“Zionists Don’t Deserve to Live” Anti-Semitism Rampant in US Universities

April 30, 2024

by: Kate Norman

Tuesday, 30 April 2024 | “Zionists, they don’t deserve to live comfortably. Zionists don’t deserve to live.”

These are the words of Khymani James, a student leader of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University, during a virtual meeting with school representatives in January that he live-streamed.

The Daily Wire posted a few highlights from the meeting on its X page.

James spoke about the weight of taking someone else’s life, but how, in certain cases, such as Hitler, the world was a better place when certain people died. He gave the example of the Haitian Revolution in which he said Haitian slaves “had to kill their masters in order to gain their independence.”

“These were masters who were white supremacists,” James added. “What is a Zionist? A white supremacist.”

Based on James’s discussion with the Columbia representative in the video—which James looked to the camera and called “a joke”—the purpose of the meeting was for James to elaborate on previous comments he had made and to determine whether the university would take punitive action.

Months later that does not appear to have happened as the Daily Wire reported last week that James “appears to still be a student at the university.”

In fact, James is one of the key organizers of the rabidly anti-Israel Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University in which students erected tents in the center of campus earlier this month a base for anti-Israel, pro-Hamas rallies.

The encampment rose in response to Columbia’s president, Minouche Safik, addressing a congressional investigative committee on anti-Semitism, the Times of Israel reported.

The committee was a continuation of hearings in December after which the Harvard and University of Pennsylvania presidents resigned, as universities across the US—particularly Ivy League universities—have been hotbeds of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel protests since Hamas’s October 7 massacre in Israel.

“Anti-Semitism has no place on our campus,” Shafik told the hearing, “and I am personally committed to doing everything I can to confront it directly.”

When asked if she hears phrases such as “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” or “long live Intifada” as anti-Semitic, she answered, “I hear them as such, some people don’t.”

However, Shafik was taken to task in the hearing about a lack of discipline for multiple Columbia professors who have praised the October 7 massacre.

The encampment was erected in response to the hearing and has since festered into a cesspool of anti-Semitic chants, signs and rhetoric.

The group infamously went so far as to form a human chain—led by Khymani James—to push pro-Israel students out of the anti-Semitic campsite.

Jewish students—and other students—have been taking their classes online rather than going to campus for fear of their safety and as instructed by the campus rabbi.

Last week, an Israeli professor at Columbia, Shai Davidai, was barred from entering the university’s main campus, where he had announced on social media that he planned to host a “peaceful sit-in” near the encampment.

He was foiled, however, as the university had deactivated his ID card, barring his entry.

“This is 1938,” Davidai wrote on a social media post, referring to when Jewish professors and students were expelled from universities in Nazi Germany.

“I have not just a civil right as a Jewish person to be on campus,” Davidai said at the entrance of the university, “I have a right as a professor employed by the university to be on campus.”

He added: “Being Jewish in public has become a political statement. It’s not a privilege, it’s a right, and they’re not allowing me that right.”

After the encampment was erected on April 17, Columbia called the police to clear them out, and more than 100 students were arrested and charged with trespassing. Regardless, the encampment has far from closed and continues to hold the university in a chokehold, with regular activities being canceled out of safety concerns—including the planned graduation ceremony for next month.

And Columbia is not the only university to have such an encampment. These anti-Israel campgrounds are springing up on university campuses across the US.

Students at Stanford University wore green Hamas headbands in support of the terrorist group that invaded Israel on October 7, killing some 1,200 people and taking some 240 hostage. Students at Princeton University were waving Hezbollah flags in support of the terrorist group in Lebanon that has been launching projectiles into northern Israel.

Students tore down the US flag from a Harvard building and replaced it with a Palestinian flag, Ynetnews reported. Despite police arresting some of the protestors at different universities, the situation is out of control and the encampments have taken over the universities. The protests at UCLA [University of California, Los Angeles] turned violent, with one Jewish student reportedly getting injured and requiring treatment.

The anti-Israel chaos is much to the glee of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who posted a video highlight reel of the chaos along with the comment in English: “See what is happening in the world. In Western countries, in England and France, and in states across the US itself, people are coming out in huge numbers to chant slogans against Israel and America. US & Israel’s reputation has been ruined. They truly have no solution.”

Posted on April 30, 2024

Source: (Bridges for Peace, April 30, 2024)

Photo Credit: عباد ديرانية/Wikimedia.org

Photo License: Wikimedia