ZOA Demands Action on SJP’s Fatima Mohammed’s Murder-Inciting, Antisemitic, Anti-American CUNY Law Commencement Speech
News Press Release
June 1, 2023

Fire CUNY Law Dean; Withdraw CUNY Funding; Ensure Mohammed Doesn’t Get Law License; Gov. Hochul & Envoy Lipstadt Must End Silence & Condemn

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

I am a child of Holocaust survivors. My aunts, uncles and grandparents were murdered by the German Nazis. My parents taught me that the Holocaust began with campus and other speeches that lied about and vilified Jews. It is thus extremely dangerous to Jews and others to have promoters of “Globalize the Intifada” giving high-profile commencement speeches at CUNY Law School.

Just like the Nazis’ horrific speeches, “globalize the Intifada” is a demand to hunt down Jews throughout the world and murder them.

Jew-hating monster Fatima Mousa Mohammed’s recent commencement speech at CUNY Law School was one of the most frightening, dangerous, hateful, libelous, antisemitic, anti-American speeches ever. Fatima Mohammed is a leader of antisemitic hate groups SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine) and WOL (Within Our Lifetime).

***WOL calls for “globalizing the Intifada” – meaning spreading the terror wars to murder Jews throughout the world. In her CUNY commencement speech, Mohammad falsely accused Israel of perpetrating indiscriminate murder, when in fact it’s the Palestinian Authority terrorist dictatorship that perpetrates indiscriminate murder by paying Arabs lifetime pensions to murder Jews, naming schools and streets after Jew-killers, and publishing posters honoring Jew-killers. Only last week, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh praised recent killers of Jews as martyrs.

Fatima Mohammed’s CUNY speech promoted and incited violence and hatred towards Israel, America, CUNY Central and the police; endorsed antisemitic boycotts; and honored Hamas financiers. Mohammed’s outpouring of anti-Jewish and other incitement and hatred should never have been permitted, especially at a law school supported by New York State and New York City taxpayer dollars.

ZOA appreciates that the CUNY Chancellor, Board of Trustees, Chair and Vice Chair have finally issued a statement condemning Mohammed’s speech as “hate speech . . . that has no place on our campuses or in our city, our state or our nation.” ZOA also appreciates that Mayor Eric Adams condemned the “negativity and divisiveness” of Mohammed’s speech; and the condemnations by several New York-based public officials and Jewish and other organizations.

Nonetheless, these condemnations were not strong enough against Mohammed’s blood-curdling, murder-inciting propaganda that lied about Jews and the Jewish country of Israel that was frighteningly loudly applauded by the audience. Her Nazi-like rant was more than merely a “hate-speech” spewing “negativity and divisiveness.” The monster Hitler himself would have been proud of her insane satanic oratory reminiscent of those given in the Munich beer halls and Nazi rallies.

Additionally, much more needs to be done to assure that this does not recur in the future and to hold those involved accountable:

***ZOA calls on New York State Governor Hochul and CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez to investigate and fire those at CUNY Law School, including Dean Sudha Setty, who likely after reviewing the speech before it was delivered allowed this horror to be inflicted on graduating CUNY law students and their families, and on Jews and others.

Shamefully, Dean Setty, who sees CUNY Law School’s mission as “social justice,” was reportedly captured on a livestream of the ceremony applauding Fatima Mohammed’s hateful speech. Moreover, Setty was on stage and could have stopped Mohammed’s bigoted rant. “Social justice” should mean ending antisemitism and Israel hatred.

*** ZOA calls upon the New York State Court System (and similar entities in all other states) to disqualify Fatima Mohammed from obtaining a law license in New York and elsewhere, because she lacks the requisite good character to become a member of the New York State bar or any other state bar.

*** ZOA calls for the withdrawal of major funding from CUNY Law School, and a revamp of the school’s mission to assure that graduates have integrity and decency – instead of becoming murder-inciting bigots and lying propagandists against Jews.

 *** ZOA calls for more individuals to speak out, including antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt; President Biden; more religious, political, and academic leaders; and more editorial boards of newspapers and journalists.

Jew-hating bigot and murder-inciter Mohammed is a Yemini immigrant who has a long record of spewing antisemitic and anti-American bile. Her recent tweets and Instagram posts have included: “may every Zionist burn in the hottest pit of hell.”; “i pray upon the death of the USA”; “may every zionist like yourself face the wrath of your injustice. Allah yl3nak [May God curse you]”;“quick make dua [pray] for the fall of Zionism and the destruction of Israel.”; “zionist think they’re doing something when they call me a israel hater like … yeah buddy its not just hateI don’t believe israel should exist at all.”; and “Here is your daily reminder that a world without israel existed and a future without it will too.” (See screenshots collected by Canary Mission.)

In addition, at WOL “Globalize the Intifada” demonstrations last year, Fatima Mohammed urged: “Glory to the martyrs…Glory to each and every single person throwing the stones.”; and “Demand that Zionist professors are not welcomed on your campus! Demand that Zionist [Jewish] students are not in spaces where Palestinian students are, because Zionism is a threat! Zionism is a genocidal threat to us!”; and “Oh God, make the fire of Muslims burn on the enemies!” (See Canary Mission and MEMRI videos, etc.)

This is the second year in a row when CUNY Law School served up antisemitic hatred and incitement at its commencement ceremony. Last year, CUNY Law School’s commencement speaker was WOL/Globalize the Intifada leader Nerdeen Kiswani, who had previously threatened to murder a Jew at CUNY by lighting him on fire; and called for the “death of Zionists” [Jews] and Israel’s “destruction,” New York City Councilmember Inna Vernikov said that: “The content of [Kiswani’s] speech is similar to displays of Nazi propaganda that can be found in Yad VaShem, Israel’s major Holocaust museum.”

Fatima Mohammed’s CUNY commencement rant this year included the following libelous, hateful statements:

  • “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.” [This libel reverses reality. In fact, it is the Palestinian Authority and terror organizations that rain rockets on innocent Jews and target and murder innocent Jewish worshipers. The PA honors and pays lifetime pensions to Arabs who murder Jews. “Nakba” is the Palestinian Arab term meaning that Israel’s existence, and Arabs’ failure to annihilate Israel, are a “catastrophe.”]
  • “I want to celebrate CUNY Law as one of the few, if not the only, law school to make a public statement defending the right of its students to organize and speak out against Israeli settler colonialism. That this is the law school that passed and endorsed BDS [anti-Jewish, anti-Israel boycotts, divestment and sanctions] on a student and faculty level, recognizing that absent a critical imperialism settler colonialism lens, our work and this school’s mission statement is void of value.”
  • “We did all of this in spite of the racism, in spite of the selective activism, the self-serving interests of CUNY central, an institution that continues to fail us, that continues to train and cooperate with the fascism NYPD, the military, that continues to train IDF soldiers to carry out that same violence globally.” [Of course, CUNY provides no such training; and IDF soldiers are carrying out no such global violence. By contrast, WOL – which Fatima Mohammed is a leader of – calls for a “global intifada” – the worldwide murder of Jews. Mohammed and her supporters and enablers must be severely punished!]
  • “Let us remember that Gaza, just this week, has been bombed with the world watching. That daily, brown and black men are being murdered by the state at Rikers. That there are Palestinian political prisoners like HLF in U.S. prisons.” [HLF is the Holyland Five, who used U.S. Muslim charities to funnel millions of dollars to the Hamas terror organization.]
  • “May the joy and excitement that fills the auditorium here, may the rage that fills this auditorium, dance in the hallways of our elementary schools, in our home villages of Sheikh Jarrah, Aden, Yemen, . . . . may it be fuel for the fight against capitalism, racism, imperialism, and Zionism around the world.” [Sheikh Jarrah is the Arabic name for the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood, in which Arab squatters have continued to illegally occupy land owned by Jewish charities.]
  • “We will protect the fight that brings us all closer to the fall of all oppressive institutions, a reality that is only myopic and unrealistic to the oppressors, but is the inevitable future for the oppressed people everywhere. For greater empires of destruction have fallen before, and so will these. So, to the class of 2023: the fight begins now.”
  • CUNY Law School “was created to recognize that the law is a manifestation of white supremacy that continues to oppress and suppress people in this nation and around the world.”

This sort of dangerous abuse and use of a taxpayer-funded school to attack Jews, America, Israel, and law enforcement needs to be met with the strongest possible response.

We can’t allow prominent Nazi-like speeches at a major academic venue to go without enormous and serious consequences. There must be push-back and punishment to make it crystal clear that such frightening, dangerous rhetoric and lies will never be tolerated.

  • Center for Law & Justice
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