As the crowed swarmed me, one student yelled, “He’s subhuman!” Another student shouted, “I can’t wait for Hamas to come to your door … al-Qassam is going to kill all your friends for no reason.”
I pointed with pride to the red Kippah, Jewish skullcap, that adorned my head. It was soon forcefully ripped off by a “peaceful” student who dug his nails into my scalp as he pulled it off, along with some hair. This was one of three assaults I was subjected to at Columbia University.
I am a “professional Jew.” It takes a lot to unnerve me. As an Israeli Olympian and captain of an Israeli bobsled team that is majority non-Jewish (Druze comprise most of our team,) my job is to represent the nation and country of Israel. Representing Israel for the past 10 years has been the greatest honor of my life, and it has given me a rather unique perspective on the mutating virus of Jew hate that has become so visible these past six months.
Jew hate is a rather unique form of hatred. It is a super-virus that mutates to gain entry to its host in the form of whatever grievance or bias that host might have. There isn’t a grievance that cannot be blamed on the Jews as a means of alleviating oneself or a system of the rightful blame. Jews either sit atop the power structure, pull the strings behind the structure, or lie beneath the structure to destabilize it. In my travels, I have experienced Jew hatred from socialists, capitalists, centrists, communists, you name it. These new virulently hateful protests come as no shock to me. Quite the opposite. At institutions like Columbia, which foster almost exclusively a culture of victimhood and oppression narratives, blind Jew hatred is almost the foregone conclusion.
Academia has always been a welcome home to an intellectual “elite” that are unable to make meaningful contributions to a market economy. Their talents are marketable, in a way, only at an institution that demands merely the regurgitation of information — if not for the fact that it would be impossible to charge $70,000 per year for a YouTube education, these skills are even less relevant to a market economy today. And so universities are especially attractive to a subset of adults whose skill set grows ever less marketable by the day. By definition, these are the folks most drawn to grievances and jealousy. Outside of the bubble of intellectual elitism, they have no way of supporting themselves. It is hard to make money in an office when your subject matter expertise is “oppression.”
As I pointed to the Kippah on my head, my neck still stinging from having been clawed earlier by a student who called me a “white devil,” I recalled why a Kippah was so important to me. I do not wear it for a religious purpose. I wear it as an act of pride and identification. In response to two rank anti-Semitic episodes at the 2018 Olympics, I was the first to wear a Kippah in Olympic competition. Jew hatred seeks to dehumanize, delegitimize, and intimidate Jews. But more than anything, it seeks to eradicate Jewish identity. That is the one constant of all forms of Jew hatred — the end goal is always a “final solution.” Being rid of Jews. And in some ways these protests have succeeded in their intent. It takes a lot to shock me — but seeing a Columbia student remove his Kippah before exiting the subway tunnel at the site of the protests left a mark that is truly difficult to put into words.
In the past six months, I have set up picnic tables in parks in New York and across North America to engage in a dialogue with folks and to debate. I have shown up to many protests. What I have observed is obscene. A complete subversion of Western values encouraged by the very “oppression-Olympics” loving faculty that have stoked hatred and division amongst our youth for decades. Chants of “death to America” are routine. “Go back to Poland” is shouted by the same “tolerant” young adults who champion unfettered migration. International students lead chants in Arabic about violent, terrorist action to topple the “Zionist” regime, which by extension includes the United States which, they say, is “controlled by the Jews.”
Many of the protesters have no idea what their demands are. All they know is they stand on the “side of justice” and where they stand for justice, all means of fighting evil are therefore acceptable, even violence. When I was shoved to the ground and kicked I have no doubt that whoever assaulted me believed that such action, while illegal, vile, and hateful was striking a blow against injustice. To strike me, a visibly Jewish man, was to strike against the evil they had been told I represented. The West needs to be aware of the implications of this mentality, for Western values have made the United States and other countries like it far more successful than those without those values. Eventually, these students, and those who come after them, will view a blow to Western values and structures as a blow for “justice.”
In a few weeks, these protests will be no more. The privileged students will return home for the summer without consequences for their actions, and this moment will die down. But the environment at the institutions will remain. The noxious atmosphere of grievance ideology that always views Jews as an oppressor will persist. Make no mistake — this is not a “sudden explosion.” This is systemic. Pervasive. It will take much time and spine to root out. And if the past six months are any indication, we will not succeed.
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A.J. Edelman is an Israeli Olympian and captain of Israel’s Edelman Bobsled Team, a mixed Jewish/Druze team training for the 2026 Olympic Games ranked 3rd on the North American Circuit. When not sliding down mountains he is a writer and commentator.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.