Columbia University has temporarily suspended 65 students after a protest by anti-Israel agitators led to the takeover of Butler Library last Wednesday, Fox News reported.
By Rachel Avraham
Columbia University has temporarily suspended 65 students after a protest by anti-Israel agitators led to the takeover of Butler Library last Wednesday, Fox News reported. During the protest, demonstrators distributed pamphlets that glorified terrorist Basel Al-Araj, while chanting “Free Palestine” and calling for the university to divest from Israel, Arutz Sheva reported.
Fox News reported that Al Araj was guilty of planning terror attacks in Israel and was eliminated in 2017. However, Columbia University Apartheid Divest sought to rename the library as Basel Al Araj Popular University, thus demonstrating how they glorify terrorism.
“At the original Popular University project in the West Bank, Basel al-Araj taught about the Palestinian resistance and insisted that knowledge must serve liberation, not empire,” reads the pamphlet posted by CU Apartheid Divest. “Today, we teach each other the stories our universities refuse to tell. We feed each other, protect each other, learn with and from each other. The Popular University is not only a demand for divestment.”
According to Fox News, included in the pamphlets is a list of demands, which include divestment from Israel, “Cops and ICE off our campus” and amnesty for all Columbia University members facing discipline. During the storming of the library by anti-Israel agitators, two people were injured and campus property was vandalized. According to the New York Police Department (NYPD), 80 arrests were made, with 61 females and 19 males taken into custody.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X: “We are reviewing the visa status of the trespassers and vandals who took over Columbia University’s library. Pro-Hamas thugs are no longer welcome in our great nation.”
Earlier, Claire Shipman, Acting President of Columbia University, released the following statement: “Earlier today, a group of protesters occupied one of the main reading rooms in Butler library, refusing to leave, and another group breached the front door causing substantial chaos—all of this as the bulk of our students are working hard to prepare for exams. These actions not only represented a violation of University policies, but they also posed a serious risk to our students and campus safety. We had no choice but to ask for the assistance of the NYPD, and I’m grateful for their help and professionalism, as well as that of our Public Safety team. Let me be clear, what happened today, what I witnessed, was utterly unacceptable.”
She continued: “I spent the late afternoon and evening at Butler Library, as events were unfolding, to understand the situation on the ground and to be able to make the best decisions possible. I arrived to see one of our Public Safety officers wheeled out on a gurney and another getting bandaged. As I left hours later, I walked through the reading room, one of the many jewels of Butler Library, and I saw it defaced and damaged in disturbing ways and with disturbing slogans. Violence and vandalism, hijacking a library—none of that has any place on our campus. These aren’t Columbia’s values.”
Shipman concluded: “Let me be clear: Columbia unequivocally rejects antisemitism and all other forms of harassment and discrimination. And we certainly reject a group of students—and we don’t yet know whether there were outsiders involved—closing down a library in the middle of the week before finals and forcing 900 students out of their study spaces, many leaving belongings behind. Our commitment to a safe, inclusive, and respectful campus community is unshakeable, and we will continue to act decisively to uphold these values.”
Photo from FOX 5 New York: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsyU62iQDLA
