On February 20, 2025, in a grotesque display of their continued psychological warfare and as part of ongoing ceasefire and hostage release negotiations, Hamas handed over bodies of three murdered Israeli hostages: young children Ariel and Kfir Bibas, and an octogenarian grandfather, Oded Lifshitz; in a grave violation of the deal and in a sickening twist, Hamas did not release the body of Ariel and Kfir's mother, Shiri.
Watching from the front row, reveling in the suffering, was none other than Mohammed Abu Warda, a convicted terrorist serving 48 life sentences, who was recently released by Israel in its painful pursuit of retrieving hostages held by Hamas. Abu Warda is not just any terrorist; he is the mastermind behind the 1996 Jerusalem bus bombing that killed 26 innocent people, including Columbia University students Sara Duker and Matthew Eisenfeld—a brilliant environmental science student from Barnard College and an aspiring rabbi from the Jewish Theological Seminary.
As part of the exchange releasing Abu Warda, on February 15, 2025, Israel secured the release of hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen—son of former Columbia visiting professor Jonathan Dekel-Chen—after nearly 500 harrowing days in Hamas captivity.
Since October 7, 2023, Columbia’s campus has been engulfed in protests, inflammatory rhetoric, and an unsettling surge of antisemitism. How there can be two sides of this debate is beyond comprehension. This is not a complex issue. It is a choice between those who stand for peace and humanity—with young children, with a grandfather, with Sara, Matthew, and Sagui—and those who stand for terrorism and barbarism—with Mohammed.
Students who stand with Israel are nothing short from admirable
To the students who have steadfastly supported Israel in its moral and just war efforts: Your courage in standing for what is right amidst a rising tide of hostility is nothing short of admirable. You have resisted the moral cowardice that has infected much of Columbia's campus, and history will commend your courage. Even more impressive is that you do so despite the moral bankruptcy of Columbia’s administration, which has repeatedly failed to defend its Jewish students from harassment and intimidation.
To Columbia’s faculty and administrators: Academic freedom is not a shield for moral abdication. If you champion free speech, wield it with integrity to denounce terrorism unequivocally. Silence in the face of terror is not neutrality; it is a dereliction of duty.
To the members of Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voices for Peace (a grotesque misnomer for those who promote violence), Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and others who rally behind Team Mohammed: When you chant “violence is the only path forward," you are glorifying the murder of Sara and Matthew and the kidnapping of Sagui. You are celebrating the kidnapping, torture, and butchering of innocent children, parents, and grandparents. When you shout “Globalize the intifada!” you are endorsing not just past atrocities but future violence against Jews worldwide, including in the United States.
Your allegiance to a cause that sanctifies bloodshed is a stain on your humanity. If you genuinely believe in these causes, reflect deeply on the moral abyss you have embraced. And if your support is merely performative or driven by peer pressure, know that you are pawns in a dangerous ideology that would discard you as readily as it did the lives of innocent mothers, children and elderly, and fellow Columbia students.
To those at Columbia, and on campuses elsewhere, who remain indifferent—who just want to focus on classes, social lives, and future careers: Your desire for normalcy is entirely understandable and while we sympathize with you, we also encourage you to heed the post-World War II words of regret from German pastor and theologian Martin Niemöller: “First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist…then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
Today’s targets are Jews; tomorrow, it could be you. This is your moment to educate yourself on a critical issue of our time and become engaged.
To all Columbia students, faculty, and administrators: Now is the time to reject the moral rot of excusing barbarism and supporting terrorism. Instead, act to honor the lives of those like Sagui and the legacies of those like Sara and Matthew as well as Ariel, Kfir and Oded. Stand with humanity and on the right side of history. Choose moral clarity over moral equivalence. Choose courage over complacency. History will judge us all—may it judge us favorably.
David Friedman is an alumnus of Columbia College and served as the United States Ambassador to Israel from 2017 to 2021. He now chairs the Friedman Center for Peace through Strength.
Ezra Gontownik is an alumnus of Columbia College and former Columbia College Student Council President. Ezra is the founder and managing partner of private investment firm Rockpost Capital, an advisory board member of the Combat Antisemitism Movement, and the co-founder and president of Kol HaNearim, a nonprofit supporting at-risk Israeli youth.