CUNY School of Law doesn’t like Jews or Zionists or Israel… and CUNY School of Law doesn’t really care who knows it.
For the second year in a row, the New York-based institution has chosen to honor a rabidly antisemitic speaker by inviting them to give the annual commencement speech before fellow graduating students.
While the commencement addresses normally consist of some uplifting words about how the university experience has given students the knowledge, wisdom and confidence to go out into the world, Fatima Mousa Mohammed instead used the opportunity to spread modern-day blood libels and call for the destruction of the Jewish state.
In the May 12 speech, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) activist Mohammed:
- Claimed Israel “continues to indiscriminately rain bullets and bombs on worshippers, murdering the old, the young, attacking even funerals and graveyards, as it encourages lynch mobs to target Palestinian homes and businesses, as it imprisons its children, as it continues its project of settler colonialism, expelling Palestinians from their homes, carrying [out] the ongoing Nakba…”;
- Described CUNY central institution as training and cooperating with “fascist NYPD, the military, that continues to train IDF soldiers to carry out that same violence globally”;
- Called for the release of “Palestinian political prisoners like HLF [Holyland Five]” from US prison, despite the fact that the imprisoned men were convicted of funneling money to Hamas for planning and orchestrating terror attacks;
- Alleged Israel had “just this week” bombed Gaza as the world watched while failing to acknowledge that terrorists had initially fired barrages of rockets on civilian towns and cities in Israel;
- Praised CUNY Law for “defending the right of its students to organize and speak out against Israeli settler colonialism” and for endorsing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign on both a student and faculty level — despite the movement’s founders explicitly calling for the dismantling of the Jewish state by violent means;
- Encouraged students to “fight against capitalism, racism, imperialism, and Zionism around the world,” and suggested “empires of destruction” like those she described, would be defeated.
Yet, when Mohammed’s anti-Israel diatribe was reported on by a handful of media outlets, it was the law student’s less controversial remarks that led the way in the coverage.
For example, the Daily Mail included in its headline Mohammed’s attacks on the “fascist NYPD” and the response of Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who lambasted her “hateful graduation speech.”
In addition, the global news outlet summarized her antisemitism and explicit call for the obliteration of Israel (and presumably its seven million Jewish citizens) as a speech that “included multiple references to the Israel Palestine conflict,” without detailing her most offensive remarks.
To the Daily Mail’s credit, it later published a second and a third piece that revealed Mohammed once gave a speech at a demonstration in which she demanded that “Zionist professors” are banned from college campuses and the barring of Zionist students from sharing “spaces” with Palestinians.
During the same rally in New York City, she described Zionism — that is, the belief in Jewish self-determination — as a “genocidal threat.”
Meanwhile, the New York Post’s report also focused on how Mohammed had claimed New York cops are fascists and glossed over her antisemitic remarks — specifically her claim that Israel systematically murders Palestinians — by merely alluding to her speaking about “Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.”
Fox News was another outlet that prominently featured Mohammed’s bizarre assertion that the law is an example of white supremacy, but failed to quote her anti-Israel comments.
A bright spot in the media landscape was the popular sports media company Outkick‘s unequivocal condemnation of Mohammed’s antisemitism, in addition to criticizing her for failing to “condemn Hamas, Hezbollah and other organizations that lob rockets into Israel, kill Jewish people and terrorize freedom loving individuals.”
However, missed by nearly every single news outlet was the fact that CUNY Law has form when it comes to lauding Jew-hating students.
For, this time last year, none other than Nerdeen Kiswani, the founder and head of the anti-Israel hate group Within Our Lifetime, was invited to give the school’s commencement address, despite the fact that Kiswani had publicly called for violence against the Jewish state and Zionism to be “wiped out,” and once filmed herself threatening to set a man wearing an IDF sweatshirt on fire.
Horrific – a student at @CUNY, Nerdeen Kiswani, threatens to set on fire a man wearing an #IDF sweatshirt.
“I hate your shirt, Ima setting it on fire. I’m serious” she can be heard saying.
We demand this is immediately looked into and the Ms. Kiswani face disciplinary actions! pic.twitter.com/TL1J4JrI63
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) September 22, 2020
While CUNY’s Board of Trustees and Chancellor have since issued a statement distancing themselves from Mohammed’s remarks, saying it fell squarely within the “category of hate speech as they were a public expression of hate toward people and communities based on their religion, race or political affiliation,” their condemnatory words — which notably failed to specifically address her undisguised antisemitism — feel a bit too little, too late.
After all, this is not the first time the institution’s law school has welcomed an antisemite to publicly espouse their hatred — when will the university leadership finally decide it is one too many?
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