A graduate student worker at New York University (NYU) is being investigated by the administration for the alleged “vandalism” of an Israeli mail services bag.

Items shipped to the library from an Israeli vendor were packed in an Israeli postal bag.

The bag was disposed of and left in a recycling bin in July. A discarded Israeli postal service bag sits in a recycling bin. Fuck is written above the word Israel, and Free Palestine is written on the top in red marker.

Naye Idriss, who was one of three Arabic language translation workers at the Bobst Library in the New York college, saw the discarded mail bag that had been sitting in the bin for days, said Dylan Saba, staff attorney at the civil rights group Palestine Legal.

Saba told The Electronic Intifada that Idriss “picked up a pen and wrote ‘fuck’ over the word ‘Israel,’ and then maybe the next day, she wrote ‘Free Palestine’ on it.”

The university is now charging Idriss with writing “potentially anti-Semitic words” on the discarded bag – even though nothing she wrote expressed any anti-Jewish bigotry whatsoever.

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As a member of the union, she has rights to have a union representative present in any workplace disciplinary proceeding in which a punishment is in dispute or potentially applicable, Saba explained.

Along with her union representatives, Idriss warned the university that NYU would be violating her right to representation.

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