Anti-Israel Columbia University students and New York City activists held a lecture off campus on learning the methods and lessons of the First Intifada amid outrage and controversy about the event.The Saturday event was organized by the Columbia University Apartheid Divest group and the Palestinian Youth Movement New York City at the People’s Forum to build “the methods employed to sustain the revolution” and the lessons one “can draw from this historic uprising.”CUAD wrote in a Sunday Instagram story that the event was extremely successful despite “mass coordinated Zionist repression and harassment.”
Columbia Assistant Professor Shai Davidai and other activists protested the Intifada event, and according to FreedomNews.TV, the academic was removed from the area.The university stated on Thursday that CUAD was not “recognized, authorized, or supported” by the institution and that it rejected “materials that glorify violence.”
“Promoting violence or terror is not tolerated in our community and is antithetical to what our university stands for,” said Columbia.
Richie Torres calls to cancel
Democrat Congressman Ritchie Torres had called for the cancellation of the event, with the New York politician and other pro-Israel figures saying on X/Twitter on Friday that the now-deleted original event advertisement had included a shattered bayonet and stone image. The allegedly used image comes from a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist group poster.
A joint statement from the involved activist groups said that “racist lies” had been spread about the event, referencing a viral image of the advertisement with text overlayed explaining the event was about how to kill Jews.“These bad-faith actors have circulated doctored versions of the event flyer, falsely accused the organizers of promoting violence against Jewish people, and publicly called for law enforcement action based on these blatant fabrications,” said the groups.Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackman shared the news of the event on X on Thursday, claiming that the organizers had described on the posters that the session was how to “un-live Jews.”Ackman called on US law enforcement to review what he called a “terrorist training session.”The People’s Forum said on X on Saturday that they would not be stopped from teaching the “history of the struggle of the Palestinian people against Israeli apartheid, occupation, and genocide.“Through [the] study of the history of resistance to oppression, we build our movements for liberation today,” said the People’s Forum. “We are not intimidated by right-wing slander but stay focused on our task: to build and grow our movements today.”