Columbia University group for Palestine: ‘violence is the only path’

A group of pro-Palestinian students at Columbia University are scaling up their rhetoric against Israel, calling for “liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance.”
In a statement posted to Instagram Tuesday, Columbia University Apartheid Divest rescinded its apology made in April on behalf of a member who told school officials, “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”
The student, Khymani James, issued an apology at the time, saying in a video shared by Columbia University Apartheid Divest, “Those words do not represent CUAD. They also do not represent me.”
Now, the protest group is apologizing to James.
“We caused irrevocable harm to you by contributing to the ostracization you experienced from your fellow students, fellow organizers, the media, and the public,” the group wrote this week.
Columbia University Apartheid Divest kick-started student encampments at the school last spring to protest Israel’s response to the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas. Groups at other universities across the country followed suit with their own encampments and protest movements.
On the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attacks, the Columbia student group disseminated newspaper copies with the headline, “One Year Since Al-Aqsa Flood, Revolution Until Victory,” and posted an essay calling the assault a “moral, military and political victory,” the New York Times reported.
Several Jewish students at Columbia have spoken out online about the fear they now face on campus.
“If something violent (at Columbia) happens today, let me make it very clear: The administration is at fault,” senior Eliana Goldin wrote in a post on X Monday, Oct. 7. “They know the credible threat to Jewish students, and they’re still playing both-sidesism.”
Student-led protests have caused an uproar, creating backlash for school administrators who are navigating the right to free speech, while preventing threats of violence or antisemitism.
“Statements advocating for violence or harm are antithetical to the core principles upon which this institution was founded. Calls for violence have no place at Columbia or any university,” Columbia spokesperson, Ben Chang, said in a statement to USA TODAY.
But students protesting at Columbia are not softening their stance or language.
“In the face of violence from the oppressor equipped with the most lethal military force on the planet,” they wrote this week, “where you’ve exhausted all peaceful means of resolution, violence is the only path forward.”