Student activists have been calling for universities to "divest from genocide".
Colleges should not be using students' tuition money to invest in companies supporting Israel's war in Gaza.
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| (Pro-Palestinian protests on Columbia’s campus stretched into their second week on Monday. Photo by Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition). |
I Am a Jewish Student at Columbia. Don’t Believe What You’re Being Told About ‘Campus Antisemitism’
Smears from the press and pro-Israel influencers are a dangerous distraction from real threats to our safety.
“Reprehensible and dangerous.” “Terrorist sympathizers.” “It’s not 1938 Berlin. It’s 2024, Columbia University, NYC.”
The White House, Congressional Republicans, and cable news talking heads would have you believe that the Columbia University campus has devolved into a hotbed of antisemitic violence – but the reality on the ground is very different. As a Jewish student at Columbia, it depresses me that I have to correct the record and explain what the real risk to our safety looks like. I still can't quite believe how the events on campus over the past few days have been so cynically and hysterically misrepresented by the media and by our elected representatives.
Last week, the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition, representing more than 100 student organizations, including Jewish groups, organized the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, a peaceful campus protest in solidarity with Palestine. CUAD was reactivated after the university suspended Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace in the fall. On Wednesday morning, hundreds of students camped out on Columbia’s South Lawn. They vowed to stay put until the university divests from companies that profit from their ties to Israel. Protesters prayed, chanted, ate pizza, and condemned the university’s complicity in Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Though counter-protesters waved Israeli flags near the encampment, the campus remained largely calm from my vantage point.
Columbia responded by imposing a miniature police state. Just over a day after the encampment was formed, university President Minouche Shafik asked and authorized the New York Police Department to clear the lawn and load 108 students – including a number of Jewish students – onto Department of Corrections buses to be held at NYPD headquarters at 1 Police Plaza. One Jewish student told me that she and her fellow protesters were restrained in zip-tie handcuffs for eight hours and held in cells where they shared a toilet without privacy. The NYPD chief of patrol John Chell later told the Columbia Spectator that “the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.”
Since then, dozens of undergraduates have been locked out of their dorms without notice. Barnard College, an affiliate of Columbia, notably gave students just 15 minutes to retrieve their belongings after returning from lockup and finding themselves evicted. Suspended students cannot return to campus and are struggling to access food or medical care. Students who keep Shabbat, and do not use electronics on the Sabbath, were forced to rely on technology in order to secure food and emergency housing. This crackdown was the most violence inflicted on our student body in decades. I implore you, as our Jewish Voice for Peace chapter does, to consider whether arresting Jewish students keeps us and Columbia safe.
Smears from the press and pro-Israel influencers, who have levied charges of antisemitism and violence against Jewish students, are a dangerous distraction from real threats to our safety.... READ MORE https://zeteo.com/p/i-am-a-jewish-student-at-columbia[AS
ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO
READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP
SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and
conversations) THAT EMPOWER
DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE &
PEACE... and hopefully
Palestine]
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