‘No jew is safe until…’, Columbia Law students' ‘warning’ amid anti-Israel stir, ‘antisemitism exposed’ claim critics
FILE PHOTO: Police stand guard at Columbia University, where a building occupation and protest encampment had been set up in support of Palestinians, during the ongoing Hamas-Israel conflict
As Columbia University struggles to limp back to normal after last week’s NYPD action its law school group has written to the management declaring that no Jew is “safe” or “free” until Palestine is free.
In an email sent by Columbia Law’s National Lawyers Guild organization on Friday, the group criticised the school’s administration and the NYPD for clearing out Hamilton Hall.
Columbia Law Students’ Group’s blatant ‘warning’
In what’s being touted as a ‘dangerous threat’ the group, “Our safety cannot be predicated on the oppression of others, whether campus protesters or Palestinians. No Jew is safe until everyone is safe, and no Jew is free until Palestine is free.”
“While you repeatedly cried wolf with claims that anti-Zionist speech was antisemitic, which diluted the very real instances of antisemitism, we shared uplifting, welcoming Shabbat services in the Gaza solidarity Encampment. While you threatened doxxing and disciplinary actions, we found community in the encampment and imagined a more just world,” the email continued.
Despite these blatant remarks the group countrered against concerns over the safety of Jewish students and faculty, claiming that they are only being used as a “pretext for Columbia’s violence.”
“We have repeated to the point of exhaustion that the protection of Jewish students and faculty is a dangerous, flimsy pretext for Columbia’s violence. By now, it is abundantly clear that this excuse is a gross perversion of the truth. This excuse has been weaponized by white Christian nationalists, including those in Congress, whose main motivations are dismantling diversity initiatives and promoting a Jewish majority in Israel to initiate the rapture.”
Rabbis and Israel sympathisers condemn students
After being widely shared on the internet the email has attracted sever criticism. Conference of European Rabbis Chairman Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt told Fox News Digital, “It is reckless for Columbia Law’s National Lawyers Guild group to throw around words such as safety and freedom when the message they are communicating directly threatens the safety and freedom of Jewish students on campus, and more broadly, all Jews across the United States and around the world.”
An X User Edward Soloman posted, “From the same people who brought you “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism”, here is the reboot: “No Jew is safe until everyone is safe, and no Jew is free until Palestine is free.” This from a law faculty, at that. America, this is your mess to clean up.”
“This is clearly hateful antisemitism. The group must be decertified and tossed out of school,” an X user claimed.
Columbia Uni students seek respite from exams
The email further asked the management to cancel the final exams as students are still reeling under the traume posed by police in riot gear. “Videos have circulated of police clad in riot gear mocking and brutalizing our students. The events of last night left us, and many of our peers, unable to focus and highly emotional during this tumultuous time.”
“We believe that canceling exams would be a proportionate response to the level of distress our peers have been feeling.”
Last week nearly 300 protesters were detained from the Columbia University campus after NYPD stormed the Hamilton Hall that was being occupied by them to pressurise the government to act. However the NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Tarik Sheppard and the New York Governor have stated that those arrested were not students but outside agitators.
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