Video of incendiary comments by one of the leaders of the student protest encampment at Columbia University surfaced online Thursday evening, forcing the school to again confront an issue at the core of the conflict rippling across campuses nationwide: the tension between pro-Palestinian activism and antisemitism.
The student, Khymani James, said in the January video that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”
Mr. James made the comments during and after a disciplinary hearing with Columbia administrators that he recorded and then posted on Instagram.
Not sure why this is getting down voted? Like, we can agree that genocide and antisemitism are both bad at the same time, right?
Like, just because Israel’s actions against Palestine are evil, does that necessarily require someone to embrace the Holocaust? Clearly not, right?
And I realize that Zionist =/= Jewish, but it’s dancing a fine line, no? At the very least it’s a call to violence against a Jewish adjacent group that I think feels pretty deeply uncomfortable.
Maybe I’m alone in that though. :/
There’s a narrative that calling out the antisemitism is just like how right wingers said everyone riots and engages in property destruction during BLM rallies. I think that’s a false equivalence thought.
I also think that sometimes “Zionism” is used as a euphemism by antisemites because they know it’s more palatable.