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Ex-NYU Student Bar President Doubles Down on Israel Comments After Her Letter Backfires

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I’ll say this about Ryna Workman: She’s certainly willing to put her future earnings potential where her mouth is.

If you don’t know who Workman is, you might know her case: She’s the New York University Law School student who lost both a postgraduate job with a prestigious law firm and the presidency of the NYU Student Bar Association after authoring a statement on the Israel-Hamas war that placed the blame for Hamas atrocities solely on (you guessed it) Israel.

At this point, considering she’d lost pretty much everything she’d been working for over a statement that basically took the side of a terrorist organization slaughtering innocent men, women and children simply for being Jewish Israelis, you might think she would have the good sense to shut the heck up.

Instead, Workman — whose pronouns are “they”/”them,” which will be roundly disregarded in this piece — doubled down on her statements during a Tuesday interview with “ABC News Live Prime.”

“I think I will continue to speak up for Palestinian human rights and use whatever platform I have available to me to call for a cease-fire and, you know, end this occupation that’s harming the Palestinians,” she said during the interview.

She was then asked whether “they would change anything about their statement or condemn Hamas.”

“Workman stood their ground,” is how ABC News described it. Translation: Nope.

“I think what I use my platform for and who I condemn was pretty clear by my message,” Workman said. “And I think I will continue to condemn apartheid and military occupation.”

Host Linsey Davis continued to press for any sign of remorse for the innocent Israelis who died. Answer: Nope, in italics.

“I will continue to use my voice to uplift the voices of Palestinians and the struggles they’re going through. … I think whether or not my empathy goes to Israelis or to Palestinians is really not the question here,” Workman said. “What the question is, is will we call for an end to this genocide and will we call for a cease-fire?”

And yes, her message made things pretty darn clear; she said in the message after the terrorist attacks of Oct. 7 that Israel’s “regime of state-sanctioned violence created the conditions that made resistance necessary” and that she would “not condemn Palestinian resistance.”

Instead, she went on to say, “I condemn the violence of apartheid. I condemn the violence of settler colonialism. I condemn the violence of military occupation. I condemn the violence of dispossession and stolen homes. I condemn the violence of trapping thousands in an open-air prison. I condemn –” etc. etc.

“Palestine will be free,” Workman wrote in closing.

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A few days later, on Oct. 10, the firm where she had been a summer associate, Winston & Strawn, announced that due to “certain inflammatory comments regarding Hamas’ recent terrorist attack on Israel … the Firm has rescinded the law student’s offer of employment.”

Should Workman have been denied the job?

“These comments profoundly conflict with Winston & Strawn’s values as a firm,” a news release from the firm read. “As communicated yesterday to all Winston personnel, we remain outraged and deeply saddened by the violent attack on Israel over the weekend. Our hearts go out to our Jewish colleagues, their families, and all those affected.

“Winston stands in solidarity with Israel’s right to exist in peace and condemns Hamas and the violence and destruction it has ignited in the strongest terms possible. We look forward to continuing to work together to eradicate anti-Semitism in all forms and to the day when hatred, bigotry, and violence against all people have been eliminated. Our strength lies in our unity, empathy, and shared humanity.”

That and losing the presidency of the NYU Student Bar Association haven’t seemed to slow down Workman in the slightest, however.

Video from numerous accounts on social media purport to show her defacing the posters of missing/kidnapped Israelis — while wearing what appear to be the same garments she wore during the ABC News interview:

The only thing that one can give Workman is points for consistency.

Whereas many other students at prestigious universities were shocked that the academia-inculcated wokeness they’d gotten so far by regurgitating was suddenly being realized for the toxin that it was because it was now being used in service of murderous, rapacious terrorist thugs — and distanced themselves from it — Workman is still sticking to the same mephitic line that’s lost her a prestigious job and student-organization title.

Forever, her name will top Google results as the woman who took the side of the terrorists, who made common cause with anti-Semitic bloodlust and unregenerate violence.

No amount of empty talk about “apartheid,” “settler colonialism” and “military occupation” will make for a fig leaf broad enough to cover the shame of her statement, and no post facto apology will be able to erase her inability to see her merciless, wolfish disregard for human life at the precise moment that she should have realized just how diabolic her statements were.

To hear her talk, all this couldn’t have happened to a better person.


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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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