Columbia pro-Palestinian group endorses violence and walks back apology for student who said ‘Zionists don’t deserve to live’

The most prominent pro-Palestinian student group at Columbia University walked back an apology it had issued for a student who said “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” 

The statement on Tuesday from Columbia University Apartheid Divest also included an explicit call for violence. It comes as pro-Palestinian groups at Columbia and other universities have made clear that they intend to continue and in many cases escalate their activism in the current school year. 

“We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance,” the CUAD statement said. “In the face of violence from the oppressor equipped with the most lethal military force on the planet, where you’ve exhausted all peaceful means of resolution, violence is the only path forward.”

The student, Khymani James, had made the remark about Zionists in a video he posted in January, in which he also said, “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.” Columbia barred James from campus in April, after the video resurfaced and garnered widespread attention and criticism. At the time, James was a prominent activist in Columbia’s pro-Palestinian encampment movement.

Days later, CUAD issued an apology in James’ name. “When I recorded it, I had been feeling unusually upset after an online mob targeted me because I am visibly queer and Black,” it said.

“CUAD and the Gaza Solidarity Encampment have made clear that my words in January, prior to my involvement in CUAD, are not in line with the CUAD community guidelines. I agree with their assessment,” the statement said, according to the Columbia Spectator. “Those words do not represent CUAD. They also do not represent me.”

The statement was posted to CUAD’s Instagram but has since been removed. An apology James posted on Twitter was also taken down.

Late last month, James filed a lawsuit against Columbia in a New York State court, saying the university had violated his rights by misusing the student conduct system to discriminate against and harass him. Less than two weeks later, CUAD released its statement retracting the apology. 

The retraction was published a day after the first anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 invasion of Israel, and said CUAD’s original statement in April had been written by the group’s organizers, not James himself. It cast the statement as a betrayal of the group’s principles, and offered an apology to James, saying he had been subjected to discrimination.

The apology “does not represent Khymani or CUAD’s values or political lines,” the statement said. “CUAD organizers were complicit in not maintaining our political line.”

James thanked the group for the statement, writing on Twitter, “I never wrote the neo-liberal apology posted in late April, and I’m glad we’ve set the record straight.”

CUAD is an alliance of student organizations led by Columbia’s chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace. Both groups were suspended from campus last year for violating Columbia’s protest policies, but have continued to operate via CUAD. Columbia JVP also posted the Tuesday statement on its Instagram page.

CUAD is now one of multiple student groups in the city that have used violent language in their protest of the Israel-Hamas war. In August, weeks ahead of the beginning of the school year, CUAD hailed the Oct. 7 attack and posted, “We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.”

Columbia disavowed the Tuesday post in a statement to the New York Jewish Week.

“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 said.

The university’s community standards state that “threats of violence, or the inducement of others to engage in violence” are not covered by free speech protections. James had made the comments in a meeting with university staffers about a previous post in which he had said, “I fight to kill.”

The statement was posted one day after pro-Palestinian students led by CUAD staged a protest walkout on the one-year anniversary of Oct. 7 that included at least one sign with red triangles, a symbol Hamas used in videos of the Oct. 7 attack to identify Israeli targets. Columbia’s SJP, meanwhile, hailed the Hamas attack, according to the Columbia Spectator. 

Jewish students staged a commemoration event Monday on campus, setting up giant milk cartons with the names and faces of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Outside the campus gates, the pro-Israel group End Jew Hatred staged a protest attended mostly by non-students who feel Columbia has not done enough to combat campus antisemitism. One day earlier, the former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg hosted an on-campus screening of “Screams Before Silence,” her documentary on sexual violence against Israelis during the Hamas attack. 

Columbia was rocked by anti-Israel protests last year, peaking with a student encampment at the end of the spring semester that launched a movement of similar encampments at schools across the United States. The university called police onto campus after the protesters forcibly took over an administrative building, resulting in dozens of arrests, most of which were dismissed, and causing widespread controversy.

The turmoil has continued since then. Columbia’s president resigned in August, after three deans resigned under criticism for sending antisemitic text messages during a panel on antisemitism. Pro-Palestinian vandals also defaced the apartment building of a university administrator, and the university restricted access to campus due to “potential disruptions.”

The university’s antisemitism task force reported in August that Jewish students faced “crushing” discrimination that “affected the entire university community.” A House congressional committee is investigating antisemitism at the university.