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I'M A JEWISH STUDENT AT COLUMBIA. CAMPUS AFTER OCTOBER 7 IS DISTURBING

Dec 08, 2023 at 11:04 AM EST


00:08
Protests Erupt at Columbia University After Barring of Two Pro-Palestinian
Groups
By Sonya Poznansky

225
Share



I can't even begin to explain the feeling of October 7, the most devastating and
depressing day of my life.

Immediately, I scrolled through social media and saw peers posting within hours
of the news breaking that the Israelis "had it coming after 75 years of
oppression against Palestinians" and telling people not to be shocked by the
violence.

I'm a student at Columbia's School of General Studies, which offers
non-traditional tracks for university, and I'm on the pre-med track. I'm there
because I did the school's dual degree program with Tel Aviv University in
Israel, where I spent two years before coming back to the U.S.



Just a few days after the attack, a student protest was organized on campus by
an anti-Israel group that said radical things like "glory to our martyrs" and
praised October 7 as a "historic" victory.

Many people I know who otherwise would never have said those things attended
because they had no other outlet to protest. This was the first step in their
radicalization.

The protest was in the wake of so much morning for Jewish and Israeli students.


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Sonya Poznansky is a student at Columbia in New York. She is troubled by what's
happening on her campus and others since the October 7 attack on Israel by
Hamas. Sonya Poznansky

I had a close friend at the music festival. We hadn't heard from him for a few
days and were hoping he was still alive and that maybe his phone had just died.
He had escaped to a nearby kibbutz and hid in a bomb shelter.

But Hamas terrorists threw grenades into the shelter, dragged his body out, and
beat him to death. One of his friends survived and gave testimony; another was
kidnapped into Gaza.



The campus protests were happening when so many of us had just lost friends or
family and feeling utter grief at the most violent day against Jews since the
Holocaust. It was unclear what they were even protesting at that point.

We were face to face with people shouting "intifada" and "from the river to the
sea" as we stood in complete silence for 22 minutes, spending one second for
each victim of October 7.

Sign up for Newsweek’s daily headlines

It was mentally disturbing. I had to shut off my reactions to their shouts and
cheers. Internalizing it would have driven me into a depression.



A lot of our students were made to feel like they had no room whatsoever to
mourn, and that they didn't even have the right to be grieving.

Within literal hours we were forced to go from grieving the most traumatic
losses to defending our right to grieve and even exist.

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Much of the antisemitism on campus is not how you might traditionally define it.
There have been physical assaults on visibly Jewish students, which is terrible,
but they're relatively few in number.

It's a non-traditional interpretation, but I feel it is antisemitic to tell Jews
that they have no right to grieve their losses. I've had many people tell me
that Zionists are to blame for the world's antisemitism.

How could you blame the vast majority of Jews for the bigotry that is
perpetrated against them? As if there was never antisemitism in the world before
the modern state of Israel was declared independent. This is in and of itself
antisemitic.



A lot of us are psychologically still dealing with grief that we were never
allowed to process.

Columbia has a lot of students who are Israeli veterans because of the dual
degree program. After October 7, some of my closest friends had to pick up and
leave, disrupting their young lives and academic careers.

They received death threats from Columbia students for going back and fighting
in the IDF. As if the threat of death on the front lines is not enough.



But many feel morally compelled to protect their country after a terrorist
invasion and they are needed; they had well-established roles in the IDF or were
in charge of units.

To know they might come back to a hostile campus after being on the front lines
of battle is really upsetting.


PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE

I had the most amazing two years of my life at Tel Aviv University (TAU)
studying life sciences.



TAU is incredibly diverse with thousands of Arab students and I made close
friends with some of them. I loved that opportunity. There was a very peaceful
coexistence between Jewish, Arab, and Muslim students at TAU.

I remember Muslim students held a big party for Eid after Ramadan and they
invited all of us. We danced together. It sounds idealistic or unbelievable, but
it was beautiful and real.

After October 7, I got messages from my Arab and Palestinian friends asking if I
was OK and expressing sorrow for our loss. They did that much more quickly than
any of my non-Jewish friends here in the U.S., and that upsets me and gives me
hope at the same time.



There's a motion from anti-Israel groups at Columbia to close down the dual
degree program with TAU on the grounds that it is collaborating with an
"apartheid regime". It's just not true.

What's not properly understood is how impactful the multi-denominational and
cross-cultural connections students like me make at TAU.

If I hadn't done the program, I probably would never have met Palestinians or
Arab-Israelis in this close way. My professors were Arab-Israeli or Palestinian.
We just coexisted and were there to learn and to have a good time.




THE SAME BOMB SHELTER

I was in Tel Aviv during an Israeli operation after tensions in the West Bank
and Sheikh Jarrah. Hamas and the PIJ launched rockets into Israel, and Israel
struck terror targets in Gaza in return.

I remember during the day there was a large protest by the Arab-Israeli and
Palestinian students at TAU condemning settlers in the West Bank and Israeli
police for using inappropriate force at the al-Aqsa mosque.

That night, Tel Aviv was bombed and all the Jewish, Palestinian, and Arab
students were in shelters together hiding from this attack by Hamas.



It was mind-blowing for everyone; at the most divisive moment for Arabs and
Jews, here we all were together in the same bomb shelter, hiding from an attack
we as civilians wanted nothing to do with.

Around that time, I did have some difficult conversations with my Palestinian
friends, but I respect them so much that I take them for their word about their
experiences and opinions because they live it.

We never really argued. We both understood that we are entitled to how we
perceive our experiences. We just shared our conflicting ideologies about what
to do. But there was never disrespect.



That is so different from Columbia. I can't go into conversations with people on
the same level of mutual understanding or respect because they have never
experienced what it's like to live under an oppressive terrorist regime or next
to it.

They just regurgitate whatever they've read online, which is usually very
biased. They don't realize that their anti-Israel protesting only emboldens
Hamas, which does a major disservice to my Israeli-Arab and Palestinian friends.

What they think supports Palestinians only endangers them, and this angers me
beyond anything else.



At TAU, there was no convincing to be done. We just shared our different
experiences or different opinions on how to move forward, and sometimes they
didn't align.

Some moments felt tribal, each of us feeling some larger responsibility to our
respective "group". But I acknowledged their experiences and that I have
absolutely no right to tell them they're wrong.

At Columbia, there's a huge movement for making the Palestinian cause an issue
of intersectionality, and asserting that no minority group is free until they're
all free.



Putting every single conflict in the framework of oppressed and oppressor leaves
no room for nuance when discussing these issues.

Jewish and Israeli students should be doing more to rally allyship in the same
way that anti-Israel groups have.

I firmly believe Zionism is an indigenous rights movement, and I think if Jewish
and Israeli students were to push for understanding of the narrative—that Jews
are indigenous to Israel—it could be powerful for allyship between indigenous
groups.



It makes you reflect on how real or obvious the oppressed-oppressor relationship
is here. There's far too much nuance in the history to just be black and white
about it. Ignoring those nuances in any context will only push us backward, not
forwards.


JEWISH PRIDE AS A SHIELD

Something has changed since October 7. I don't know when we'll return to just
having consistently normal thoughts throughout the day. It's all still so fresh
in everyone's minds. Time is passing slowly.

But I sense a shift in the Jewish community. The atmosphere is much stronger.
There is a lot of pride in being Jewish, almost to shield against how much
hatred there is in the world for Jews. I use my pride in being Jewish to ignore
how much people might hate me for it.

I've made some incredible friendships in the Jewish community at Columbia;
people who I might otherwise have never talked to. The small silver lining is
the number of supportive new connections with people who understand me and feel
the way I do.

In a lot of cases in history, Jewish communities come back stronger after
experiencing trauma.

It has become obvious how little many non-Jewish people necessarily care about
Jewish grief and how we're doing. I do have some incredibly strong non-Jewish
allies, who I love, but in general in America, it seems like if something
doesn't affect you directly then you just don't care about it.

This is why intersectionality is so important—it makes people believe that these
issues truly affect them when parallels are drawn between two conflicts or
struggles that otherwise have nothing at all to do with each other.


PAINFUL REALIZATION

I wasn't surprised by the Congressional hearing with college presidents on
antisemitism. Those presidents have such tight talking space and are given
certain things that they can say, and it was obvious they didn't want to say
anything outside of those few lines.

It's upsetting because the answers should be clear, in my opinion. But, just as
in many cases in history, Jews have had to come to a very painful realization:
We're going to have our strong allies, but, at the end of the day, it is us who
will have to stand up for ourselves.

I'm incredibly proud of the Jewish organizations on campus because they're doing
what school administrators can't and won't do by standing up for themselves,
speaking out, and being present for other Jewish students in mourning or having
difficulty reconciling what's going on in the world.


Students participate in a protest outside of the Columbia University campus on
November 15, 2023 in New York City. The university suspended two student
organizations, Students for Justice in Palestine, and Jewish Voices for Peace,
for violating university policies. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

But I know some students who really wish university administrators were taking a
stronger stance against antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation.

The anti-Israel groups on campus at Columbia blatantly broke university policy
in such an easily avoidable way. There are simple rules and steps you have to
follow to get events authorized to be held on campus. Student groups I'm in
follow the same ones.

They went through with an event that was not authorized by Columbia
administrators to be held on campus, and so they were suspended.

They have since started protesting the suspension rather than protesting for
justice in Palestine, making this entirely about themselves. I find the
entitlement a bit embarrassing.

Columbia in its statement about the suspension also cited "threatening rhetoric
and intimidation." I appreciated that. But I wish that they were suspended on
grounds of antisemitic speech and rhetoric.

At the end of the day, they broke university policy and that's why they were
suspended.

The suspended groups have advertised and taken part in other similar events with
allied groups on campus, and, as far as I'm aware, nothing has been done about
that. I think Jewish students perceive this as administrators not standing by
their word.

None of this is surprising to me, and so it's not upsetting because, again, we
have a strong enough community to be able to stand up for ourselves.


BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS

I have conflicting feelings about the future.

On the trajectory we're headed, I don't know if Jews alone will be able to stand
up for themselves within America. We'll need more and stronger allies in
universities and in government.

One thing I grapple with is whether this situation is bad enough that I should
just get out. My great-grandmother, after whom I got my name, left Poland well
before the war started and went to Mandatory Palestine, where my grandfather was
then born.

I wonder what warning signs she saw and if she would've seen the same signs now
that I might be missing. I know a lot of students here feel excited to leave
Columbia and be done with it.

But there's a very strong argument to be made for staying in America and in
American universities, to have a presence here and be able to speak for
ourselves.

So, despite how uncomfortable it is, we need to build a stronger Jewish presence
in America and globally to give light to what we're going through and forge
greater allyship outside of Israel.

There are a lot of movements that started in the Middle East but are now
branching into America that are focused on Arab and Israeli relations, even just
interpersonal relationships, bringing people together to just talk about their
experiences and life, and just to know each other.

We have a huge need for that. A lot of hatred is based on ignorance and if
people don't have empathy for "the other", they never will unless they get to
meet and talk to them.

I have quite a few Arab and Muslim friends at Columbia who aren't necessarily
pro or anti-Israel. But because we're friends they respect me like I respect my
Arab friends at TAU, and know I am entitled to my own perception of my
experiences.

Those relationships in America are incredibly important. I'm working on building
some alliances within Columbia between Jewish and Muslim students to just get to
know each other and push past the polarization forced upon us by external forces
like social media or the loudest people at rallies.

I don't know if I'm hopeful or pessimistic. I think the future will be entirely
what we make of it.

Sonya Poznansky is a student at Columbia University in New York.

All views expressed are the author's own.

Do you have a unique experience or personal story to share? Email the My Turn
team at myturn@newsweek.com.

Read more from My Turn
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UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections
in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections
in the search for common ground.


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ABOUT THE WRITER

Sonya Poznansky


Sonya Poznansky is a student at Columbia University in New York.

Sonya Poznansky is a student at Columbia University in New York.

To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.







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