Anti-Israel student demonstrators who marched on Columbia University's campus on Friday claimed they were sprayed with a chemical that smelled like “raw sewage and dead rats.”
Members of the suspended university groups Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace said they were approached by two unidentified men outside the Lower Library and sprayed with an unknown chemical. , it was announced that it caused headache, fatigue, and nausea.
“I started smelling this awful smell” about halfway through the protest, said Mariam Iqbal, a freshman at Barnard College.
“It's just raw sewage and dead rats,” she said. he told the New York Times.
Twenty-four students who participated in the protests were investigated in the aftermath, with 18 reporting a putrid odor, 10 reporting physical symptoms such as burning eyes, headaches and nausea, and three of them receiving medical attention. Eight people had to seek medical attention and eight reported damage to their belongings. According to the school newspaper.
Later, students attending Friday's unsanctioned protest said they saw two men approach a group of protesters and then flee the scene as the odor spread.
Maia, a Barnard College senior who was identified only by her first name, said she saw two people whose faces were “almost completely covered” by keffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian headscarf.
Their keffiyehs stood out to her because they seemed a little different in color and pattern than the black-and-white keffiyehs sold by student organizations, she said.
“I noticed that they were coming behind different people on the edges of the protests. [they] I stood there for about a second,” she told the Columbia Spectator.
Eventually, Maia said he got close enough to hear the spray and smell it.
“When they were closest to me, I heard a small splash behind someone who was close to me.”
She then noticed the two men leave and “then it started to smell really bad,” she said.
Leila Saliba, 24, a Palestinian-American graduate student at Columbia University's School of Social Work, said the two looked as if they wanted to confront the protesters, whom she called “terrorists.”
She said she appeared “particularly aggressive” toward students holding signs that read “Jews for a ceasefire” and called them “self-hating Jews.”
Saliba later Share suspect photo onlineit shows a man wearing an orange puffy jacket and sunglasses, and a man dressed in black wearing an army green Israeli flag hat.
She also said she began to feel fatigued, resulting in headaches and nausea, which led to her being admitted to an urgent care facility.
There, doctors diagnosed her with “hazardous chemical exposure” and she said she was told she would have to miss “several days” of classes due to “severe pain,” according to the Spectator.
She said her symptoms continued on Monday, and the odor remained on her clothes and hair even after taking nearly a dozen showers.
Meanwhile, Iqbal said he reported the incident to the university's public security department on Sunday and showed officials the jacket he wore during the protest as evidence.
But after smelling the jacket, Iqbal said he felt sick again and had to be treated for nausea at a local hospital.
Students for Palestinian Justice — one of the student groups the university banned from campus in November — claimed The spray contained Skunk, a herd control chemical developed by the Israeli military, and they claimed, without providing any evidence, that the perpetrators were members of the Israel Defense Forces.
The Post was unable to verify those claims.
On Monday, Interim President Dennis A. Mitchell sent an email to all students, faculty and staff at Columbia and Barnard Colleges, saying university officials “received additional information Sunday night.”
“As a result, the alleged perpetrators identified by the university were immediately removed from campus,” while police are investigating “an incident that appears to have been a serious crime, possibly a hate crime.”
The day before, the Ivy League Public Safety Bureau announced “The New York City Police Department is taking a lead role and is actively cooperating with local and federal authorities in this investigation.”
However, so far no arrests have been made and the investigation is ongoing, police said.
It remains unclear how many people were barred from campus and whether they were students at the school. It is unclear what substance was sprayed or what led to the incident.
However, a university spokesperson told the Post, “Friday's event was unsanctioned and is part of university policy in place to ensure sufficient personnel are on site to protect the safety of the community.” and violated procedures.”
University representatives reportedly handed out leaflets to demonstrators chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” demanding an end to the “disruption,” and saying, “The president's decision for the remainder of the semester He reportedly threatened to impose interim sanctions, including suspension from the school. ” said the audience.
