Jewish Law Students Association

At CUNY School of Law

 

September 22, 2020

 

As Jewish students at CUNY Law, we stand against the hateful, Islamophobic campaign being waged against our classmate. The Jewish Law Students Association (JLSA) condemns CUNY Law's response to a video circulating on social media. The school's statements wrongly conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. CUNY Law’s statement assumes that the Jewish people have monolithic views on Israel. Neither Judaism nor Jewish people are mentioned in the video in question, which was posted by a right-wing Zionist organization acting in bad faith in order to spur harassment of one of our classmates. Painting us in this way is, in fact, antisemitic, and erases the long and deep history of Jewish anti-Zionism and Jewish dissent.

 

Furthermore, CUNY Law’s statement is deeply harmful to our Palestinian classmates, and all those who stand in support of Palestinians. Conflating symbols of Israel — a settler-colonial nation-state with one of the most powerful militaries in the world, and a record of well-documented human rights abuses — with symbols of Jewish people silences the free speech that CUNY Law purports to hold so dear.

 

The threat of antisemitism is real, but Zionism is not a solution to antisemitism. Zionism is premised upon the dispossession of Palestinians from their land. Israel, and the IDF, systematically engage in racist human rights atrocities against Palestinians. Israel routinely denies Palestinians access to clean water and 4.9 million Palestinians face daily restrictions on their movement. Israel has demolished more than 50,0000 Palestinian homes over the past 50 years and 600,000 Jewish Israeli settlers are illegally living on occupied Palestinian land. Israel treats Palestinians within Israel as second-class citizens and uses military force to crush political dissent – including extrajudicial killings, the incarceration of Palestinian children, and torture and inhumane detention conditions.

 

We support Palestinians. We stand strongly against ANY attempt to use us, Jewish CUNY Law students, as a justification for this racist and Islamophobic campaign.

 

Signed with love and rage,

 

CUNY Law Jewish Law Students Association