Pro-Palestinian students of Columbia University shamefully disrupted pro-Israel students as they remembered the victims of the Holocaust this week.
Around 20 students from Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Columbia University took part in the demonstration, in their words, “to show solidarity with the 30,000 Palestinians participating in the #GreatReturnMarch”, the Hamas-led demonstrations on Israel’s border that have been taking place over the last few weeks.
The protest was held a couple hundred feet away from a Holocaust memorial event, where printed testimonies of survivors were displayed and candles were lit to remember the victims of 6 million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. The memorial event was organised by the Students Supporting Israel (SSI) at Columbia University and featured an Israeli flag alongside the group’s logo.
SJP members used a megaphone to disrupt the SSI students and shouted anti-Semitic slogans such as, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, which is a call for the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel.
Unfortunately, this anti-Semitic display by SJP Columbia is not uncommon. This same group of students held an anti-Israel event on Holocaust Remembrance Day last year which featured Omar Barghouti, the founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
Aaron Maccabee, a Columbia student and member of SSI, said, “It’s offensive because they continue, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, to put on events and speakers that wish to destroy the Jewish state.”
“It’s really horrific to choose this day to bring this kind of hateful rhetoric into our campus,” he continued.
Another video from the Students Supporting Israel at Columbia University shows that this anti-Semitic hate from SJP students is not just reserved for Yom HaShoah, but takes place year-round.