Student demonstrators in Columbia were finally put down by police on Tuesday evening, after weeks of unrest caused by the school’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment.
Protesters are demanding that the council divest companies with ties to Israel or companies that profit from the war against Hamas.
NYPD officers arrested pro-Palestinian students on the Ivy League campus who had taken over Hamilton Hall, causing significant damage and destruction to the building.
On Wednesday morning, the NYPD reported that more than 280 students from Columbia and City College were arrested on Tuesday.
While the fate of these students currently rests in the hands of New York’s top colleges and their respective universities, DailyMail.com looks at some of the most absurd moments from the past few weeks of pro-terror protests.
Request ‘humanitarian assistance’ in Hamilton Hall
Columbia PhD student Johannah King-Slutzky, who calls herself a “political strategist for left-wing and progressive causes,” along with some of her fellow keffiyeh-wearing activists, held a press conference outside the building they had taken over.
King-Slutzky claimed the university was required to provide food to students who barricaded themselves in the hallowed building because they paid for the meal plan at Columbia.
She said the university’s decision on how to handle such a request will depend on “what kind of community and obligation Columbia feels to its students.”
“Do you want students to die of dehydration and starvation?” she asked.
“It’s crazy to say because we’re on an Ivy League campus, but this is like basic humanitarian assistance that we’re asking for. Can people please have a glass of water?’
One reporter from the crowd challenged the radical student, who is writing her dissertation on Marxist history, about the legitimacy of asking the school to provide resources to students who had carried out a hostile takeover of a building.
“It’s like saying, ‘we want to be revolutionaries, we want to take over this building, now can you please bring us some food,’” he said.
King-Slutzky said the group was looking for a “commitment” from Columbia that no one who tried to deliver food and water to protesters would be met with force — at the time she said this, no one had been met with force or otherwise stopped.
After weeks of incitement, pro-terror students from Columbia took over Hamilton Hall around 1 a.m. Tuesday
New York Police Department officers arrest dozens of pro-Palestinian students at Columbia University on Tuesday evening after barricading themselves in the Hamilton Hall building near the Gaza Solidarity Encampment
Protesters shout ‘We are Hamas!’ and ask for privacy
Last week, just days after Passover, protesters from Columbia gathered on the quad chant various slogans and activist battle cries to further promote their position across campus.
One such protester was seen shouting, “We are Hamas!”
“Hamas make us proud, now kill another soldier,” shouted another.
Hamas is the unrepentant radical Palestinian terror group that committed this atrocity on October 7, which included killing civilians, raping Israeli women and taking hundreds of hostages, many of whom have yet to be returned.
October 7 was quickly labeled by some campus radicals as a legitimate means of resistance against Israel’s alleged occupation of Gaza.
Leading up to and during the Passover holiday, the environment on campus became so intolerable for Jewish students that an on-campus rabbi warned them to stay home amid the incredibly anti-Semitic environment.
All the while, student protesters have maintained the position that they have a “right to privacy” and that the media should stop showing up to record them proclaiming their support for terrorism.
One student confronted Free Beacon journalist Jessica Costescu, who was tried to take a video of Mohamed Abdoua North African-Egyptian Muslim anarchist activist-scholar, whom she had seen speaking outside the encampment.
The young-looking student wore a keffiyeh, an oversized checked jacket and a nose ring as she repeatedly asked the journalist in a monotone voice to stop the recording “for security and for privacy.”
String Dance for Peace
In a particularly strange display of solidarity with Palestinians in war-torn Gaza, university students performed a red tightrope walk to celebrate Earth Day on the sunny Columbia site full of camp tents.
Students wore keffiyehs, COVID masks and some generally strange outfits to protect their identities as they became entangled in red thread through interpretive moves.
Fellow activist students stood around the large knot as it began to take shape, clapping and holding banners that read “Decolonize Decarbonize.”
Sporty protest supporters of Keffiyeh watch as members of the NYPD detain demonstrators from the pro-Palestinian protest encampment and Hamilton Hall, where demonstrators barricaded themselves inside
‘Zionists don’t deserve to live’
In one of the most striking moments of the Columbia encampment saga, it was revealed that one of the loudest student protest leaders, Khymani James, had said publicly over and over again that “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”
A video of James, a non-binary junior at the Ivy League school, resurfaced last week. It was initially a 90-minute live stream that he posted while attending a disciplinary meeting after posting threatening messages online.
In a recording of the stream, James meets with staff from Columbia’s Center for Student Success and Intervention through an Instagram post in which he warned Zionists in his DMs that he was “fighting to kill.”
An employee asked him, “Do you see why that’s even problematic?” He replied, ‘No.’
He continues to defend his position that all Zionists “don’t deserve to live,” sprinkling cackles and erratic-looking tonal changes throughout the video.
“Zionists don’t deserve to live comfortably, let alone Zionists don’t deserve to live… I feel very comfortable, very comfortable, when I call on those people to die,” he said just before the stream ended.
After an uproar over the video, Columbia banned James from campus under an “interim suspension,” meaning he may or may not be allowed to return to classes.
James, who has previously expressed ambitions to one day become a member of the US House of Representatives, has since issued an apology of sorts, apologizing for his exact wording but remaining steadfast in his position that “Zionism is an ideology that makes the genocide of the Palestinian people necessary. I am strongly against that.’
Images and video showed extensive damage to Hamilton Hall after protesters were evicted Tuesday evening
The Gaza solidarity crowd smashed windows, overturned furniture and caused damage throughout Hamilton Hall during their brief occupation
The messy finale
On Tuesday evening, police raided Hamilton Hall, arresting more than 100 students and causing no harm, halting the most outrageous part of the demonstration yet. It was their second trip to the uptown campus that ended in more than 100 arrests.
The NYPD confirmed that those occupying Hamilton Hall could be charged with trespassing and burglary, while those in the camp could be hit with trespassing and disorderly conduct charges.
However, the university’s problems are far from over. As authorities began their raid, Columbia faculty released a statement condemning the decision to end the protest and blaming the administration of President Minouche Shafik for causing tensions to reach a boiling point.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has also brought attention to the issue, claiming that the protest had been co-opted by outside actors and that it was long past time to shut the whole thing down.
Jewish students and their supporters are angry that it has taken so long for officials to suppress protests amid accusations of anti-Semitism.
Regular Columbia students were also chased off campus by the protesters and administration during the last weeks of classes and the time leading up to finals week.
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