Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) expressed outrage that radical Sharia advocate Linda Sarsour has been invited to give a CUNY commencement speech. Sarsour, a self-proclaimed activist who glorified and encouraged terrorist stone throwers as “courageous,” was invited by the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy to address this year’s graduating class. Having already called on Chancellor James Milliken to step in and rescind this invitation, Hikind is now calling upon Governor Andrew Cuomo to prevent this outrage from occurring.

“Governor Cuomo has been a great supporter of Israel and the Israeli people,” said Hikind. “Our Governor has stood firm against the racist BDS movement. He recently visited Israel stating, ‘If you really care, you show up.’ Now I ask the Governor to intervene in this outrageous choice.

“Linda Sarsour’s record of advocating for terrorists speaks for itself. If she had only called Arabs who hurl rocks at moving cars ‘the definition of courage,’ that would have been enough. Stones killed Adva Bitton’s three-year-old daughter Adele and badly injured her other two small children in 2013 in Israel. But there’s so much more! Sarsour publicly called for violence against Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a feminist Muslim author who opposes violence… She recently shared a stage with and praised Rasmea Yousef Odeh, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine convicted by an Israeli court for her role in the murder of two students, Leon Kanner and Eddie Joffe, in a Jerusalem supermarket bombing.

“The United States and the rest of the free world are locked in conflict with terrorists and rogue nations that employ the cruelest tactics against innocent victims. Those who applaud terrorists must be exposed for what they are. It would be bad enough if a private university were to offer Sarsour a platform, but a City university funded by our tax dollars? Sarsour is not the benevolent voice of peaceful Islam. She does not seek to build bridges. She is a propagandist and an apologist for terrorists. She is not someone CUNY should be inviting to speak to its graduates.”

(YWN Headquarters – NYC)