Pro-Palestinian group at NYU Law protests ‘Zionist grip on the media’

Sending emails to other students, NYU Law Students for Justice in Palestine accused Israel of being an “apartheid regime” and said the violence by a presumed Palestinian gunman was “a direct result of the Israeli occupation.”

The email stressed that “the Zionist grip on the media is omnipresent."

NYU LSJP acknowledged the concern over language that is in line with antisemitic tropes over Jewish control of the media, but added that “Zionism does, in fact, intentionally and strategically use US and Western media."

Following this matter, a group of 100 students expressed concerns over the language used by NYU LSJP in an open letter, which was sent to the law school’s dean, Trevor Morrison.
 

“The effort to silence those who choose to speak out against apartheid and violent occupation is shameful, and equally shameful is the purposeful conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism,”, Yosmin Badie, a member of NYU LSJP said

She added, “I will not be intimidated by those who wish to deny this right and will continue to unequivocally stand with Palestinians in their struggle.” 

The listserv includes support for NYU LSJP’s pro-Palestinian message from at least 11 law school student associations, representing Black, Muslim and South Asian groups and students with disabilities, among others.

Jewish board members of NYU LSJP, whose names were redacted, also wrote their own statement “in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation.” 

“Zionist violence is done in our name, and the Jewish faith makes it a moral imperative that we call out violence done in our name,” the Jewish students wrote.

It also said that Zionism is not Judaism and called it “a racist imperalist, white supremacist ideology, not a religious movement.”