The anti-Israel tent encampment at Columbia University is led by a group of controversial student leaders, some of whom have expressed solidarity with Hamas and said “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” There is.
These students held the campus hostage, with dozens of tents spread out on the Morningside Heights lawn and hundreds of protesters, to negotiate directly with the Ivy League university’s leaders. ing.
One of the most prominent figures in the protest camp was Kaimani JamesA spokesperson for Columbia United Apartheid Divest calls for the university to divest from companies that do business with the Israeli military, including a wide range of Fortune 500 companies.
James, who describes himself as queer and uses they and they pronouns, went viral this week after a video resurfaced of him saying “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”
James issued a half-hearted apology but placed the blame for the controversy on “far-right agitators.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) was seen on Wednesday when she visited campus with the daughter of suspended Barnard College student Isra Hirsi. shaking hands with james.
Following protests and complaints that Jewish students cannot safely attend classes despite paying $90,000 a year, the university announced it would allow students to attend online for the remainder of their academic year.
They are also the students who waved the white flag to university officials in an attempt to break up the camp. Late Thursday, they withdrew a deadline they had sought to meet, asking protesters to leave by Friday morning.
By Friday afternoon, leaders were shouting victory. “At the moment, we are not actually negotiating the status of the encampment,” Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian graduate student who is one of the demonstrators’ lead negotiators, told the Post Friday afternoon.
Instead, negotiations began with Colombia addressing its demand for a sale, they said.
Khalil – earned his bachelor’s degree in Beirut, Lebanon – He told the Columbia Daily Spectator. He said he has not participated in any protests in the past week and a half because he is worried about losing his student visa to stay in the United States.
Mr. Khalil previously served as political attaché for UNRWA, the United Nations agency assisting Palestinian refugees, from June 2023 to November 2023. According to LinkedIn.
UNRWA lost hundreds of millions of dollars in funding earlier this year and came under fire after Israeli documents implicated agency personnel in the October 7 terrorist attacks.
Early this week, Independent review group announced The nine-week investigation found a lack of significant evidence that the group had legitimate ties to Hamas, it said.
Colombian apartheid divest groups and their leaders had been disciplined for extremist rhetoric even before setting up tent camps. In March, organizers hosted an event titled “Resistance 101,” in which one speaker claimed that “there is nothing wrong with being a Hamas fighter.”
Three students were suspended for the event, including 27-year-old graduate student Aidan Parisi and 21-year-old fourth-year student Mariam Alwan.
Although they are technically barred from campus, Parisi has since shared multiple social media updates and hateful anti-Israel messages from the camp.
“Long live the insurrection,” Parisi wrote in an Instagram post about the initial suspension.
“Good night, Israel.” Parisi wrote to X last week:.
Alwan, an organizer with Students for Justice in Palestine, said: proudly shared a photo of herself He was arrested by the NYPD in a mass arrest last week.
“@ColumbiaUniversity may have turned into a fascist police state, but that can’t stop us from celebrating,” Alwan captioned the post.
She was issued a summons, police officials said.
Alwan was also suspended, presumably for refusing to leave the first tent camp. shared a smiling photo With Hirsi when Omar’s daughter returned to campus.
Hirschi was one of at least three Barnard College students suspended last week for participating in tent protests.
Maryam Iqbal, another Barnard College student and SJP member, has an inverted red triangle on her X profile, a symbol associated with support for Hamas and the assassination of Israeli soldiers.
Iqbal’s biography says, “Victory over the Intifada.”
Iqbal recently reposted a message comparing British Jewish women to “white slave owners”. Because she expressed her concern for her safety.
She also reshared a post by X that belittled the “ways in which the American left” continues to “complain.” [the Houthis] And the revolutionary groups supporting Palestinian national liberation are not ideologically “progressive.” ”
Meanwhile, the tent camps continue with no end in sight, and there is little sign that Colombian authorities intend to call in the NYPD again to remove protesters from campus.
“The university understood that we cannot operate based on timelines. We cannot operate under time pressure,” Khalil said.
