Scuffle erupts at rally against BDS promoter Linda Sarsour

A scuffle broke out between supporters and critics of the City University of New York’s plan to host Linda Sarsour, an activist opposed to President Donald Trump and a supporter of attempts to boycott Israel.

The incident occurred Thursday night outside the CUNY building in Manhattan, where activists against radical Islam, including Pamela Geller and Milo Yiannopoulos, had rallied in protest of the decision by the institution’s School of Public Health to host Sarsour on Friday as a commencement speaker, the New York Daily News reported.

One 19-year-old student who supports the invitation to Sarsour – an organizer of the anti-Trump Women’s March on Washington on January 20 — was pushed around by a small group of demonstrators chanting “Make America Great Again,” according to the report. No arrests were made.

Geller, president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, and Yiannopoulos, who are Jewish and advocates of Israel’s actions against Palestinian terrorism, were joined by Assemblyman Dov Hikind, (D-Brooklyn), who is also Jewish.

Milo Yiannopoulos speaks at the California Polytechnic State University as part of his ‘The Dangerous Faggot Tour’ of college campuses, Jan. 31, 2017, in San Luis Obispo, California. (David Middlecamp/The Tribune (of San Luis Obispo) via AP)

Geller, a firebrand conservative blogger, said the invitation extended to Sarsour was “obscene,” describing her as a “pro-terror vicious anti-Semite” and punctuating her remarks with, “Surely CUNY can do better!”

Earlier this year, Sarsour raised more than $150,000 to repair a vandalized Jewish cemetery in Missouri.

But Sarsour has also been criticized for denouncing Zionism and tweeting a photo of a young boy with rocks in each hand facing Israeli police, along with the words “the definition of courage.”

Pamela Geller, cofounder and president of Stop Islamization of America, is shown during the American Freedom Defense Initiative program at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, on May 3, 2015. (photo credit: Gregory Castillo/The Dallas Morning News via AP)

“Why would CUNY have a commencement speaker who supports terrorism and believes in throwing rocks?” Hikind said at the Thursday rally.

Sarsour, who is of Palestinian descent, this year said that supporters of Israel cannot be feminists. She favors a one-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a formula that many Jews consider a formula for the demise of Israel. In 2012, she tweeted “Nothing is creepier than Zionism.”

Some Jewish groups with a liberal agenda defended Sarsour against accusations of radicalism or anti-Semitism, including Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. “She has stood with us against anti-Semitism, both in words and actions,” the group said in a statement last month.