Washington, DC – Jewish students involved in protests at Columbia University say their pro-Palestinian activism is driven by their faith – not in spite of it.
On Tuesday, a group of Jewish student activists met with members of the United States Congress in Washington, DC, to tell their stories, which they say have been left out of mainstream narratives about anti-Semitism on college campuses.
As student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza swept the country last year, Columbia University in New York became a flashpoint.
The university saw one of the first student encampments in the country, erected to demand an end to investments in companies complicit in human rights abuses. Shortly after the tents started popping up, the campus also witnessed some of the first mass arrests of student protesters in the Palestinian solidarity movement.
That visibility has made Columbia a focal point for President Donald Trump’s efforts to crack down on what he called “illegal protests” and campus anti-Semitism.
Earlier this year, Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil became the first student activist to be detained by the Trump administration and targeted for deportation.
Tuesday’s delegation of Jewish students came to Congress to push the case that Khalil and others like him should never have been detained in their name. They met with at least 17 Democratic legislators from both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
media spoke to several students who participated in the lobbying day, which was organised by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Action, an advocacy organisation. Here are some of their stories:
Raised in upstate New York, history major Tali Beckwith-Cohen said she grew up in a community where Zionism was the norm. She remembers being told “myths” about Palestine as “a land without a people for a people without a land”: a slogan used to justify the establishment of Israel.
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