Biden accuses Gaza protesters of hate speech
Student activists, pictured on Tuesday, have been protesting against Columbia University’s investments in Israel – OLGA FEDEROVA/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Joe Biden has accused Gaza protesters at Columbia University of hate speech after they occupied a campus building and flew pro-Palestine banners from its windows.
In his strongest comments yet on the student protests, the US president warned against “tragic and dangerous hate speech”, linked the demonstrators to anti-Semitism and described their occupation of an administrative building as “wrong”.
The protests at Columbia, which have been raging for almost two weeks, have spread across the US to more than two dozen states and sparked copycat “encampments” in Britain, France and Canada.
Mr Biden is under pressure from Democrat voters, including many young liberals, who have threatened to withhold their votes in November’s presidential election over his support for Israel.
Democrats in several states have organised campaigns to vote against him in the presidential primary in protest against his position on the issue.
On Tuesday, a White House spokesman said the president had “stood against repugnant, anti-Semitic smears and violent rhetoric his entire life” and criticised pro-Palestine demonstrators who broke into Hamilton Hall, a Columbia University building, on Monday night.
“He condemns the use of the term ‘intifada,’ as he has the other tragic and dangerous hate speech displayed in recent days,” said Andrew Bates, the White House deputy press secretary.
“President Biden respects the right to free expression, but protests must be peaceful and lawful.
“Forcibly taking over buildings is not peaceful – it is wrong. And hate speech and hate symbols have no place in America.”
A spokesman for Joe Biden, pictured on Tuesday, described the protests as ‘wrong’ – Alex Brandon/AP
On Tuesday afternoon, officials at Columbia said the student protest had become an “untenable situation” and accused those who broke into Hamilton Hall of “vandalising property, breaking doors and windows, and blockading entrances”.
The protesters flew a “Free Palestine” banner from the building’s windows and said they had renamed it Hind Hall after a six-year-old they said had been killed in Gaza “at the hands of the genocidal Israeli state”.
Another banner pronounced an “intifada revolution” – a reference to an “uprising” of Palestinians against Israel.
A demonstrator breaks a window panel on the door of a building at Columbia University on Tuesday – Alex Kent/Getty Images North America
The news came after Baroness Shafik, Columbia’s president, gave students an ultimatum to end the protest or face suspension on Monday.
The students said the university’s authorities would have “blood on their hands” if they attempted to dismantle the protest, and compared it to anti-war demonstrations in the 1960s.
Columbia closed the campus to non-essential staff and issued a new threat of expulsion to any student who continued to occupy the building.
Demonstrators themselves inside the university’s Hamilton Hall on Tuesday – lex Kent/Getty Images North America
Ben Chang, a university spokesman, said: “We made it very clear yesterday that the work of the university cannot be endlessly interrupted by protesters who violate the rules.
“Continuing to do so will be met with clear consequences.”
Negotiations between the protesters and university administration had reached an “impasse”, Baroness Shafik said, because Columbia would not agree to divest its endowment from companies linked to Israel.
It has also said it will not end a planned “global centre” in Tel Aviv, which protesters had asked to be shut down.
Baroness Shafik, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, warned that the protests had led to a rise in anti-Semitism and called for them to end immediately.
Daniel Diermeier, the chancellor of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, told The Telegraph that the protests across the US could become more aggressive if they were not controlled.
“What you’re seeing right now is a further radicalization and the barricading of buildings,” he said.
“This is like we’ve seen in the 1960s – we’re basically watching the movie of the 1960s right now. I think there’s a real concern that this will tip into more extreme forms of violence”.
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