US President Joe Biden has condemned ongoing anti-Semitic protests at American universities as “reprehensible and dangerous.” Gaza war protestors have set up tent encampments on campuses and called for violence against Jews while praising the actions of Hamas.
During a Passover greeting the president said those calls had no place in the United States. His administration has been scrambling to defuse the rapid spread of the protests. Hundreds of arrests have been made at Columbia, Yale and NYU universities as students and other agitators set up camps, occupied buildings and ignored demands to leave.
A video shows Jewish students just outside Columbia’s campus enduring calls to “go back to Poland” where the Holocaust took place. The students are seen telling each other they’re scared and asking where the police are. A photo posted on X shows a demonstrator standing in front of pro-Israel students while holding a sign with an arrow that reads “Al-Qassam’s next targets” Al-Qassam is the military wing of Hamas.
CBN News reports a Jewish student as saying: “I was there today and it made me physically sick hearing the things they were saying and doing. So, over this Passover holiday I kind of just want to try to avoid it as best as I can for my own safety.”
A Jewish professor who was trying to take a group of pro-Israel protestors to the area of the campus occupied by the pro-Palestinian demonstrators reportedly had his badge deactivated and was denied entry to the campus while school officials looked on. “I am a professor here, I have every right to be everywhere on campus, You cannot let people who support Hamas on campus and me, a professor, not go on campus. Let me in now,” demanded Shai Davidai, assistant professor at Columbia Business School.
Rabbi Elie Buechler, director of the campus Orthodox Union-Jewish Learning Initiative, advised 290 students in a group chat to avoid the university. “The events of the past few days have made it clear that Columbia University’s Public Safety and the NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety in the face of extreme anti-Semitism and anarchy. It deeply pains me to say that I would strongly recommend you return home as soon as possible and remain home until the reality in and around campus has dramatically improved. It is not our job as Jews to ensure our own safety on campus,” he wrote.
The Ivy League school will switch to hybrid learning for the rest of the semester which will finish by the end of next week. Congresswoman Elise Stefanik and other lawmakers wrote a letter calling on the university’s president, Minouche Shafik, to resign for failing to promptly dismantle an anti-Israel encampment on campus and stop the anti-Semitic harassment.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said he believes that some of those protesting are outside agitators. “We strongly believe that is the case right now. That there are people who are here – they latch on to any protest. To see our police officers having bottles thrown at them, chairs thrown at them. People who peacefully protest an issue, they’re not throwing bottles and chairs.”
The mayor said some protestors had come to “aggravate” the situation and “to use this to cause violence in our city, and we’re going to seek them out. And we’re going to identify them. Why is everybody’s tent the same? Was there a fire sale on those tents? There’s some organising going on. There’s a well-concerted organising effort, and what’s the goal of that organising? That’s what we need to be asking ourselves. We can’t have outside agitators come in and be disruptive to our city. Someone wanted something to happen at that protest at NYU, and police officers didn’t respond to it.”
Former CNN anchor Campbell Brown posted a sobering message on social media, saying she is taking her sons to Israel, where they will “be safer and feel more welcomed” than they currently are in New York City, “where pro-Palestinian protests rage.”
Similar anti-Israel demonstrations flared at universities in California and Michigan while protestors blocked roads in Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle. Even in the conservative heartland state of Arkansas police are guarding synagogues and Jewish centres after attacks by vandals.
Photo: Lev Radin / Shutterstock.com
