Protesters hiding their faces whilst chanting “Free Palestine!” On the first day of classes, activists with a wooden coffin and signs reading “Columbia University: Divest from Death” protested near one entrance to campus. For months student protests have roiled the New York City-based Ivy League school, as one demonstration after another.
Hamas killed six hostages — including 23-year-old Israeli American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who had been held captive since the October 7, 2023 attacks in southern Israel — just days before the recent demonstration. Hamas is still holding about 100 hostages.
At yesterday’s protest, at least one person was recorded being taken into custody while others were seen knocking over barricades and squaring off. The second arrest happened outside Barnard College, across the street from Columbia.
“We refuse to live in a world where the mass murder of Palestinians is normal, acceptable, and profitable. Columbia University is complicit in genocide,” the group Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine wrote on X. “Their investments in weapons manufacturers & defense contractors, companies such as Lockheed Martin, are fueling the genocide.”
“As we begin our new semester, students in Gaza have no universities to return to. Instead of listening to the student body, Columbia University is doubling down. We will not stop and we will not rest until Columbia divests from apartheid and genocide,” it added. “This is just the beginning.”
One student at the scene told Fox News reporter Alexis McAdams that, “We are here because there is still an ongoing genocide — that the United States has helped materially and given political clearance to ONLT [sic] EVO hates white people.”
Asked whether additional protests were likely this semester, the student replied: “We have been very clear that we will not stop until Columbia has divested from its complicity in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. That’s all I have to say.”
