A prominent law firm in New York City said it had rescinded a job offer to a college student who made “inflammatory” comments about the Hamas militant group’s deadly attacks on Israel over the weekend. The student in question had, hours earlier, placed the blame for the death toll of at least 1,600 people in Israel and Gaza squarely on the former’s government.
In a statement, Winston & Strawn LLP did not explicitly identify the student beyond characterizing them as a former summer associate who’d distributed their remarks “to the NYU Student Bar Association.”
Reuters reported that a newsletter circulated by the NYU Student Bar Association earlier on Tuesday had included a message by its president, Ryna Workman, who’d said Israel bore “full responsibility” for Hamas’ incursions. The wire noted that Workman’s now-deleted LinkedIn page previously listed them as a summer associate at Winston & Strawn.
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“This regime of state-sanctioned violence created the conditions that made resistance necessary,” Workman, who uses they/them pronouns, wrote in part. “I will not condemn Palestinian resistance.”
They went on to say that they, instead, condemned “the violence of apartheid,” “settler colonialism,” “military occupation,” and “the violence of trapping thousands in an open-air prison,” among other things.
“I condemn the violence in removing historical context,” they wrote. “I condemn the violence of silence. Palestine will be free.”
The company said that the student’s comments were “profoundly in conflict with Winston & Strawn’s values as a firm.” It added that it remained “outraged and deeply saddened by the violent attacks on Israel over the weekend,” condemning Hamas “in the strongest terms possible.”
New York University also took steps to distance itself from its Student Bar Association on Tuesday, saying the newsletter statement “does not in any way reflect the point of view of NYU.”
“Acts of terrorism are immoral,” a university spokesperson said. “The indiscriminate killing of civilians and hostage-taking, including children and the elderly, is reprehensible. Blaming victims of terrorism for their own deaths is wrong.”
