Columbia University Postpones a Fund-Raiser as Divisions Over War Deepen | CPT PPP Coverage

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“We would never allow the KKK to march on our campus,” Professor Davidai said. “We would never allow a pro-ISIS demonstration on our campus. Can you imagine, in the city that had to endure 9/11, the worst attack on American soil, can you imagine that here we have pro-terror student organizations?”

He was referring, in part, to an on-campus demonstration held on Oct. 12, when pro-Palestinian student groups marched on campus. Among their chants, according to a list provided by the protesters, was, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Many Jewish view that phrase as a call for the destruction of the state of Israel.

A speech by a leader of Students for Justice in Palestine, one of the organizing groups of the march, called the Hamas attack “an unprecedented historic moment for the Palestinians of Gaza,” according to a transcript provided by the organization to the student newspaper, the Columbia Spectator. “Despite the odds against them, Palestinians launched a counteroffensive against their settler-colonial oppressor,” the speech said.

The words echoed what Joseph Massad, a professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia, wrote online the day after the Hamas incursion. In an anti-Zionist publication, the Electronic Intifada, Professor Massad described the Hamas attack as a “stunning victory.”

An online petition calling for his removal from the faculty has gotten 57,000 signatures; a letter supporting him has hundreds of signatories.

Professor Davidai, in his remarks at a candlelit vigil that he asked students to film, likened such statements to support of terrorism and blasted the school for allowing them. The U.S. government and the European Union consider Hamas a terrorist organization.

Not all pro-Palestinian groups endorse the actions of Hamas, and Professor Davidai said he considers himself pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian but anti-terror.

In an interview, Professor Davidai, an Israeli citizen, said he spoke not for any organization, but as a “liberal leftist dad who feels like he cannot protect his children.” Saying he no longer felt safe on campus, he called on the parents of current university students to contact Columbia’s administrators to demand that they do more to stop the hateful rhetoric.

He said he had received thousands of emails since his speech went viral, including some from alumni saying that they would stop donating to the school.

“I think a lot of people have been sending them the message, what you’re going to run is a taking day, not a giving day, because you’re taking our money and not giving us the basic thing of protecting our children,” he said of Columbia’s postponed Giving Day event.

Some pro-Palestinian students are also frightened that their safety is at risk. Members of Students for Justice in Palestine pointed to an interview on the student radio station, with someone who identified himself as a Columbia University administrative officer at the medical center. That person said, “I hope every one of these people die,” about Columbia students demonstrating for the Palestinian cause.