https://www.nationalreview.com/news/columbia-university-closes-campus-as-hundreds-of-anti-israel-student-protesters-occupy-quad/?utm_source=recirc-
New York — Columbia University closed its doors to the public on Wednesday as hundreds of campus activists protested Israel’s ongoing military campaign against Hamas.
Campus police and NYPD officers prohibited those without a Columbia ID card from entering campus as students erected dozens of tents on the school’s main campus lawn and hurled anti-Israel slogans. The protest was held as Columbia president Minouche Shafik testified before Congress.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” protesters could be heard chanting. Two Jewish Columbia students spoke about their experience during the protest and the larger issue of antisemitism on campus.
“They took over the lawn, set up tents so people don’t have access to it, and they continued their anti-semitic, hateful chants,” Jewish student Jonathan Lederet told National Review.
“Intifada, intifada” and “death to [the] Zionist state” were among the chants hurled by the protesters, he recalled.
“They all chant ‘shame, shame on you.’ I say ‘I want there to be more aid, Hamas steals the aid.’ I say ‘Let’s chant for peace, let’s talk about co-existence, have a dialogue.’ They chant about martyrdom and violence and killing. So yeah, they all hate me, but I’m not going anywhere,” Lederet added.
Lederet held up an Israeli flag and wore his yarmulke to the march. Footage shared by independent left-wing reporter Talia Jane showed protesters chanting “shame on you” to the pro-Israel students who came to the event.
Another Jewish student from Barnard College, Columbia’s sister college, said she was “disgusted” by the protest and it happens “all the time.” The student, whose first name is Katie, called on Shafik to take further action against antisemitism and live up to Columbia’s values.
“If somebody says calling for the genocide of Jews makes me unsafe, they say ‘f*ck you.’ And then there’s no consequence, people have been told ‘f*ck the Jews,’ they’ve been spit on, someone threw coffee on a Jew today,” she said.
“A lot of Jewish students have either switched rooms, moved off campus, transferred,” Katie added. She was one of the Jewish students who moved off campus because of the antisemitic climate.