Columbia U Jewish students faced violent assaults from Hamas supporters

These are not accidents.

By Daniel Greenfield, Frontpage Magazine

Earlier this year, three Columbia University deans sat during a panel on the experiences of Jewish students with campus antisemitism and texted mocking messages to each other.

Their interactions become all the more vile in light of the newly released report about the experiences of Jewish students at Columbia.

Here are some samples.

One student who had moved into her dorm room in September, told us she placed a mezuzah on her doorway as required by ritual law, as traditional Jews have done for centuries.

In October, people began banging on her door at all hours of the night, demanding she explain Israel’s actions. She was forced to move out of the dorm.

Jewish students heard from one of the protesters right outside Columbia’s gates, “October seventh [2024] is going to be every day for you.” S

tudents reported being told “Kill your fucking self. And I’ll fucking kill you.”

Visibly observant students, like ones who wear traditional head coverings, have been frequently met with extreme hostility.

“On campus, my friends have been spit on, been called like terrible, terrible names, a very close friend of mine was called, a lover of genocide and then a lover of baby killing. This was only a couple of days after October seventh.”

A student told us she had been chased off campus with her brother one night.

Students have reported having necklaces ripped off their necks and being pinned against walls, while walking back to their dorms on Friday afternoon and when they were on their way to synagogue.

There were also multiple reports of visibly Jewish individuals simply walking past 116th Street who have been followed, stalked, and subjected to ethnic slurs and hateful statements, like “go back to Poland” and “I hope you guys suffer.”

A student told us that “Since October, most people on campus have felt apprehension. Then this Thursday we were walking onto campus. We weren’t wearing any symbols of Judaism. We were shouted at, ‘We don’t want no Zionists here.’ They were wearing keffiyehs and shoving us. No one is doing anything.…

One student explained that they were hesitant to attend Shabbat dinner lest their peers assume that they are Zionists who may “believe in genocide.”

The founder of an LGBTQ+ group sought to exclude Zionists from the group’s events in a flier that read “It’s FREE PALESTINE over here. Zionists aren’t invited.”

The founder defended this stance in an email that evinced the slippage between anti-Zionism and antisemitism:

“white Jewish people are today and always have been the oppressors of all brown people,” and “the Holocaust wasn’t special.”

One Israeli student reported that when she went to health services in July, no one came in to see her and she overheard a discussion between two healthcare professionals in another room in which one said they would not treat her because she was Israeli.

The first thing that I would like to bring up is student organizations hosting “Vigils,” labeled as “Glory to our Martyrs.”

Some of the things said during these events are directly linked to Hamas verbiage, and I do not believe these are actual vigils.

That language is not reflective of a vigil and it is violent. It feels like the promotion of death and hate.”

Students told us about chants such as, “Al-Qassam you make us proud, kill another soldier now,” “Yes Hamas, we love you, we support your rockets too,” or “We say justice you say how, burn Tel Aviv to the ground.”

There’s been very little discussion about this.

Leftist political groups and the media have colluded to turn the Hamas supporters into the victims after they got arrested when their harassment went too far. Columbia University leaders chose to publicly dismiss and privately sneer at Jewish students.

These are not accidents.

We are living in a country where two-tier justice and moral systems are becoming the norm. And that means the Left and its political allies are allowed to do anything that they want.

AntisemitismColumbia Universitypro-Palestinian