CUNY Law School Hosts Graduation Speaker Accused of Antisemitism

Following public pressure, the City University of New York (CUNY) Law School released a copy of its 2023 commencement address on Thursday. American Jewish groups have condemned the speech as “trading in antisemitic tropes.”

The speech, originally given by student-activist Fatima Mohammed on May 12, sought to connect Israel with the global struggle against white supremacy and colonialism.

“Israel continues to indiscriminately rain bullets and bombs on worshipers, murdering the old, the young, attacking the funerals and graveyards as it encourages lynch mobs,” the law student argued.

During another part, Mohammed condemned the treatment of “Palestinian political prisoners like HLF [Holy Land Foundation] in U.S. prisons.”

The Texas-based group, which the State Department designated as a terrorist organization for aiding the Palestinian militant group Hamas, had sought to pass itself off as a Muslim charity.

“May we rejoice in the corners of our New York City bedroom apartments and dining tables, may it be fuel for the fight against capitalism, racism, imperialism, and Zionism around the world,” Mohammed said near the end of her speech.

The student’s comments led several American Jewish communal organizations to denounce CUNY Law.

“Once again the CUNY Law School commencement speech by the student body elected commencement speaker was incendiary anti-Israel propaganda,” the Jewish Community Relations of New York wrote in an official statement earlier this month.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) echoed the sentiment noting: “Graduations should be a place for all — not a time to denigrate students’ identities.”

“We are appalled to see such an egregious display of hostility toward ‘Zionists’ (which is how many Jews see themselves) and Israel in CUNY Law’s commencement address,” the group added on Twitter.

Mohammed’s speech comes the year after the law school hosted Nerdeen Kiswani, then the president of the law school’s Students for Justice in Palestine, to give the 2022 commencement address.

Kiswani had previously made several statements calling for violence and the destruction of the state of Israel.

“I’m banned from my homeland for as long as this Zionist settler entity, this organization called Israel, masquerading as a country, continues to exist,” the activist said during one interview on YouTube in 2021. “We had peace before Israel was created, so abolishing Israel is the key to peace.”

Following the murder of three Israelis, Kiswani liked an Instagram post showing the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem with the caption: “Glory to the axe of resistance.”

Kiswani was also a leader of Within Our Lifetime, a pro-Palestinian organization, that had a member imprisoned on federal charges for assaulting a Jewish man in  New York City in 2022. The group openly calls to “globalize the Intifada.”

Court documents after the attack revealed that the group had brought Molotov cocktails and instructed members to cover their faces to evade identification and refer to targets as “Zionists” rather than “Jews” to avoid accusations of antisemitism.

“Remember, don’t chant out Jews, it’s the Zionists,” one participant wrote in the group chat before another added later: “Fuck all Jews.”

Reached for comment by Fox News Digital, the school noted that “student speakers” remarks reflect “their own individual perspectives on advocating for social justice. As with all such commencement remarks, they reflect the voices of those individuals.”