In the US, the Columbia campus is under siege in the wake of the war in Gaza.

Milan Klein was preparing to celebrate Pesah, the Jewish Passover, with her family on Monday, April 22. But that didn't stop her from continuing to mobilize. With a Palestinian flag painted on his left cheek and the word “Jew” written on his right cheek, this 21-year-old philosophy and comparative literature student is one of several Jewish students at Columbia University supporting the movement against the war in Gaza. . The New York campus, which has a strong community of Jewish students (5,000 out of 36,000), has been torn for months by the war between Israel and Hamas.

The site was turned into an entrenched encampment by Monday morning, with police filtering out students and the devastating suspension of classes, before pro-Palestinian students were arrested in the evening.

“It's like there's been a military coup on campus. We don't see our leaders anymore, they're emailing us saying what's happening is terrible. There are police all over campus. But now a lot of students are telling themselves it's our campus.Milan Klein believes she wants to take advantage of the opportunity to be heard. “It is our responsibility as Jews to stand up and say what is happening [à Gaza] a genocide”She believes and accuses “Zionists are using this moment to push their agenda and threaten Palestinian and Arab students on campus.”.

But at the center of these tensions, Jewish students also feel threatened, verbally assaulted and sometimes physically threatened, hearing anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic chants from their dormitories located next to the campus's central square. The issue took a political turn, with a campus and faculty committed to the left, a generally uncomfortable Jewish community and Republicans happy to do battle with progressive universities and mask any criticism of Israel.

Between grotesque and McCarthyism

On Monday, the US President himself intervened in the matter and condemned it “Anti-Semitic Demonstrations” On campus, just like that “Those who do not understand what is happening to the Palestinians”. At Yale, about sixty students were arrested for defending the Palestinian cause. Across the country, other campuses are rallying.

The crisis in Colombia crystallized on Wednesday, April 17. On that day, the university's president, Nemat Shafiq, 61, an Egyptian-born economist who has been in office since the summer of 2023, was interviewed by a congressional commission that led to the downfall of presidents in December 2023. Harvard and Pennsylvania. Asked by Elise Stefanik, Trump's elected official, if calling for the genocide of Jews violates their university's internal regulations, they responded: “depending on context”. Nemat Shafiq is determined not to make the mistake of his colleagues. “Yes, it defies him.”She answers the question.

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