Morton A. Klein, National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA); Susan B. Tuchman, Esq., Director of the ZOA’s Center for Law and Justice; Zach Stern, Managing Director of the ZOA Campus Department; and Eytan Sosnovich, Executive Director of ZOA’s New York Metro chapter, issued the following statement:

Yesterday evening a collection of The City University of New York (CUNY)-based chapters of the anti-Israel hate group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) organized a frightening hate-filled anti-Semitic rally at Hunter College.

Under the auspices of a so-called “Million Student March” (which only a few thousand students around the country attended), the student organizers blamed CUNY’s “Zionist administration” for high tuition rates at CUNY. The hate-filled activists chanted “Zionists out of CUNY!” and “long live the intifada!” at the rally. The SJP’s call for an intifada is the call for a terror war against Jews, promoting violence against and murdering Jewish people. A cell phone video taken at the rally is available by clicking here.

Frank Sanchez, CUNY’s Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, issued a “Statement on the Freedom of Student Expression.” Buried in the statement affirming the freedom of expression at CUNY is a reference to “the efforts of a few to distract attention from important issues in higher education like learning, access and quality by invoking discriminatory language reeking of thinly veiled bigotry, prejudice, anti-semitism or other behavior inconsistent with our educational mission.”

This vague statement, which was not even issued by the Chancellor of CUNY, did not clearly describe what happened yesterday. It did not identify or condemn the SJP by name or condemn its hateful, anti-Semitic, violence-inciting rhetoric.

Much more must be done. CUNY Chancellor James B. Milliken, Mayor Bill de Blasio, and other elected officials and religious leaders should be speaking out clearly and forcefully. They should specifically describe what the SJP did at Hunter College yesterday, condemn the SJP, and explain why. This bigoted group’s unadulterated Jew-hatred must be unequivocally condemned by New York City’s academic leaders, elected officials and religious leaders.

ACTION

Contact CUNY Chancellor James B. Milliken, Mayor Bill de Blasio,and Your City Council Member to demand that they condemn the SJP and the group’s vicious hate-filled rally that called for murder and violence against Jews. Let them know that YOUR tax dollars should not be used to enable hate groups like the SJP to propagate anti-Semitism and incite violence here in New York City.

Contact information for Chancellor James B. Milliken is available here.

Contact information for Mayor de Blasio’s office is available here.

The directory for the New York City Council is here.

For more information about SJP, see the ZOA backgrounder at campus.zoa.org.