing safety
Maastricht University called off a lecture by the Jewish student association IJAR and the pro-Israel group StandWithUs, saying online calls from both camps made safety impossible to guarantee, while the organisers accuse it of yielding to intimidation.
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Illustrative photo: Michielverbeek / CC BY-SA 4.0
Maastricht University called off a meeting of the Jewish student association IJAR and the pro-Israel organisation StandWithUs last night, saying it could not guarantee safety. Opponents had called online for the meeting to be stopped, and supporters had called on people to come to Maastricht.
The organisers dispute the decision. They say the university told them less than an hour before the start that the talk could not go ahead. In a statement on Instagram, IJAR and StandWithUs say the university "caves in to intimidation". They say it is the third time it has cancelled an event organised by Jewish students, which they call "a systematic suppression of Jewish student life on campus".
The university describes "an accumulation of risks". In a statement it says several pro-Palestinian groups had announced they wanted to prevent the meeting, and information about the lecturer was shared online "in an unacceptable way". StandWithUs then called on people to come to Maastricht, posting on social media: "We will not be silenced." Together, the university says, this left "too much uncertainty about whether the meeting would be safe".
Lecturer Eli Sapir was due to speak in a university building on the theme "Drie jaar na 7 oktober" (Three years after 7 October). The university says it proposed an online meeting instead, but the student association declined.
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IJAR
IJAR is a Jewish student association in the Netherlands, a student organisation for Jewish students that organises activities, meetings and talks for its members. Student associations like this are common at Dutch universities and are generally run by and for students, with the university's rules on events and safety applying to their activities on campus.
StandWithUs
StandWithUs is a pro-Israel organisation, an international non-profit that runs educational programmes, events and speaker meetings about Israel. In the Netherlands, its events are usually organised together with student or community groups and are subject to the same university or venue rules on safety and access as other public events.