Columbia U. program director shares Facebook post calling Border Policewoman a ‘terrorist’
ADL calls on university to condemn posting by Palestine Studies program head
Aaron Kalman is a former writer and breaking news editor for the Times of Israel
The Anti-Defamation League called on Sunday for Columbia University to condemn “deeply disturbing” statements that called a border police officer a “terrorist” and were posted on Facebook by the program director for the University’s Center for Palestine Studies.
In her Facebook post, program director Maryam Zohny named the border police officer who last week fatally shot a Palestinian teen who appeared to be threatening to shoot a fellow officer in Hebron. The post called her a terrorist and the teen a martyr, according to an ADL press release.
The officer, whose identity has been kept under wraps in Israel, shot Mohammed Suleima in Hebron last week after he threatened another Israeli border police officer with a gun — later found to be a fake.
In addition to warning that the officer was “wanted by the resistance,” the Facebook post “included the logos of several Palestinian terrorist groups,” the statement read, as well as a picture of the officer.
The ADL sent a letter to Columbia University President Lee Bollinger in which it “expressed deep concern” regarding Zohny’s online post and urged the “university leadership to take appropriate action.”
The ADL finds the posting by “Ms. Zohny, a Columbia employee, to be deeply disturbing,” the organization’s national director Abraham Foxman said in a statement.
While Zohny “is certainly entitled to her own views,” her work on campus in the field of Middle East studies, could not be ignored when she circulated such pieces, the statement said.
Foxman asked the University to “issue a clear and unequivocal statement that these views are neither supported by nor a reflection of the school.”
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