Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz (D-Brooklyn) is calling on Brooklyn College President Karen L. Gould and CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein to cancel an anti-Israel forum set to take place on the campus on February 7.

The forum, entitled “BDS Movement Against Israel” and co-sponsored by the student club Students for Justice in Palestine and the college’s political science department, was organized to encourage attendees to boycott, divest from and impose sanctions upon Israel.

In a strongly worded letter, Assemblyman Cymbrowitz called the forum “absolutely unacceptable” and said it “would accomplish nothing more than promote and incite anti-Semitism throughout your campus and beyond.”

“No department or club in Brooklyn College, which boasts a richly diverse student body, has any business sponsoring events on the college campus that serve no useful purpose but to promulgate anti-Semitism,” he said.

Assemblyman Cymbrowitz, whose parents are Holocaust survivors, noted that Brooklyn is home to thousands of native-born Israelis and Palestinians and the area surrounding the Midwood campus is also home to a thriving Jewish community.

“It is our task as responsible leaders to always stand on the right side of history, and Brooklyn College should not participate in or allow any event to take place on the college’s campus whose primary impetus is to shatter the already shaky bridges of peace and unity that so many of us have labored to build,” he said.

“My parents are living witnesses to the disastrous results of blind hatred going unchecked, and I refuse to stand by and allow it to happen again,” Assemblyman Cymbrowitz said.

(YWN Desk – NYC)