President Joe Biden marked the Passover holiday by condemning antisemitism on college campuses amid the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University that have reverberated across the nation. “In recent days, we’ve seen harassment and calls for violence against Jews,” Biden said in a statement Sunday. “This blatant antisemitism is reprehensible and dangerous—and it has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country.”
“While every American has the right to peaceful protest,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates echoed in a separate statement, “calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly antisemitic, unconscionable, and dangerous.”
Their condemnations came following reports of harassment over the weekend at Columbia, where pro-Palestinian students erected an encampment in protest of the school’s financial connection to companies that support or operate in Israel. The language used by some protesters appeared antisemitic in certain instances, including when a demonstrator apparently yelled at Jewish students that the “7th of October is going to be every day for you”—a reference to Hamas’s attack on Israel that ignited the war in Gaza. In response, Rabbi Elie Buechler, the director of the Orthodox Jewish group on campus, encouraged Jewish students on Sunday to “return home as soon as possible and remain home until the reality in and around campus has dramatically improved.” (For its part, Columbia Hillel—another Jewish student organization—pushed back on Buechler’s warning, though it argued that the school should “do more to ensure the safety of our students.”)
Much of the controversy has centered on Columbia president Minouche Shafik, who has been criticized over her handling of the encampment, which she cleared out last week by authorizing the New York police to arrest over a hundred student protesters. On Sunday, Shafik said that classes would be conducted remotely to “deescalate the rancor.” “Our bonds as a community have been severely tested in ways that will take a great deal of time and effort to reaffirm,” the university president wrote over the weekend, after testifying on Capitol Hill about her efforts to combat antisemitism on campus. “We need a reset.”
As the school conflict unfolds, US lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have not been loath to weigh in. “What’s happening at Columbia is outrageous and un-American,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement. “No student of any race or religion should have to leave campus because it’s become too dangerous.” Democrat Jared Moskowitz said Sunday he would come to campus to “walk with the Jewish students,” writing: “If the University won’t protect them, Congress will!”
The turmoil has not been specific to Columbia. On Monday, hundreds at Yale University organized a demonstration against their university’s ties to Israel, with dozens of arrests reported in the first hours of the protest, according to the Yale Daily News. Similar pro-Palestinian protests have also emerged at the University of Michigan, NYU, Emerson College, MIT, and Tufts.
All of this student organizing is just the latest flashpoint over the war in Gaza, which has dragged on for seven months and brought about the deaths of over 34,000 Palestinians. Biden has called on Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to exercise restraint, limit civilian casualties, and allow more aid into Gaza. But Bibi has repeatedly defied Biden’s warnings, and the president has mostly declined to change US policy—continuing, instead, to provide unconditional military aid to Israel. That’s led to increased aggravation among prominent Democrats “who are frustrated with the failure of the Biden administration to apply leverage,” as Oregon senator Jeff Merkley recently told The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof.
But that frustration has seemed even more intense among younger Americans, who have registered their disapproval of Biden’s approach to Israel in demonstrations and primary protest votes—and could pose a major threat to his reelection prospects. “We demand our voices be heard against the mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza,” organizers of the Columbia protest said in a statement Sunday, condemning “any form of hate or bigotry” and distancing themselves from the “inflammatory individuals” who have engaged in acts of antisemitism. “We will remain until moved by force or Columbia concedes to our demands.”
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