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Police and activists clash on Atlanta campus amid Gaza protests - BBC News Police and activists clash on Atlanta campus amid Gaza protests - BBC News
(32 minutes later)
Bernd Debusmann Jr Sarah Smith
Reporting from Columbia North America editor at Columbia University
I’ve heard nothing at Columbia University that could be described as antisemitic.
I just spoke to Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a vocal critic of Israel whose daughter was suspended from Barnard College last week after being arrested at a demonstration. But speaking to Jewish students on campus, they say they have heard different chants and slogans over the last six months - before the TV cameras arrived - including calls for a global intifada, which they interpret to mean Israelis and Jews should be killed.
In response to a question from the BBC, Omar said she believes it was Columbia's move a week ago to authorise police to clear the encampment that ultimately led to the spread of the protests nationwide. One Jewish student, who didn’t want to be named, had tears in her eyes as she told me she now feels deeply unwelcome on campus.
"This is a movement that started with only 70 students," she said. The fact that an unauthorised protest is being allowed to continue makes her feel that the university authorities are on the side of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators and therefore not on the side of Jews.
"And because Columbia University decided to crack down on them and violate their first amendment, this has now spread nationally and internationally." One wall in the middle of campus has been covered with photographs of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, and a sign saying: “Bring them home NOW!"
She spoke after apparently leading a prayer with protesters on Columbia's campus. The Jewish students say that’s one thing they have never heard the protesters demand.
Some of the demonsrators held up towels to obscure BBC reporters' view of what was happening.
In 2019 the congresswoman apologised after tweeting that US support for Israel was "all about the Benjamins baby", a slang term for $100 bills, a post that drew accusations of antisemitism.
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