Columbia University Rabbi Urges Jewish Students To Stay Home for Their Safety as School Braces for More Anti-Israel Protests

Columbia University is preparing for more anti-Israel protests on the eve of Passover, with one Jewish professor asking to march through campus to the protest with a police escort and one rabbi warning his fellow Jews to stay off campus until the protests have died down. On Monday, a Columbia Business School professor, Shai Davidai, says he plans to walk on campus and sit among the anti-Israel protesters. He is asking the university leadership to provide a police escort for him because he has been vocal online about the antisemitic protests and the right of Israel to defend itself. “I am going to be on campus Monday morning and I am requesting [a] police escort,” Mr. Davidai says on X. “Police escort for simply going to my own place of work.”“Last I checked, I am still a professor at Columbia University,” he wrote in a letter to university leadership, which he shared online. “I plan to go tomorrow, Monday morning, and sit peacefully right in the center of the illegal encampment that you have allowed the pro-Hamas mob to establish in the middle of campus.”“I will be joined with several Jewish and Israeli students, faculty, and staff. I am requesting approval to have a police escort of at least 10 cops with me. … We will be coming. I am an employee and they are your students. You have a responsibility to protect our physical safety,” he writes. Mr. Davidai wrote the email Sunday morning, just hours after a raucous Saturday night on the Ivy League campus. In one video posted online, pro-Israel students waving American and Israeli flags are singing peacefully. Standing right in front of them is an individual whose face is concealed by a keffiyeh, holding a sign that says “Al-Qassam’s Next Target,” with an arrow pointing at the flag holders. The Al-Qassam Brigades are the military wing of Hamas.Other videos posted online showed the protesters calling for violence against Jews and Israel, chanting “We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground,” “Al-Qassam, you make us proud, take another soldier out” and “Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets too.”The encampment on Columbia’s main campus has lasted for days. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s daughter was suspended from Barnard College because of her involvement in the protest and her refusal to leave the area. The New York City police department was eventually called in to disperse the encampment, though students continue to protest on the green. It has gotten so bad on campus for Jewish students that one rabbi is calling for his fellow Jews to leave Columbia until the protests have died down. In a message shared with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Rabbi Elie Buechler “strongly” urges Jewish students to take a break from the school. “What we are witnessing in and around campus is terrible and tragic. The events of the last few days, especially last night, have made it clear that Columbia University’s Public Safety and the NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy,” Rabbi Buechler writes to his students. “It deeply pains me to say that I would strongly recommend you return home as soon as possible and remain home until the reality in and around campus has dramatically improved,” he continues. He ends his message, which was sent on Sunday, by saying that, “It is not our job as Jews to ensure our own safety on campus. No one should have to endure this level of hatred, let alone at school.”A prominent New York financier who has been active in efforts to suppress antisemitism at Harvard and other universities, Bill Ackman, was among those criticizing the apparent double-standard exhibited by the university.“How would Columbia respond if the students took over campus in support of the KKK and called for the genocide of other ethnic minorities?” he said in an online post. “Would Columbia continue to support the demonstrations on the basis of a commitment to free speech or would the University’s code of conduct suddenly have operative impact?”In a statement released Sunday, a New York GOP congresswoman, Elise Stefanik, said it was time for the university’s president, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, to consider resigning.“Over the past few months and especially the last 24 hours, Columbia’s leadership has clearly lost control of its campus putting Jewish students’ safety at risk,” she said. “It is crystal clear that Columbia University – previously a beacon of academic excellence founded by Alexander Hamilton – needs new leadership.”Even the White House was forced to weigh in on the debate, issuing a statement Sunday stating that while peaceful protest is the right of every American “violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly Antisemitic, unconscionable, and dangerous.“Echoing the rhetoric of terrorist organizations, especially in the wake of the worst massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, is despicable,” the statement concluded.As of Sunday afternoon, students were still camping on Columbia’s main lawn.

Columbia University Rabbi Urges Jewish Students To Stay Home for Their Safety as School Braces for More Anti-Israel Protests

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