Dispatch: Jewish students confront extreme anti-Semitism at Columbia protest camp

Outside the gates of Columbia University on Friday afternoon, a man wearing a black balaclava was shouting about Jews.

Security guards, employed to guard the entrance after pro-Palestine students set up an “encampment” at the university in protest of the war in Gaza, looked unmoved by the man’s rant.

“Jews have total control of everything. Inflation is a result of greedy Wall Street Jews,” he shouted, holding a banner depicting an Israeli flag soaked in blood and the word “Nazis”.

“Jews control America. What is happening in Gaza is the result of Jews controlling America.”

Hezzy Segal, a 20-year-old Jewish student who wears a kippah, approached him to disagree.

“Excuse me” he began before the man shouted back: “Get the f— away from me. I’m not here to answer your Jew questions. America is controlled by Jews.”

The man gave a false name to The Telegraph and said he would not remove his balaclava because “you got to hide your f—ing face to avoid these Jews”.

The incident is one of many examples of anti-Semitism witnessed on and around university campuses across the United States.

As the Columbia protest spread to universities across the country, and then the Western world, it left a disquieting quantity of hate speech in its wake, prompting fears among Jewish students that the student-led protest movement has become a beacon attracting outsiders with extreme racist views.

Some examples of anti-Semitism posted on social media have come from students themselves.

Khymani James, who attends Columbia, has been barred from the campus after a video surfaced of him arguing that “Zionists don’t deserve to live”.

Videos taken from inside the Columbia encampment show students chanting “Go back to Poland,” and other students calling for “10,000 October 7ths”.

In Texas, a protester called a Jewish student a “Zion Nazi b—,” while in Colorado, Jews were threatened with murder. Some at universities across the US have openly supported Hamas.

At Boston’s Northeastern University, Police in riot gear cleared an encampment after crowds were heard chanting antisemitic slurs including “kill the Jews”.

The school said that the demonstration, which began two days ago, had become “infiltrated by professional organisers” with no affiliation to the school.

About 100 people were detained, and students who produced valid identification were released. They will face “disciplinary action,” the university said, but not legal action. People who refused to disclose their affiliation were arrested.

The University of Pennsylvania took similar action on Friday when President J. Larry Jameson called for a protest camp there to be disbanded.

The “harassing and intimidating comments and actions” by some protesters violate the school’s open expression guidelines as well as state and federal law, Mr Jameson said.

The vandalism of a statue with antisemitic graffiti was “especially reprehensible and will be investigated as a hate crime,” he added.

Student organisers insist that anti-Semitic comments do not reflect the view of their “movement”, which they say is “decentralised” and peaceful.

Their main demand is that their institutions divest from companies that support Israel, and increase financial transparency to make investments easier to scrutinise.

“You can’t blame it on the pro-Palestine protesters,” said Jonathan Ben-Menachen, a spokesman for the Columbia protesters.

“I want to stress very strongly, there are people from so many different identity groups that are a part of this movement.

“I can’t control random anti-Semites rolling up to the Columbia grounds.”

However, there is rising concern in the Jewish community that the protests have also shifted the tone of public discourse on Israel enough that non-students can now sow hatred with impunity.

Sacha Roytman, CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement, a global advocacy group, said the student protests had “acted as a vanguard” for anti-Semitism in wider society.

“When non-students are allowed to join and Jewish students are blocked from attending classes, these encampments have created spaces where antisemitism is not only tolerated but actively encouraged,” he said.

“This welcoming atmosphere for anti-Semitic individuals, regardless of their student status, undermines the safety of Jewish students on campus.”

Both the US and UK governments have expressed concern about a rise in anti-Semitic incidents from both students and those encouraged by them.

Last Sunday, on the eve of Passover, Joe Biden issued a statement warning of an “alarming surge of anti-Semitism – in our schools, communities, and online”.

The Anti-Defamation League, a non-governmental organisation, estimates that anti-Semitic incidents increased by 360 per cent in the last three months of last year, in the aftermath of Hamas’s terror attacks on October 7.

Mr Segal, a computer science and Jewish studies student, said he first felt unsafe when he heard protesters chanting about the existence of Israel, but worried more about other members of the public.

“I didn’t think someone was going to attack me. I wouldn’t say I was so scared of that,” he told The Telegraph.

“I felt more scared, I would say, for what that’s going to incite. We have hundreds of people chanting ‘We don’t want a Jewish state’.

“This is an early sign, it’s getting bad, and what’s the next step?

“I guess it’s people who are more open coming onto campus and saying ‘F— you, you’re a Jew. Get out of here, you control the world. I don’t care about you’.

“And the next step after that is maybe there are 100 more people and they’re starting to be violent towards Jews.”

“What’s scaring me is that a year ago, if we had a mob walking around chanting, ‘we don’t want a Jewish state’, that would have pretty universally been condemned as anti-Semitism. And now it’s not.”