On the leafy campus of Columbia University, New York’s elite university, pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students face off in hostility, separated only by a narrow strip of grass. Palestinian and Israeli flags raised at the double demonstration; Students wear scarves or kippahs demonstratively. The posters say “Genocide” and “Palestine will be free”. When the two demonstrations end, the students get lost, but the confrontation remains.
Shortly afterwards, a truck passes the university building. Screens on all sides display photos and names of “Columbia’s leading anti-Semites.” Angry students surround the truck and cover the photos with Palestinian flags. They hold signs that say “Stop defaming our students.”
Then it boils inside. Hillary Clinton, former Democratic presidential candidate, teaches at the School of Public and International Affairs. In the middle of the lecture, the students pack their things and leave. The truck outside obtained the images from a supposedly secure server at the Foreign Policy Institute, they explain. The university must stop this.
The war for Gaza is also being fought on American universities, and with great severity. “Many people here are horrified by the suffering on both sides,” says Anne Nelson, who taught at the Foreign Policy Institute for many years. “Others feel attacked precisely when they hear that children should not die. The atmosphere is tense; Any comment can be misinterpreted.” Nelson adds: “I’ve never experienced anything like this here before. I had classes with students from Serbia and Croatia who spoke sensibly, but that ended.”
Over the past two days, college students have also flocked to the city: Tens of thousands of people gathered at Columbus Circle, in front of the Christmas-decorated Macy’s department store, and in front of the New York Times building on West 40th Street. , whose door was covered in spray. -painted. Police cordoned off Grand Central Station and traffic in Midtown came to a complete standstill.
Swastikas and angry mobs
The air isn’t just burning in New York. Michael Schill, president of Northwestern University in Illinois, who is Jewish, was greeted by students who shouted, “Hey, Schill, how many children did you kill today,” reminiscent of the Vietnam War. Israeli flags were burned at Tulane University in New Orleans. Joseph Massad, a Columbia politics professor and Palestinian Christian, called the October 7 attack on the Electronic Intifada website a “magnificent spectacle” and the beginning of liberation. As a result, 70 thousand students demanded his resignation.
Pro-Israel students, in particular, feel threatened. At Cornell University in upstate New York, a student threatened to rape and shoot Jewish classmates. At George Washington University, in the federal capital, the facade of the library was illuminated with “Glory to Our Martyrs”. A Jewish student center at Ohio State University was vandalized. At Cooper Union in New York, Jewish students barricaded themselves in the library as a mob banged on the door. And swastikas are repeatedly sprayed and posters of Israeli abduction victims are destroyed.
Due to such incidents, several hedge fund managers and other billionaires canceled their donations to UPenn, Columbia and Harvard, including cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder. Wall Street banks withdrew job offers when Harvard as well as Columbia students justified Hamas’ “military action” on October 7 and called Gaza an open-air prison.
But there are also supporters. More than a hundred Columbia scholars defended anti-Israel students, citing freedom of speech, including Jewish professors like Jack Halberstam. New York rabbi Joseph Potasnik then asked him if he would also defend “the Nazis or the KuKluxKlan.”
Mobilize the Christian Right
The controversy is not necessarily about Jewish students versus Arab students; Left-wing Jews are more likely to side with Palestinians. Many defenders of Israel are right-wing Christians. The trucks with the photos come from the “Accuracy in the Media” association, founded by banker Reed Irvine, who blamed the media for the lost war in Vietnam. Accuracy in Media defended the Iraq War, considers Barack Obama a Marxist and climate change a hoax.
Other right-wing supporters include organizations such as Turning Point USA, which considers itself a “student freedom movement” and maintains lists of openly left-wing professors. The association is headed by Charlie Kirk, who called former President Donald Trump the “bodyguard of Western civilization.”
Now Minouche Shafik, the president of Colombia and a native of Egypt, has to calm things down, together with Keren Yarhi-Milo, the rector of the foreign institute, an Israeli who was in the army’s intelligence service. Shafik announced an “Anti-Hate Task Force” aimed at combating anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. First, they suspended two student groups for the entire winter semester: “Students for Justice in Palestine” and “Jewish Voice for Peace” organized a “Die In” without permission, after several attempts at verbal intimidation.