Two Brooklyn College volleyball players who took a knee rather than stand during Yeshiva University’s playing of the the Israeli national anthem are now taking heat for “anti-Semitism.”
The duo kneeled as “Hatikvah” played before the team’s Feb. 23 game at Yeshiva University in Manhattan, stunning some fans.
“I saw these two guys kneeling and I honestly had to [do] a double take … and I was shocked, my heart felt ripped out of my chest,” Tehilla Teigman, a student at the university’s Stern College for Women told the Yeshiva University Observer, the student newspaper.
The student said she played three sports for Stern and had “never seen one person show any disrespect.”
Sarah Serfaty, who posted a video clip of the incident on Facebook, wrote, “I don’t care what your political beliefs are, have some respect. This is Anti-Semitism. This is not a place to make a religious or political statement, respect the other team. Show sportsmanship and tolerance.”
The Brooklyn College Bulldogs won the match against the YU Maccabees.
YU President Dr. Ari Berman said the school was “proud to be the only university who sings both the American and Israeli national anthems before every athletic competition and major event.”
“It is unfortunate that some members of the opposing team disrespected Israel’s national anthem,” Berman said in a statement. “Nothing makes me prouder to be an American than living in a country where our religious freedom, our zionism and our commitment to our people will never be impeded and always be prized.”
The mother of one of the kneeling students, sophomore Omar Rezika, said he would not comment.
She said, “We love everybody,” but she could not explain her son’s actions. She said she had a Jewish grandmother and the family was of mixed faith, including Muslim.
“Why did he kneel?” said the mom, who wouldn’t give her name. “I don’t know.”
The other student, freshman Hunnan Butt, could not be reached.
Brooklyn College president Michelle Anderson sent out a campus-wide message about the incident yesterday saying, “The students’ kneeling itself is protected speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”
“The college, as a public institution, is bound by the First Amendment, which prohibits the suppression of speech based solely on its content or viewpoint,” Anderson wrote.
She went on to say the college had “taken an active stance to promote understanding across our many differences” including holding lectures and panel discussions through an initiative called “We Stand Against Hate.”
