Pro-Hamas activists Abdullah Akl and Mohammad Badawy have called to “strike Tel Aviv” and destroy “the illegitimate Zionist occupiers and all of their supporters.” Now they’re launching an initiative to form student chapters in dozens of New York City public high schools.
Akl, an advocacy director with the Muslim American Society (MAS) Youth Center in Brooklyn, recently announced the group’s “MAS in Schools” initiative, which aims to create prayer spaces and host Islamic events at 50 New York City high schools. The group will partner “for the first time ever” with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the radical organization that earlier this month called for “death to all collaborators” of Israel, to do so.
Akl is well known as a pro-Hamas activist in New York City, having led a chant at a local rally last year calling on Hamas to “strike Tel Aviv.” At a rally this month, he said “we will show up stronger than we did the first October 7th.” Akl is an organizer at Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a group so radical that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) denounced it for “atrocious anti-Semitism” over its protest last year at a remembrance exhibit for the victims of Oct. 7.
Mohammad Badawy, the MAS Youth Center’s resident scholar, is no less extreme. At an event in April, he prayed for the “destruction of the illegitimate Zionist occupiers and all of their supporters” and encouraged “all those resisting against them by any means necessary.” Quds News Network cofounder Raja Abdulhaq, meanwhile, is a frequent speaker at MAS Youth Center events, including a “Resisting Capitalism” seminar last month. He has called the actions of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups an “authentic indigenous response to a violent, colonial project.”
Anti-Semitism is already a problem at New York City’s public schools. Two teachers at Origins High School in Brooklyn, for example, sued the city’s education department last year for failing to discipline students who chanted “f— the Jews” and gave Nazi salutes during a march across campus, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Local Jewish leaders are now concerned the “MAS in Schools” initiative will exacerbate the issue given the group’s radical rhetoric.
“It’s very troubling,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean and director of the Global Social Action Agenda of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Cooper said while it remains unclear whether the student groups violate any city or state codes, the group’s “track record of essentially being pro-Hamas” should warrant “political consideration from elected officials.”
“This is a concerning level of organizing, down from universities right into high schools in the five boroughs,” added Cooper, who noted Brooklyn, where the MAS Youth Center is based, has the highest concentration of Jews outside Israel.
The MAS Youth Center is already working with several Brooklyn high schools to help its Muslim student chapters get off the ground.
The MAS’s Yusof Badawy and Saed Awawdeh spoke to students at Brooklyn’s Lafayette High School in May, according to social media posts. A leader of Fort Hamilton High School’s Muslim student group said the MAS Youth Center “reached out” to his chapter offering to teach the group “how to organize” and “how to advocate” on campus.
The MAS Youth Center touts its involvement in “Protest Mobilization,” in which it “mobilize[s] our youth to attend protests and rallies that aim to uphold justice for anyone and everyone.”
The group helped students at Fort Hamilton and Lafayette high schools organize a “STUDENT WALKOUT FOR GAZA” on Oct. 7, the anniversary of Hamas’s attack on Israel. Student chapters at the schools posted fliers for the event that featured the anti-Israel slogan, “FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE,” and directed students to attend a rally by WOL.
“Your MSA can change campus,” said MAS Youth’s Yusof Badawy in a promotional video for a summit between the MAS and SJP held this month.
The summit calls to “build the future of student organization” and provides a “space rooted in faith, liberation, and collective power.”
The partnership with SJP could also raise eyebrows.
SJP, which claims 350 chapters at universities across North America, has been kicked off several college campuses for promoting anti-Semitic and pro-Hamas rhetoric. The national chapter called for “death to all collaborators” of Israel in a social media post earlier this month, the Free Beacon reported.
One of SJP’s most prominent former university leaders is New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani (D.), who led the group’s chapter at Bowdoin College. Mamdani has campaigned at the MAS’s Bronx location. And he also knows Akl, according to a recent interview.
Some of Mamdani’s allies at city hall have obtained city funding for the New York chapter of the MAS, which oversees the youth center, according to city records.
Council speaker Adrienne Adams and Councilman Justin Brannan, both allies of Mamdani, obtained $150,000 and $60,000 in grants for the MAS since 2023, according to the records.
That could stoke concerns for New York City families worried pro-Hamas and anti-Israel groups are active at public schools.
“If Mamdani wins, who are parents supposed to go to?” asked Cooper.
The New York City public school system and the MAS Youth Center didn’t respond to requests for comment.
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