Commentary
The militant anti-Israel protests in and around Columbia University are fueling violent and
anti-Semitic rhetoric, which protesters sometimes put into action, including
assaults on a pro-Israel activist and Jewish student,
spitting at a Jewish student, and the theft of an Israeli flag.
The activists took inspiration from protests at Columbia in 1968 that developed over time into America’s most deadly left-wing terror organization, the Weathermen.
The Weathermen are not the only terrorists from whom the protesters take inspiration. As
Bari Weiss notes, the pro-Palestinian activists at Columbia are people who openly celebrate “Hamas and physically intimidating identifiably Jewish students” who come near.
The threat of violence is so strong that on April 21, a
rabbi associated with Columbia called on Jewish students to return home until order is restored. Columbia’s Hillel, a campus Jewish organization, called on the university and city to ensure student safety, including on public streets around the campus that students must use to travel between classes, dorms, and off-campus housing.
“Columbia University and the City of New York must do more to protect students,” said the Hillel statement. “We call on the University Administration to act immediately in restoring calm to campus. The City must ensure that students can walk up and down Broadway and Amsterdam without fear of harassment.”
The university
responded by saying that students are now allowed to attend class virtually. However, that the university has let the situation devolve to this point—arguably due to a failure in its commitment to truth and teaching in favor of relativism and far-left ideology that denies or elides historical anti-Semitism—is a problem it should fix immediately.
The university is not the only actor at fault. Student protesters have rules against drinking and taking drugs at their encampments. After the violence, they finally issued a
statement prioritizing “the safety of all,” including “not antagonizing counter protestors or escalating situations unnecessarily.” However, there is little evidence of explicit commitment to nonviolence. Students should know better than to engage in mass protests on incendiary issues without more nonviolence training for participants. That they encourage outsiders without this training is unconscionable.
Organizers should immediately and publicly confirm that they follow the example of Martin Luther King Jr. rather than carrying violent messages such as “by any means necessary” at the head of large marches. In the context of antisemitic violence on the scale of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre or Iran’s April 14 attack against Israel with over
300 missiles and drones, such messaging is self-defeating and ultimately distracts from the protest’s aim of a ceasefire.
Large groups of protesters outside the gates carried prominent banners for “revolution” at the head of at least a hundred marchers. Many were likely from other area protest groups and universities, including New York University (NYU) and City University of New York (CUNY).
The most visible participant at the Columbia protest has the communist hammer and sickle symbol prominently displayed on her X (Twitter) account. She has over 180,000 followers and speaks of her “
ancestors from 1968.” Columbia activists at that time were
Cuban-trained socialists who occupied buildings, leading to 700 arrests, 200 injuries, the violence at the Democratic National Convention in 1969, and 1970s communist terrorism by the Weathermen, who sought to overthrow the U.S. government through bombings, street fighting, and beating teachers and professors.
In the context of over
100 arrests on April 18 at Columbia University, about 50 outside protesters chanted, “Long live the intifada,” literally translated as “shaking off” or “uprising,” but mostly applied to terrorism against Israel. Another common slogan was “from the river to the sea,” meaning an end to the Jewish state of Israel, which de facto means violently kicking Jewish people from their homeland.
Some protesters went further. One was caught on camera yelling, “We are Hamas,” and another said, “Long live Hamas.” One reportedly
threatened to commit the Oct. 7 massacre “10,000 more times” to some Jewish students on campus.
Given the protest’s widespread violent rhetoric and open admiration for activism from 1968, the university and law enforcement should be concerned that violence in the Middle East will be imported to the United States in the form of new domestic terror organizations. A small percentage of participants in U.S. protests that use such rhetoric—perhaps up to 10 percent—will consider putting their words into action through small-scale violence, property destruction, or worse.
The lack of emphasis on nonviolence can be seen in one immediate result: violence between protesters and counterprotesters. In one off-campus interaction, an anti-Hamas protester taunted pro-Palestinian protesters, telling them they had no idea what was going on in the Middle East. One of the protesters, wearing a keffiyeh associated with the pro-Palestinian cause, appears to violently push the heckler, who later shows himself bleeding and accuses another man, who also wore a keffiyeh, of hitting him. The same video shows a Jewish student being called a “white devil” and another student derisively called a “white boy” by protesters. There is very little willingness shown by the protesters to engage with these individuals when they appear to seek constructive conversations.
Protest organizers should denounce such obstinate racism and crude forms of violence. Their failure to more strongly do so and to comply with reasonable university rules meant to give all sides a voice is why the protests have gotten out of control and required arrests.
Rule-breaking in a democracy and the risk of “rhetoric that amounts to harassment and discrimination” prompted Columbia’s president, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, to order the arrests in the first place. She was right to do so before the violence got even worse.
All students must be made to understand that the university is a place for learning and contemplation, not for militancy, racism, and violence. Many protesters at Columbia are already talking like terrorists. This must end, including through better education, before they put words into action.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
