“I’ll smash your skull to the floor,” a fellow student wrote on Whatsapp.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
An American Jew was forced to transfer out of a Montreal university after receiving a death threat from a fellow student, Israel National News reported Sunday.
“I’ll smash your skull on the floor…I can kill you – try me,” a Concordia undergrad wrote him in a student Whatsapp group, the media site reported, citing an unnamed news outlet that received a copy of the alleged dialogue.
The verbal attacker accused the Jewish student of supporting “genocide” in connection to Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which had been sparked by the terror organization’s massacre of 1,200 people, including women and children, last October 7.
The charge is a common one among Palestinians and their supporters, although the death rate of non-combatants to combatants is less than two to one in Gaza, an unheard-of low ratio in war according to military experts.
The attacker also commented, “So I understand that you won’t mind bombing me like Israelis don’t mind.”
He additionally charged that “you stole land from another people,” and therefore the Jewish student should be “ashamed” of his heritage, ignoring the historical fact that the Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel.
Due to the death threat, the student’s family told him that it was no longer safe for him to stay at Concordia, and the young man returned to the United States to attend a different school.
Concordia University has been the site of several antisemitic incidents since the war began.
About a month into the conflict, a campus event turned violent, and last March, Jewish students in the school’s Hillel club room were targeted by anti-Israel protestors.
In neither case were any offenders penalized by the university.
In September, Concordia student Eitan Kovac told Haaretz that the new school year had “started off tense” and that “the environment is hostile. The only difference this year is that we’re expecting it.”
“We’re living in anxiety about what the rest of the semester will look like,” he said. “There are groups like SPHR [Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights] just waiting to agitate and reignite the chaos.”
In September, a group of Jewish students filed a class-action lawsuit against the university and its president, Graham Carr, with one telling the Israeli paper that Concordia “has done nothing to ensure Jewish students’ safety.”
The plaintiffs, said the suit, “have suffered physical, psychological, and academic harm due to Graham Carr’s and Concordia’s negligence, breach of contract, and violation of the student plaintiffs’ fundamental rights.”
In response to the Haaretz report, while saying the school was unable to comment on ongoing litigation, a Concordia spokesperson defended the institution.
“We have taken many steps since last fall to ensure the safety of everyone on campus,” the statement said. These included “increased monitoring of events and demonstrations” and having on offer campus safety personnel to accompany “any members of the community who feel unsafe or vulnerable.”
“Our focus remains on reinforcing and reiterating the rules of conduct set out in the Code of Rights and Responsibilities and its enforcement, particularly around civil discourse and peaceful protest on campus,” the spokesperson added.
In November, however, amidst anti-Israel protests across Quebec campuses, thousands of students at Concordia rampaged through a main building on campus, committing acts of vandalism and chanting slogans such as “Long Live the Intifada!”
At one point, while standing outside the building, the protesters referenced the Holocaust, yelling to a small group of pro-Israel counter-demonstrators, “The final solution is coming your way, the final solution. You know what the final solution is?”
In the current case, after hearing about the threats made to the Jewish student, the university’s administration announced that it had suspended the offending student.