New York City Council Member Raises Pressure on CUNY Over Honoring of BDS Advocate Linda Sarsour

Ben Cohen

Anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour (center). Photo: Facebook.

As the row continues over the forthcoming honoring by the City University of New York (CUNY) of Linda Sarsour – a prominent advocate of the BDS campaign targeting Israel – a leading New York City Democrat is calling on fellow progressives to recognize her as a bigot.

Rory Lancman – a member of the New York City Council from Queens – told The Algemeiner in an interview on Monday that it was “inappropriate” for CUNY to honor Sarsour, given her persistent record of antisemitic and anti-Zionist statements. Sarsour is scheduled to deliver the keynote address at a June 1 commencement ceremony for CUNY’s Graduate School of Public Health.

Although Sarsour has been lionized by Democratic Party leaders – including former President Barack Obama, who named her as a “Champion of Change,” as well as New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who penned a tribute to Sarsour in Time magazine – Lancman takes a much less sanguine view of her public outbursts. These include tweets declaring that “nothing is creepier than Zionism” and open incitement against the anti-Islamist writers Brigitte Gabriel and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whom Sarsour said deserved an “a$$ whipping,” before adding that she wished she could have their “vaginas taken away.”

read more: …BDS Advocate Linda Sarsour