An outspoken anti-Israel agitator who rose to prominence at Columbia University is now drawing a taxpayer-funded paycheck as a New York City social worker, even as she publicly wishes for Zionists to burn in hell.
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According to the Washington Free Beacon, Zainab Khan, a graduate of Columbias School of Social Work and a former leader in the radical Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition, unleashed a tirade on Instagram over the weekend targeting anyone who expresses sympathy for Israel. In case there was ever any doubt before: if u ever make an excuse or express sympathy for isr[ael], I rlly dont care what happens to u!! Like at all! I wish for u whatever it is u wish for Gaza plz take that in the worst possible way, she wrote on Sunday, adding, Every zio and every sympathizer can burn in hell.
Khan deleted her Instagram account shortly after the outlet contacted her about the posts, and she ignored a request for comment. The move to erase her online footprint extended to her LinkedIn profile, which had documented her rapid ascent from campus radical to public employee.
Her now-scrubbed LinkedIn page showed that she began working in August for NYC Health + Hospitals, the citys sprawling public health system funded by taxpayers. In that role, she reportedly provides assistance and counseling to clients and their families who are dealing with social, emotional and environmental problems, a caseload that almost certainly includes Jewish New Yorkers and self-identified Zionists, given that the metropolitan area is home to the largest Jewish population in the United States.
NYC Health + Hospitals declined to respond to questions about whether Khans rhetoric violates any professional standards or internal policies. The silence from city officials raises concerns about whether New Yorks progressive bureaucracy is prepared to confront open bigotry when it is directed at Jews and supporters of Israel.
Khans comments mirror a broader surge of anti-Israel agitation on the American left, particularly in elite academic circles, as activists denounce joint U.S.-Israel military action against Iran. After reports that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had been killed in recent strikes, CUAD posted death to America in Persian on X, underscoring the movements hostility not only to Israel but to the United States itself.
As a Columbia graduate student, Khan became a prominent face of that movement, boasting about the first protest we had after Hamass Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, which took place just five days after the terror onslaught. That demonstration formed part of a nationwide day of resistance orchestrated by National Students for Justice in Palestine, which hailed the Hamas atrocities as a historic win for the Palestinian resistance.
Khan later claimed she was assisting with security at a January 2024 CUAD-led protest when she and other activists were allegedly attacked with a chemical spray that she said caused long-term vaginal bleeding. Subsequent reporting revealed the substance was actually Liquid Ass, a foul-smelling novelty fart spray available on Amazon for $26.11, casting doubt on the apocalyptic narrative pushed by campus radicals and their allies.
Roughly two months after that episode, Khan sat down with longtime anti-Israel agitator Linda Sarsour, conducting an interview that doubled as a fundraising and organizing pitch for pro-Palestinian groups. Sarsour, who has compared Zionism to white supremacy in America and insisted that One cannot be a feminist and a Zionist at the same time, urged activists to donate to anti-Israel organizations and intensify protests against the Jewish state.
Sarsour has long questioned Israels right to exist and helped lead the 2017 Womens March, where her embrace of notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan and convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh ignited national controversy. She has also championed the global boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, framing it as a moral imperative for the American left.
Khan conducted that interview while working part-time for the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, an anti-Israel advocacy group heavily funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros. Her activism and professional trajectory thus developed in tandem, blending radical politics with positions in progressive nonprofit and public-sector institutions.
By the time she graduated from Columbias School of Social Work in May 2024, Khan had fully embraced her role as a movement figurehead, waving a Palestinian flag emblazoned with Divest Now as she crossed the commencement stage. The spectacle highlighted how elite universities have become staging grounds for ideological campaigns that often veer into open hostility toward Israel and its supporters.
Her activism did not end with her diploma. After Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a CUAD leader who helped organize the illegal encampments that paralyzed Columbias campus, in March 2025, Khan rushed to his defense in the media.
Khalil, she told CNN, was simply urging Columbia to stop using the student endowment to invest in different Israeli weapons manufacturing companies and basically remove any sort of support from Israel. That framing glossed over the encampments lawlessness and the broader pattern of campus intimidation directed at Jewish students and faculty.
Khans hostility toward Israel predates her time at Columbia, reflecting a longer ideological commitment rather than a passing campus fad. In 2019, she authored an op-ed demanding an end to a U.S.-Israeli law enforcement exchange program, claiming that Israeli policing methods promote state violence and control and linking them to racial profiling, surveillance, and police brutality in the United States.
Her rise has been cheered on by fellow activists, including Columbia classmate Aidan Parisi, who congratulated her on LinkedIn when she announced her job at NYC Health + Hospitals. Parisi, the son of longtime State Department official Elizabeth Daugharty, emerged as a leader of the illegal encampment that occupied Columbias campus for weeks in April 2024.
Parisi was suspended for his role in a CUAD event that featured a representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, and a figure from Samidoun, an Israeli-designated terrorist group and PFLP fundraising arm labeled a sham charity by the Treasury Departments Office for Foreign Assets Control. He was later among 22 student activists expelled for storming and occupying Hamilton Hall, a building takeover that evoked the campus radicalism of the 1960s but with a distinctly anti-Israel edge.
A New York Supreme Court judge has since ordered Columbia to reverse those disciplinary actions, ruling that the university improperly relied on sealed arrest records, potentially paving the way for Parisis return to campus. The episode, like Khans seamless transition from campus radical to city social worker, underscores a troubling reality: in todays progressive institutions, open contempt for Israeland, by extension, for many American Jewsoften carries few consequences and may even coexist comfortably with positions of public trust.
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