Pro-Hamas organization leads tent city in talks with university
The anti-Israel tent encampment at Columbia University is being led by a cohort of controversial student leaders, some of whom express solidarity with Hamas and say “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”
These students are the ones negotiating directly with leaders of the Ivy League university, holding the campus hostage with dozens of tents and hundreds of protesters splayed out on the lawn in Morningside Heights.
Khymani James, 20, is one of the most prominent voices behind Columbia United Apartheid Divest, which is demanding that the university divest from any company that does business with the Israeli military, including a wide swath of the Fortune 500.
James was banned from campus Friday in response to a resurfaced video that showed them saying “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”
James issued a half-hearted apology, placing the onus of the controversy on “far-right agitators.”
Columbia did not make clear if barring James meant that the student was suspended or permanently expelled.
Before attending the university, James made headlines in their native Boston as a student representative for the Boston School Committee.
“The ultimate destination is Congress,” James told the Bay State Banner in 2021, noting that they also hoped to work with farleft The Squad member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-BronxQueens).
James resigned from the committee over “adultist” policies in March 2021, and was later filmed saying, “I, too, hate white people” while discussing two former members accused of discrimination, according to The Boston Globe.
When another The Squad member, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), visited the Columbia campus Thursday with her daughter, suspended Barnard College student Isra Hirsi, she was spotted shaking hands with James.
The students also forced university officials to wave the white flag on trying to break up the camp. Late Thursday, the administrators dropped a deadline they had attempted to enforce that demanded the protesters leave by Friday morning.
The protest leaders later crowed that they were winning.
“We are not actually negotiating on the state of the encampment as of now,” Palestinian graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, one of the protesters’ lead negotiators, told The Post on Friday afternoon.
Instead, the negotiations were starting with Columbia’s addressing their divestment demands, they said.
Troubling history
The protest continued apace on Saturday, with dozens of students milling around the camp, which was stocked with snacks, including a “nut station” and feminine hygiene products.
One protester boasted that she had been suspended, but was still on campus, although the university is only letting people with active school IDs beyond the gates.
Khalil, who did his undergraduate study in Beirut, told the Columbia Daily Spectator that he has not participated in any of the protests over the past week and a half because he is worried about losing his student visa that allows him to remain in the US.
Khalil was a political affairs officer with UNRWA — the United Nations agency that supports Palestinian refugees — from June through November, according to LinkedIn.
UNRWA lost hundreds of millions of dollars in funding this year when an Israeli dossier suggested that its workers were linked to the Oct. 7 terrorist attack.
Earlier this week, an independent review commissioned by the UN announced that a nine-week probe found a lack of serious evidence that the group had legitimate connections with Hamas.
Columbia United Apartheid Divest and its leaders were disciplined for extremist statements even before the tent camp went up.
In March, organizers hosted a “Resistance 101” event, during which one of the speakers insisted that “there is nothing wrong with being a fighter in Hamas.”
Three students were suspended for the event, including postgrad Aidan Parisi, 27, and Maryam Alwan, 21, a senior.
Although they are technically barred from campus, Parisi has since shared multiple social media updates from the encampment as well as hateful, anti-Israel messages.
“Que viva la intifada,” Parisi wrote in an Instagram post addressing their original suspension — “long live the rebellion.”
The camp continues with no end in sight and little sign that Columbia officials are willing to once again call in the NYPD to remove the protesters.