Hundreds of Jewish students at Columbia University signed onto an open letter to the school community vowing not to back down in the face of protests in response to the Israel-Hamas war that caused a major disruption on the New York City campus.
Shai Davidai, a Columbia professor who last month said he was barred from campus as he tried to stage a sit-in at the site where the anti-Israel demonstrators had set up an encampment, and others shared the letter in a post to X on Wednesday.
According to the letter, the signees are “average students,” who say that those “who demonize us under the cloak of anti-Zionism forced us into our activism and forced us to publicly defend our Jewish identities.”
The letter expressed the view that the Jewish people have a “right to self-determination in our historic homeland as a fundamental tenet of our Jewish identity” and pushed back on…
