Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) expressed concern this morning regarding the absence of the Anti-Defamation League on the matter of racist, propagandist Linda Sarsour’s planned commencement speech at CUNY. The ADL, whose mission is to “stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all” has been conspicuously silent on the matter since the announcement was made.

“I hope everyone at the ADL is ok,” said Hikind. “I’m genuinely concerned. I know they’d never be silent about an issue as important as this if everything was normal. The ADL speaks out 24/7 on defamation of the Jewish people and nothing can be more defamatory than Linda Sarsour’s statements about Jews and her glorification of Arabs throwing rocks at Israelis. But following the invitation from CUNY for Sarsour to address their graduates, the ADL’s silence has been deafening and shameful.”

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. Hikind has called upon Governor Andrew Cuomo prevent this outrage from occurring.

“Linda Sarsour’s record of advocating for terrorists speaks for itself,” says Hikind. “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)