Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:

In light of the recent reports that Israel-hater, terrorist supporter Linda Sarsour enabled repeated sexual assaults of a woman who worked for Sarsour at the Arab American Association of New York (AAANY), and that Sarsour threatened the woman victim, ZOA urges the far left-wing signers of the May 2017 “Jews for Linda” letter (including officials of HIAS including Mark Hetfield, J Street including Jeremy Ben Ami, the National Council of Jewish Women, Nancy Kaufman, New Israel Fund, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College; IfNotNow, and the anti-Hillel group “Open Hillel”), to retract their letter and shameful support for Sarsour.  In addition, ZOA urges the City University of New York (CUNY) to rescind its honors to Sarsour; NYC, its grants, urges Glamour Magazine to rescind its 2017 “Women of the Year” award to Sarsour; and urges Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to retract her praise of Sarsour. 

Of note, Senator Gillibrand reportedly donated to an anti-sexual violence organization $11,800 of donations that she received from Harvey Weinstein, after his predatory sexual activities were publicly reported.  Sen. Gillibrand also stated “it’s important to not only hold predators accountable but the institutions protecting them.”  If Senator Gillibrand and all the organizations and individuals mentioned above are sincere about ending sexual violence and those who enable it, they must condemn and retract their support of Israel-hater, sexual assault enabler Linda Sarsour.

In a detailed report published by, and consistent with other sources to The Daily Caller, Asmi Fathelbab described how Linda Sarsour, who was then AAANY’s Executive Director, “oversaw an environment unsafe and abusive to women” and enabled a man named Majed Seif to repeatedly sexually assault Ms. Fathelbab (including by stalking and pinning Ms. Fathelbab against the wall and rubbing his crotch on her).  Ms. Fathelbab also reported how Linda Sarsour threatened and raged at Ms. Fathelbab when Ms. Fathelbab reported these assaults. 

Ms. Fathelbab reported that when she reported the abuse: “[Linda Sarsour] called me a liar because ‘something like this didn’t happen to women who looked like me,’ . . . How dare I interrupt her TV news interview in the other room with my ‘lies.’”  And when Ms. Fathelbab reported the assaults to other AAANY officials, Sarsour reportedly threatened lawsuits and professional damage if Ms. Fathelbab went public about the sexual assaults.  Ms. Fathelbab stated: “[Linda Sarsour told me I’d never work in NYC ever again for as long as she lived. . . She’s kept her word. She had me fired from other jobs when she found out where I worked. She has kept me from obtaining any sort of steady employment for almost a decade.”  (See “Linda Sarsour Accused of Enabling Sexual Assault Against Woman Who Worked For Her,” by Benny Johnson, Daily Caller, Dec. 17, 2017.  See also “BREAKING: Linda Sarsour Allegedly Enabled Sexual Assault Against Female Employee — Threatened Legal Action If She Went Public!,” by Joshua Caplan, Gatestone Institute, Dec. 17, 2017.)

These latest revelations that hater Linda Sarsour enabled sexual assaults compounds Sarsour’s long history of hateful statements disparaging women, Jews, Muslim reformers, Israel and America, and promoting jihad, anti-Semites and terrorists.  For instance, Sarsour promotes the false notion that if you are a Zionist, then you cannot be a feminist; tweeted that Brigitte Gabriel and female genital mutilation victim Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s “vaginas should be taken away” and that they do not “deserve” to be women; opposes Israel’s right to exist; tweeted “Nothing is creepier than Zionism”; promotes the antisemitic Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS); defends sharia legal systems that deny women basic rights; and makes common cause with notorious grotesque anti-Semites such as anti-Semite, black supremacist hate-monger Louis Farrakhan.  This past April, Sarsour said that she was “honored and privileged” to be sharing a podium with convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh (who murdered two college students in a 1969 supermarket bombing in Israel).  And, during Sarsour’s alarming July 2017 speech at the ISNA convention (the Islamic Society of North America – an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial for funneling money to Hamas), Sarsour called for jihad, said that American Muslims must refuse to assimilate and instead remain “perpetually outraged,” and effusively praised unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing Imam Siraj Wahhaj (who also said “Muslims could take over the U.S. and form a Caliphate”) as her mentor.

For details on the foregoing, see “ZOA to Glamour Magazine: Don’t Honor Anti-Israel Bigot Linda Sarsour,” Nov. 6, 2017; “ZOA to Gov. Cuomo: Cancel Pro-Terror CUNY Commencement Speaker Sarsour,” Apr. 27, 2017; “ZOA’s Klein Condemns New School for Inviting Jew-Hater Sarsour to Discuss Anti-Semitism,” Nov. 27, 2017; “ZOA: Jihadist, Jew Hater Linda Sarsour’s Speech was Call for Sedition, Violence Against Pres. Trump and U.S.,” July 12, 2017; and “ZOA Condemns HIAS, J St, NCJW, Recon. Rabbis, NIF For Defending Israel-Bashing, Jew-Hater Linda Sarsour,” Nov. 27, 2017.