Mideast War blowback

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Columbia University announced it would take action against several masked protesters who disrupted a modern Israeli history class on Tuesday.

The protesters entered the classroom, banged on drums, chanted "Free Palestine," and handed out posters that read "crush Zionism," featuring an image of a jackboot stomping on the Star of David. The protesters also held up a sign featuring an illustration of armed Hamas fighters and attempted to plaster it on the classroom walls.

The disruption occurred on the first day of the spring semester, marking a shift after several relatively quiet months on campus.

Interim President Katrina Armstrong condemned the incident in a statement.

We strongly condemn this disruption, as well as the violent imagery on the fliers, which is unacceptable on our campus and in our community," Armstrong said. "No group of students has the right to disrupt another group's learning in a Columbia classroom."

She added that the university would "act promptly to investigate and address this incident" and stressed that "any act of antisemitism, discrimination, harassment, or intimidation against members of our community is unacceptable and will not be tolerated."

President Armstrong also indicated that the disruption likely violated the rules of university conduct and may have breached other university policies, including Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin.

The class was led by Israeli historian Avi Shilon, who was teaching his first course at Columbia. Shilon told Haaretz that as he was presenting the syllabus and outlining how the course would explore conflicting narratives on Israel and Palestine, the protesters stormed into the classroom.

"I was surprised," he said. "I thought that with the cease-fire in place, things would settle down. I even told my wife this morning it should go smoothly."

Shilon said that much as he wasn't fazed by the protesters, there's an uneasy feeling. "It was like someone bursting into your house."

He approached the protesters and suggested that if they had strong opinions, they should join the class and engage in the discussion. He said they refused and continued to interrupt.

Shilon, author of books on David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, and the decline of the left-wing in Israel, as well as a contributor to Haaretz and other publications, began his tenure at Columbia that day. Shilon said he was hired to fill the university's need for a historian specializing in Israel.

"I am a historian. I didn't come to represent the Israeli government. I am interested in research and dialogue," he said. "This isn't a protest on the street; it is a place of work."

The protesters left after a few minutes of disruption, and security arrived shortly after. Shilon said that the administration was supportive and had even offered protection for his next class, an offer he declined.

"Having security goes against the idea of open engagement. But if this keeps happening, there might not be another option, and that would be very sad," he said.

Outside, dozens of protesters, their faces covered with keffiyehs and masks, gathered on Columbia's main quad and at the entrance to the Morningside Heights campus.

Despite the cease-fire, pro-Palestinian activists have vowed to continue protesting the university.

Police in Australia believe a string of antisemitic attacks, including the torching of a daycare center in Sydney early Tuesday morning, may be coordinated by foreign actors, as authorities struggle to contain the scourge.

Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said Tuesday that a special anti-terror operation set up to combat serious antisemitic crimes was actively investigating 15 serious allegations, though only a single person has been arrested thus far. There have also been dozens of arrests by local police in Victoria and New South Wales, the Australian government said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called a snap meeting of the national cabinet Tuesday to discuss the issue following the daycare center attack, a move opposition parties and Jewish community leaders have been demanding for weeks. Officials there agreed to establish a national database to track antisemitic incidents and behaviors in order to better coordinate responses across different departments and states.

Jeremy Leibler, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, said Australia’s political leadership was finally starting to understand the severity of the problem after failing to properly address mounting anti-Jewish incidents for over a year, much of it thought tied to Israel’s war against the Hamas terror group in the Gaza Strip.

Attacks have included anti-Jewish and anti-Israel graffiti smeared on properties or vehicles in areas with large Jewish populations, and arson attacks on synagogues in Sydney and Melbourne.

The latest attack occurred just before 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning when a childcare center adjacent to a synagogue in the Sydney neighborhood of Maroubra was firebombed and graffitied with the message “f**k the Jews.” The building was unoccupied at the time and there were no reports of injuries.

In a statement Tuesday, Kershaw said Australian Federal Police were investigating the possibility that overseas actors were paying local criminals to carry out attacks against the Jewish community and whether young people who had been radicalized online were behind the incidents.

Kershaw noted that payments may have been made in cryptocurrency, making it harder to track.

The pattern of foreign actors paying locals — usually via cryptocurrency — to carry out acts of petty vandalism and setting cars on fire could dovetail with a similar phenomenon in Israel. According to the Shin Bet security agency, dozens of Israelis have been arrested in recent months for accepting money from figures in Iran to graffiti cars and walls with anti-Israel or pro-Iran messages, and to torch cars.

A similar phenomenon has also been reported in Europe, with Russia accused of recruiting locals to commit arson attacks and other acts of sabotage in a bid to undermine support for Ukraine.

Australian officials did not elaborate on the avenue of investigation, but Kershaw said the antisemitic attacks had been brought up with the Five Eyes, a high profile intelligence sharing network between Australia, the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand.

“Regardless, it all points to the same motivation: demonising and intimidating the Jewish community,” he said in the statement, promising that more suspects would be charged as more evidence is gathered.

An executive order signed by US President Donald Trump on Monday appeared to target, among others, foreign nationals who participated in anti-Israel protests that swept throughout the country since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, and which sometimes featured support for the Palestinian terror group.

The Executive Order Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Threats stated that the government must be “vigilant” in issuing visas to foreign nationals and ensure that those approved “do not intend to harm Americans or our national interests.”

The order signed by Trump shortly after his inauguration required the US government to ensure that foreign nationals “not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.”

Trump campaigned on cracking down on the anti-Israel protests, particularly those on college campuses, but it was not yet clear how exactly he’d go about doing it, given free speech laws in the US.

“When I am president we will not allow our colleges to be taken over by violent radicals,” Trump said at a rally in May. “If you come from another country and try to bring jihadism or anti-Americanism or antisemitism to our campuses we will immediately deport you. You’ll be out of that school.”

The Republican party also included a commitment to “deport pro-Hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again” on a list of 20 promises made in the party platform adopted at its National Convention in July.

The legality of expelling foreign nationals from the United States for participating in a protest has not yet been tested, but the move would likely be extremely controversial.

It is not clear how many foreign students have been involved in the anti-Israel protests. GOP officials and pro-Israel groups told NBC News last year that they have so far identified only four who were known to have been arrested, expelled, or barred from graduating due to their participation in the demonstrations.

Columbia has identified and suspended a University affiliate in connection with the Tuesday disruption of the History of Modern Israel class, according to a Thursday Columbia News statement.

The suspension will remain in effect until the University completes a “full investigation and disciplinary process,” the statement read. A University spokesperson did not immediately respond to request for comment regarding the nature of the individual’s affiliation to Columbia.

The University is still investigating the disruption and working on identifying the remaining three participants.

“Disruptions to our classrooms and our academic mission and efforts to intimidate or harass our students are not acceptable, are an affront to every member of our University community, and will not be tolerated,” the statement reads.

Protesters disrupted the first session of the class History of Modern Israel, a graduate-level Jewish studies course taught by history lecturer Avi Shilon, on Tuesday, the first day of classes in the spring semester.

Multiple individuals walked into the Fayerweather Hall classroom and distributed flyers to the class, according to a video posted on X. One flyer depicted a boot stomping on the Star of David with the words “Crush Zionism.” Another included the words “Burn Zionism to the ground” with the image of an individual wearing a keffiyeh holding a burning Israeli flag.

The disruption overlapped with pro-Palestinian demonstrations on and around campus on Tuesday. Interim University President Katrina Armstrong, Barnard President Laura Rosenbury, and Columbia College Dean Josef Sorett condemned the disruption.

In a Wednesday article in YNet News, Shilon detailed his experience in the classroom. He wrote,“The moment I saw the masked men, my first instinct was to think they were terrorists.” Shilon wrote that the experience showed him “how important it is to teach about Israel and the conflict from a complex perspective, one that does not see only one side.”

Elisha Baker, CC ’26, a student in the class, wrote in a statement to Spectator that he is “heartened by Columbia’s swift suspension.”

“Accountability is crucial as a measure to disincentivize this kind of behavior which runs completely counter to the fundamental purpose of the university,” he wrote. “And I hope to see swift discipline for the other perpetrators.”

Armstrong wrote in a statement on Wednesday that the University had conducted an expedited investigation of the incident and modified security protocols to require CUID swipe access for buildings on the Morningside campus.

Public Safety will be “identifying and directing additional resources to classes at increased risk for disruption,” the Wednesday statement read.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression criticized the disruption in a post to X on Wednesday and dozens of Columbia and Barnard faculty condemned the disruption in a Wednesday letter to the editor published in Spectator.

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce condemned the incident in a post on X, claiming that “failing to combat antisemitism will no longer be tolerated in the Trump administration.”

“Outrageous that masked students disrupted class at @Columbia, which receives billions in taxpayer dollars, to pass out flyers calling for the murder of Jews,” the committee wrote.