At Columbia, Israel Backers Are Outside Looking In

Naomi, a sophomore at Columbia’s Barnard College, can hear the chants and drumbeats from her room. “I hear ‘Intifada,’ ‘From the River, To the Sea,’ all of that,” she says, gesturing down the block toward her dorm. “Nothing’s being done. . . . The school has lost all control.” Naomi doesn’t have to be here. A week ago, on the first day of Passover, the university moved to “hybrid” classes—in-person attendance is optional—for the rest of the term. Naomi had already gone home after the rabbi of Columbia’s Orthodox Union Jewish Learning Initiative urged Jewish students to leave for fear of their safety. “I was falling apart, honestly,” she says.

Yet on Friday morning she was back, standing proudly among Israeli flags at a rally outside the campus gates, which are closed to outsiders. “There’s this mindset of, ‘Why do we have to leave? We’re not causing any problems. We just want to do our work.’ ” She’s brave, but given the campus climate, not brave enough to be identified by her last name, which she declines to give after thinking it over. We stand amid the crowd, listening as relatives of hostages and local Jewish leaders speak a few hundred feet away from the campus anti-Israel encampment. Unlike the masked occupiers on campus, the pro-Israel crowd stands barefaced, peacefully chanting “Bring Them Home” between speakers.

(snip)

An older resident, Barbara Lass, holds a sign with a photo of a hostage and wears a Star of David necklace. She invokes John Lennon’s “Revolution”: “They’re standing on a corner passing out literature about Mao to unsuspecting young people,” she says. “I graduated in 1968. I’ve seen all of this before, but it’s new and improved. . . . These young Americans are now actually defining themselves by their victimhood.”

(snip)

After weeks of watching from afar as the hateful, menacing protests rage on campuses across the country, Friday morning’s rally made me hopeful. New York’s Jewish people won’t be cowed by an ignorant, hateful mob, no matter how much noise it makes.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-columbia-israel-backers-are-outside-looking-in-rally-hostages-hope-32ebc07f?st=w0avifn438lezg6&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink