Each year, the law school graduates elect a member of their class to deliver a speech, and this year they chose Ms. Mohammed, an activist devoted to the Palestinian cause. Although her remarks would later be presented as a lightning bolt of antisemitism, she began uncontroversially, talking about the pain and loss of Covid and how it shaped her cohort’s first semesters in law school. “Let us remember that Gaza, just this week, has been bombed with the world watching,” she said at one point. But it was the fierceness she brought to her denunciation of “Israeli settler colonialism” and CUNY’s collaboration with “the fascist N.Y.P.D.” that especially inflamed the political class, even if her own audience, including the law school dean, seemed receptive. (“Imagine being so crazed by hatred for Israel as a Jewish State that you make it the subject of your commencement speech,” Mr. Torres wrote on Twitter last week.

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Persons: Mohammed, ”, “, —, Mohammed’s, “ Stark, Ritchie Torres, Ted Cruz, Mr, Torres, Israel derangement Organizations: CUNY, New York Post, Fox, Democratic, Bronx, Republican, Jewish, Twitter Locations: Gaza, Rikers, Israel, Jewish State