A DeKalb County Superior Court judge is facing calls to resign after a social media post in which she said it is “hard to believe” there are any innocent civilians in Gaza.
Stacey Hydrick, who also chairs the investigative panel for Georgia’s judicial watchdog agency, made the comment last week in a now-deleted Facebook post, according to the Georgia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
The post included photos of Israeli mother Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, whose remains were returned to Israel last week. Bibas, her husband and their children were abducted from their home in the Nir Oz kibbutz during the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023.
In the post, Hydrick wrote she is “absolutely broken” by the deaths of Bibas and her children.
“If anyone has ‘no issues’ with Hamas, believes there are innocent civilians in Gaza, or thinks Oct. 7th was about land, resistance or somehow justified in any way, you MUST watch this footage and hear with your own ears how the Jihadists, AND the people of Gaza, were celebrating and gloating about their brutal murder of Jews,” she wrote in the post, according to screenshots shared by the Muslim advocacy group.
In a response to one comment, Hydrick appeared to encourage a follower to watch footage from Oct. 7.
“Then I will be happy to talk to you about the innocent civilians,” the judge wrote. “Hard to believe there are any after watching what I saw.”
On Monday, CAIR-Georgia released a statement condemning Hydrick’s remarks, which it said “demonstrate a clear bias against Palestinians and Muslims” and undermine public trust in the impartiality of the judiciary.
The organization also called for her resignation from the state’s Judicial Qualifications Commission, and said that “such extreme bias” renders Hydrick unfit to serve as a judge or an adjunct professor at Emory University.
In a statement, Hydrick said she posted online after watching “horrific video footage” from the Oct. 7 attack.
“Judges are human beings. We see and hear things that cause us to feel emotion and to speak out,” Hydrick said. “I am no different.”
She said she remains committed to reflection and recognizing how her own words “may be received by those who have a different perspective than my own.”
“I will continue to conduct myself in accordance with Rules of Judicial Conduct that govern recusal and will disqualify myself in any case where my impartiality can reasonably be questioned,” she said, “or in any case where a party feels that based on my comments, I cannot be fair and impartial.”
Hydrick, a former state court judge, was appointed to the DeKalb Superior Court by Gov. Brian Kemp in 2019.
CAIR said that during the online exchange, the judge “doubled-down on her anti-Palestinian opinions” while engaging with commenters, including two Palestinian lawyers from Georgia who have had relatives killed in Gaza.
The organization has called on Hydrick to issue a public apology for “her hateful anti-Palestinian remarks.”
The JQC’s director, Courtney Veal, said the investigative panel was aware of Hydrick’s post and comments and “will follow the processes set forth in the JQC’s rules to see that any related complaints are properly considered.”
While a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas remains in place, Gaza’s health ministry says at least 46,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed by Israel over the past 15-plus months.
Israel’s offensive followed the Oct. 7 attack in which Hamas killed nearly 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. The attack drew worldwide condemnation.
Israel’s conduct in Gaza has also been widely criticized, and some human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have accused the country of committing genocide. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump this month proposed that the U.S. take “ownership” of the largely destroyed Gaza Strip and resettle nearly 2 million Palestinians in surrounding nations.
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