Fatima's speech was not wrong

To the editor:

We are a multiracial group of Northwest Bronx and Riverdale residents standing in support of CUNY Law graduate Fatima Mohammed, who has been unjustly targeted by a smear campaign accusing her of hate speech.

We are highly disturbed that Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz and U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres have joined the chorus conflating Ms. Mohammed’s criticism of Israeli treatment of Palestinians with antisemitism.

Ms. Mohammed was elected by her classmates to be their commencement speaker. In her speech on May 12, she highlighted the values of CUNY Law School of training lawyers who will defend those facing oppression anywhere. She said: “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.”

Citing facts, not hate, Ms. Mohammed continued: “Israel continues to rain down bullets and bombs on worshippers, murdering the old, the young, attacking even funerals and graveyards. And 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.”

On Twitter, Congressman Torres claimed Ms. Mohammed suffered from “Anti-Israel derangement syndrome.” Assemblyman Dinowitz co-wrote a letter to CUNY chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez, which demanded he repudiate the “hateful speech.”

We reject these comments. As does the CUNY Jewish Law Students Association, which expressed its support of Ms. Fatima.

“It is disingenuous to characterize these factual descriptions as antisemitic, when they describe the conditions of Palestinian life,” the group said in a statement.

The United States provides Israel with more than $3 billion in yearly aid. Rather than attacking a young law student, perhaps Mr. Dinowitz and Mr. Torres could lobby for some of that money to be used to prevent budget cuts at CUNY.

As Ms. Mohammed said in her speech, “Palestine can no longer be the exception to our pursuit of justice.”

We agree.

Pam Sporn, Paul Foster,
Jose Alfaro & John LoSasso