by Parrish Alford on American Family News
Columbia, the private Ivy League school, signaled Monday it has surrendered to anti-Jewish protesters when it announced classes have been canceled for the spring semester.
The change was announced in an email to students and faculty Monday night, The New York Post reported.
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“Safety is our highest priority as we strive to support our students’ learning and all the required academic operations,” Provost Angela Olinto wrote. “It’s vital that teaching and learning continue during this time.”
The reference to “safety” might be telling since Jews make up almost 23% of 6,668 students at Columbia, according to Hillel International.
That announcement comes after New York police arrested more than 100 protesters five days ago, a move encouraged by university President Minouche Shafik.
Images of protests at Yale, in New Haven, Conn., as well as Columbia’s New York campus have been aired by Fox News, which notes that “agitators” are greatly involved.
Columbia has willingly failed to protect its Jewish students, Rabbi Yaakov Menken said on Washington Watch Monday.
“Are they doing enough? The answer is obviously a resounding no,” he told show host Joseph Backholm.
“Antisemitism is always about finding a facade, a pretense, and then moving on to their end goal, which has always been ethnic cleansing and genocide,” he warned. “That is exactly what we’re seeing happen.”
Columbia had ‘clear choice’
After the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel, many U.S. college campuses erupted with pro-Palestinian protests after Israeli Defense Forces entered Gaza and went on the offensive.
What the public saw in past weeks and months was calls for a cease-fire, pleas for humanitarian aid, and claims Israel is committing genocide. Even “river to the sea” chants, which call for eliminating Israel, were explained away as innocent protest songs.
Those protests were never really anti-Israel protests, Menken now insists, but anti-Jewish hatred masked as support for Palestinian civilians.
“They were always anti-Semitic protests that glorify terrorism, that glorify atrocities, actual beheading of babies and rapes and holding hostages,” the rabbi said. “These are not decent human beings.”
Columbia was confronted with a “clear choice” between “anti-Semitic barbarians” or its Jewish students and professors, Menken said, and it chose the barbarians.
Robert Kraft, owner of the NFL’s New England Patriots, on Monday announced he would no longer consider contributing to Columbia University “until corrective and decisive action is taken.”
Professor booted for his ‘safety’
Menken said the move to virtual learning at Columbia came in response to the campus rabbi who urged Jewish students to stay home for their own safety.
Jews are being “ethnically cleansed” from Columbia under the guise of safety, Menken said, and it’s happening with the blessing of the administration.
Shai Davidi, a Jewish professor at Columbia Business School, used his position to fight for Jewish students only to learn he was not welcomed either. At the school entrance, Davidi learned Monday his I.D. badge had been deactivated to keep him off campus.
Retelling the story, Menken said Davidi had vowed to show up Monday morning with fellow Jews to confront the anti-Semitic protesters. Instead of protecting Davidi and other Jews, the university kept them out.
Menken compared the campus demonstrations to the rise of Nazi power in Germany.
“We’re watching it happen at Columbia. We’re watching it happen at Yale, Harvard, Penn, MIT, Princeton. It’s the most elite places because those are the places where (students) have to compete with Jews,” he said.
Menken says the campus unrest playing out on elite campuses in America isn’t solely student-driven. A number of the protesters are simply following others in the cause of the moment. Others are the grown-ups of campus unrest from decades ago.
“These folks who were students then with their long haircuts and bandanas are now tenured professors. In some cases, even deans of students,” the rabbi observed. “At a certain point, the takeover (of campus) becomes top-down. The Columbia administration has clearly chosen the anti-Semitic barbarians over the Jews. They had to choose to deactivate the access card of a Jewish professor.”
Menken: Christians are targets, too
The core of the discontent deals with social values, and the hate is not Jew-exclusive, Menken said.
“You look around the world at countries where Christians are experiencing the worst persecution. These are countries that already have no Jews,” Menken said. “Places like Iraq, Syria, they get rid of the Jews then they turn on the Christians. Egypt, same story.
“So, you’re watching this happen on campus. These so-called Palestinian protesters who are supposed to be about politics, or maybe they just want to target Jews, well, why are they disturbing Christmas tree lightings and the Easter vigil in St. Patrick’s Cathedral?” he said. “They’re not interested just in Jews, much less Israel. They’re interested in attacking America, its core values, and the values of the founding fathers that they got from the Bible.”
Originally published in American Family News
Photo Credit: SWinxy on Wikimedia Commons