Columbia students confront anti-Israel protesters who stormed classroom with antisemitic flyers

Student agitators astatine Columbia University began their outpouring semester by storming an Israeli past class, video shows. 

A set of masked keffiyeh-clad students "threw" flyers featuring a smashed Star of David underneath a boot, a burning Israeli emblem and weapon-carrying militants astatine students, according to accounts and videos shared to X. 

Among the messages connected the flyers were "the force volition not spot tomorrow," "Burn Zionism to the ground" and "Crush Zionism," according to images shared by people of 2026 pupil Lishi Baker. 

"It's time 1 of... History of Modern Israel @Columbia and masked protesters conscionable barged successful to intimidate and disrupt," the pupil wrote. "So overmuch for 'academic freedom.' Welcome to Columbia, 2025!"

COLUMBIA ANTI-ISRAEL AGITATORS TO REACH 'CRESCENDO OF INTIMIDATION' AS SCHOOL SUFFERS LATEST BLACK EYE

Pictured is simply a poster handed to students by anti-Israel demonstrators astatine a History of Modern Israel people connected Tuesday. (@LishiBaker connected X)

Video of the incidental shows Avi Shilon, a visiting prof for the school's Institute of Israel and Jewish Studies, asking the students to permission arsenic different students tin beryllium seen handing the flyers back. 

"This is a civilian rights violation," 1 of the students said. "We're trying to learn."

One of the protesters begins speechmaking from a script. "We are going to springiness you an wrong scoop into Columbia University's normalization of genocide."

Baker, who is simply a Middle Eastern History pupil astatine the school, told The Washington Free Beacon that the incidental near him "extremely disturbed."

PRO-PALESTINIAN PROTESTERS PLAN ANTI-VETERANS DAY GATHERING AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: 'DISGUSTING'

One pupil successful the people said that they were "extremely disturbed" by the incident. (@LishiBaker connected X)

"Not lone americium I paying a batch of wealth to beryllium here, but I really privation to prosecute successful the class, and it’s truly frustrating erstwhile there’s students astatine this schoolhouse who don’t attraction astir learning, don’t attraction astir class, and are intentionally disruptive and intimidating wrong of a classroom," helium added.

Shilon told the outlet that helium was torn betwixt his tendency to "protect [his] students" but did not "want to ignite the protesters excessively much."

COLUMBIA STUDENTS DESCRIBE NIGHT OF TERROR AS PROTESTERS OCCUPY BUILDING: 'LIKE A SCENE FROM 'THE SHINING'

Anti-Israel protesters show extracurricular Columbia University connected Tuesday, Sep. 3, successful New York City. (AP/Yuki Iwamura)

He told the outlet that conscionable earlier the protesters barged into his classroom, helium told his students that they would "learn the 2 narratives: 1 of the Palestinians and 1 of the Israelis."

"It did not discourage me; connected the contrary, it conscionable makes maine consciousness that it is truthful important to thatch and to survey Israel from a existent historiographer who this is his tract of expertise," Shilon told the outlet.

According to an online statement of Shilon's course, the people explores Israeli authorities from the state's constitution to the contiguous day, focusing connected the demographics that "create the cloth of Israeli authorities and society" including the "Palestinian citizens of Israel."

Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, said that the instauration "strongly condemn[s] this disruption, arsenic good arsenic the fliers that included convulsive imagery that is unacceptable connected our field and successful our community."

"No radical of students has a close to disrupt different radical of students successful a Columbia classroom. Disrupting world activities constitutes a usurpation of the Rules of University conduct, and the quality of the disruption whitethorn represent violations of different University policies," Armstrong wrote successful a statement. 

"We volition determination rapidly to analyse and code this act. We privation to beryllium perfectly wide that immoderate enactment of antisemitism, oregon different signifier of discrimination, harassment, oregon intimidation against members of our assemblage is unacceptable and volition not beryllium tolerated."

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On campus, protesters with the Columbia University Apartheid Divest and the school's Students for Justice successful Palestine section protested successful enactment of "the liberation of Palestine beyond a ceasefire," blocking thoroughfare postulation arsenic they marched extracurricular the university. 

Among phrases spray-painted astir the field the nighttime earlier were "Gaza Rises Columbia Falls," the Free-Beacon reported.