Why American college campuses are exploding with anti-Israel protests

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The anti-Israel protests that have roiled Columbia aren’t just spreading across America’s campuses — they’ve drawn attention from key players in the war between Israel and Hamas itself.

“What is happening on American college campuses is horrific. Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities. They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish faculty,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a press briefing on Wednesday. “This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s. It’s unconscionable. It has to be stopped.”

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Izzat Al-Rishq, a high-level Hamas official, praised the demonstrators that have paralyzed college campuses around the United States, saying their support is indispensable for raising global awareness of the Palestinian fight against Israel.

“The American administration, led by President Biden, violates individual rights and the right to expression, and arrests university students and faculty members because of their rejection of the genocide that our Palestinian people are subjected to in the Gaza Strip at the hands of the neo-Nazi Zionists, without the slightest sense of shame about the legal value represented by the students and university professors,” Al-Rishq said in a statement.

Last weekend, just days after Columbia University assured Congress that the anti-Israel protesters on campus were not antisemitic, the New York Police Department was called in to remove protest encampments, with the university’s president calling them “a clear and present danger” to the Manhattan Ivy League school.

More than 100 protesters were arrested at Columbia, among the latest developments in high-profile tensions on university campuses that have developed following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the Jewish state’s military response that has led to a protracted war in the Gaza Strip.

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The protests, which echo the radical campus activism of the 1960s, have wracked universities across the western world. In the United States, they have spawned congressional hearings, with politicians asking the leadership of Harvard University, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania last December about whether calls for the genocide of Jews violate campus policy.

The Columbia protests, which have yet to end despite the police involvement, have inspired activists and imitators across the United States at many elite liberal institutions.

“We will seize our universities and force the administration to divest, for the people of Gaza! Join the Popular University, take back our institutions!” wrote Students for Justice in Palestine on social media last Saturday.

In quick succession, students at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the University of Michigan joined Columbia in creating anti-Israel encampments. At Yale University in Connecticut, nearly 50 students were arrested after protesters resisted warnings to clear Beinecke Plaza on campus. Activists at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, created their own encampment on Wednesday. Several blocks south of Columbia, at New York University (NYU), 120 protesters were arrested on campus on Monday night.

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The anti-Israel protests also spread to the West Coast as students at California State Polytechnic at Humboldt barricaded themselves inside a building; in response, the campus was locked down. The campus remained closed through Wednesday, with students warned to stay clear of the “dangerous and volatile situation.” Outside of Oakland, California, at the University of California at Berkeley, throngs of anti-Israel protesters grew through Tuesday and Wednesday. The University of Southern California (USC) arrested nearly 100 people on Wednesday for failing to vacate the campus public areas.

Stu Smith, a citizen journalist in Virginia, has been documenting signage and speeches from campus protests. In an email, Smith said that he has seen speeches given where the October 7 attack has been celebrated and speeches have been given demanding protesters escalate their tactics against police.

“I have also seen colleges where the encampments are almost comical in nature with two to three students begging for attention and breaking up camp at night for the luxury of their dorm rooms,” Smith wrote.

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Nevertheless, many encampments, Smith said pose a safety issue.

“Many college presidents are woefully out of their league,” he said.

Among those arrested at Columbia included Isra Hirsi the daughter of Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

“It’s really frustrating, because when we were arrested, we were literally sitting in a circle singing songs, sharing a meal together. I think it is really egregious of them to completely misrepresent what was happening and have the audacity to call us things like terrorists,” Isra Hirsi told Teen Vogue.

It’s not just elite schools seeing protests, either. At Ohio State University two protesters were taken into custody on Tuesday and at the University of Minnesota, when encampments were cleared Tuesday night, nine protesters were arrested.

At the University of Texas, Austin, the Palestine Solidarity Committee demanded students occupy the South Lawn of the school. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said the protesters in the state capital “belong in jail” and hundreds of state troopers and local police — some on horseback — arrived on campus to disperse the Wednesday protest.

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“Arrests being made right now & will continue until the crowd disperses. These protesters belong in jail. Antisemitism will not be tolerated in Texas. Period. Students joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled,” Abbott wrote on social media.

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Jay Hartzell, the university’s president, warned that the campus rules would “be enforced.”

“Our University will not be occupied,” he added.

The arrests, student suspensions and class cancellations have also led to tensions among faculty and administrators. Columbia University’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors drafted a resolution censuring university president Minouche Shafik for the heavy-handed response to the demonstrations. Dozens of academics at Columbia and its sister school, Barnard College, lauded the demonstrators without referencing any displays of rampant antisemitism.

Rather, the letter raised concerns about Columbia’s decision to “arbitrarily suspend” students and have them arrested by the police. “We are appalled by what has been happening on our campus, and we want to help you reclaim your University,” the instructors wrote.

Still, the university’s board reaffirmed Wednesday that it “strongly” supports Shafik’s leadership “as she steers the university through this extraordinarily challenging time.”

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“We are urgently working with her to help resolve the situation on campus and rebuild the bonds of our community; we encourage everyone who cares about Columbia to join us in that effort,” the statement said.

Footage of the protests, particularly over last weekend, flooded social media — a marked difference even from mass protest movements of a decade ago when social media was less pervasive and cellphone cameras less ubiquitous.

Viral footage on Saturday night also showed anti-Israel demonstrators chanting, “Burn Tel Aviv to the ground,” “Hamas we love you, we support your rockets, too,” and “It is right to rebel, Hamas give them hell!” One student wrote an essay about how his Israeli flag was burned while protesters screamed at him to “Go back to Poland.”

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The explicit antisemitic nature of the protests, coinciding with the Jewish holiday of Passover, drew wide condemnation across the American political spectrum.

“While every American has the right to peaceful protect, calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly Antisemitic, unconscionable, and dangerous — they have absolutely no place on any college campus, or anywhere in the United States of America,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates noted.

Mike Johnson, the Republican House Speaker, visited Columbia on Wednesday afternoon, reassuring Jewish students on campus, and demanding Shafik’s resignation over Columbia’s inability to quell the protests.

“As speaker of the House, I’m committed today that the Congress will not be silent as Jewish students are expected to run for their lives and stay home from their classes hiding in fear,” Johnson said during a press conference.

Johnson’s comments were met with boos and heckles from counter-protesters.

“Get off our campus!” one yelled. “Go back to Louisiana, Mike!” another said.

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While Columbia has yet to fully remove demonstrators, student protesters did agree to dismantle and remove a “significant number” of tents and assured school administration that only Columbia students — and not outside agitators — would be at the demonstrations. Organizers, the school said, have also taken  steps to ensure no discriminatory or harassing language is used at the encampment.

If negotiations break down, Shafik has warned that the administration “will have to consider alternative options for … restoring calm to campus.”

With additional reporting from National Post Wire Services

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