NYC anti-Zionist groups back walkout from interfaith campus event to protest Hillel leader

NEW YORK — Anti-Zionist activist groups in New York City on Sunday backed a Muslim leader who led a walkout from a college interfaith event after decrying a fellow panelist as “Zionist.”

The groups also condemned similar interfaith efforts.

Last week, a Muslim leader, Abdullah Mady, spurred around 100 students to walk out of an interfaith event at Manhattan’s City College of New York after castigating the Jewish community representative, Hillel leader Ilya Bratman.

“I came here to this event not knowing that I would be sitting next to a Zionist and this is something I’m not going to accept. My people are being killed right now in Gaza,” Mady said, to cheers and applause from the students.

“If you’re a Muslim, out of strength and dignity, I ask you to exit this room immediately,” he shouted, leading all of the Muslim students out of the room.

City College of New York, part of the public City University of New York (CUNY) system, said it was aware of the incident and investigating.

The incident, first reported by The Times of Israel, caused an uproar among New York leaders, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, who decried the rhetoric and walkout as antisemitic.

But over the weekend, activist groups from around the city, including from CUNY campuses, issued statements backing Mady and condemning interfaith efforts.

Muslim or pro-Palestinian groups hailing from CUNY’s John Jay College, the Borough of Manhattan Community College, Brooklyn College, the College of Staten Island and the CUNY Graduate Center also shared statements in support of Mady, as did the Muslim American Society Youth Center in Brooklyn.

“We stand in full solidarity with Abdullah Mady’s statements rejecting the normalization of Zionism,” said a statement from a group at John Jay College that was shared widely by other activist organizations.

The statement said that interfaith workshops “are not genuine dialogue: instead, they feel like structured attempts to manufacture political consent under the guise of coexistence.”

“What is presented as ‘interfaith understanding’ becomes, in practice, an attempt to sanitize state violence,” the statement said.

Two groups at Brooklyn College and the borough’s Muslim American Society center condemned the interfaith event and supported past disruptions of interfaith gatherings at the college.

“Zionism is a racist belief system and it has no place at our universities,” the statement said. “The Zionist state has no ‘right to exist,’ and Palestinians should not be pressured into ‘coexisting’ with racists who call for their annihilation.”

Two groups from the College of Staten Island also backed Mady, saying, “By normalizing Zionism, you, in turn, legitimize the violent ongoing occupation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.”

The statements took aim at Hochul, who called the walkout “antisemitism, plain and simple,” and said she expected CUNY to “act swiftly to ensure accountability.”

Other New York and national leaders condemned the walkout, including Harmeet Dhillon, the US Department of Justice’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, who said the department will “look into this.”

A spokesperson for the City College of New York said last week, “We were made aware of this incident and are working with our teams to investigate claims of possible discrimination.”

“The City College of New York has zero tolerance for acts of hate or bigotry of any kind and will promptly take all necessary and appropriate actions to address any such discrimination and remedy its effects,” the spokesperson said.

CUNY is the largest urban college network in the US, with more than 240,000 students at 26 colleges spread around the city. The experience of Jewish students varies widely between the different campuses, and each college has significant autonomy from the central CUNY administration.

But Jewish students and faculty have said Israel criticism on campuses often spills over into outright antisemitism, which has prompted investigations and City Council hearings. Palestinians and their supporters have decried alleged attacks on free speech.

Some campuses have seen vitriolic protests against Israel since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack, including students targeting Hillel chapters with terrorist symbols. Other campuses have been relatively quiet.

The CUNY system has contended with instances of antisemitism on its campuses for years, and taken steps to counter anti-Jewish discrimination. A third-party review of antisemitism and discrimination at CUNY last year called for an overhaul of the system’s policies related to the issue.

An attempted interfaith event between Muslim and Jewish students weeks after the October 7 attack, at CUNY’s Queens College, also broke down amid protests by Muslim students, who denounced the imam for hosting the event with the rabbi and stormed out of the meeting.