Jewish Activist on the Abandonment of the Jews

Zina Rakhamilova is a social media activist, focused on Israel and Jewish causes. She has looked at the ever-spreading campus protests in America, denouncing Israel and praising Hamas, the protesters setting up their tent encampments on at least forty campuses, from where they spew their antisemitic rants. She has concluded that the Jews in America can count for their protection only on themselves. More on her disturbing conclusions can be found here: “The masks have come off at Columbia: Students turning on Jewish peers – opinion,” by Zina Rakhamilova, Jerusalem Post, April 25, 2024:

It feels like the 1930s because it has once again become normal and even trendy to be antisemitic. The words of fear that are coming out of Diaspora Jewish communities are likely what we would have heard in Germany when the Nazis were coming into power.

The rabbi at Columbia University sent a message to the Jewish students that read: The events of the last few days, especially last night, have made it clear that Columbia University’s Public Safety and the NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy. It deeply pains me to say that I would strongly recommend you return home as soon as possible and remain home until the reality in and around campus has dramatically improved.”

This message came shortly after days of protests at the Columbia campus in parallel to the school president’s testimony before Congress about the antisemitism happening on her campus. Over two hundred pro-Hamas students and faculty gathered at Columbia’s main campus in what could only be described as an antisemitic hate rally. Protesters set up “liberated zones,” pitched tents, chanted antisemitic slurs, and harassed Jewish students before the NYPD had to come onto the main campus to arrest multiple people.

Protesters shouted, “Never forget the 7th of October. That will happen not one more time, not five more, not ten, not a hundred, not a thousand, but ten thousand times. The 7th of October will be every day for you.”

Instead of wanting people to forget the unbelievable atrocities committed by 3,000 Hamas operatives on October 7, when they smashed into Israel in cars, on motorbikes, and on paragliders, and proceeded to rape, torture, mutilate, and murder 1,200 Israelis, and to kidnap 263 who were taken back to Gaza, those campus protesters are proud of what Hamas did on October 7, and promised — speaking for Hamas — that there will be in the future “not five, not ten, not a hundred, not a thousand, but ten thousand” such days when such atrocities — which Hamas calls “acts of resistance” — will be repeated.

At one point, a student who wore a scarf to cover her face held up a sign that read Al Qassam’s (the Hamas military wing) next target and stood next to Jewish students who were counter-protesting with Israeli and American flags.

The sign indicating the next target of Hamas’ military wing was held up by a pro-Hamas protester just over the heads of Jewish students staging a counter-protest. Its meaning was clear: you Jews in America will not be spared. After the Jews in Israel have been taken care of — that is, killed or expelled — and the Jewish state replaced with a 23rd Arab one, American Jews will be next. There is no safe place for Jews, anywhere.

Protesters chanted to bomb Tel Aviv and said, “We don’t want no Zionists here,” and some even yelled, “We are Hamas.” Students Supporting Israel at Columbia University even stated that the campus environment had become so hostile that many faculty members chose to cancel classes and that some students were afraid to go to campus altogether….

“Bomb Tel Aviv” is a call for genocide. Bomb the second largest Jewish city in the world (after New York City), and wantonly kill everyone in it. And “we don’t want no Zionists here” means, since 95% of American Jews declare themselves to be Zionists, that “we don’t want any Jews here in America. Get out.”

The Columbia administration kept issuing ultimatums to the students at the tent encampments, telling them to pack up and leave. It issued one for April 23, and then another for April 24, and still a third for April 26. Finally the NYPD was called in. Shafik has not shown any signs that she intends to punish the students for their antisemitic hate speech. She ought to be willing, and so should all other college presidents similarly challenged by these protesters, to expel students who refused to disband, or who engaged in antisemitic harassment of Jewish classmates. Why did Shafik treat these students with kid gloves?

At the University of Southern California, students had found Jewish students with mezuzot on campus. They ripped them off, and pro-Hamas students blocked, pushed, and attacked Jewish students at Yale University during a protest. Protesters at Yale also cheered when the American flag was removed from the campus flagpole, as many of these pro-terror rallies include the chants of “Death to America.”…

The chants of “Death to America” at these pro-Hamas rallies should not surprise. America deserves “death,” in the view of these protesters, for a host of reasons, but especially, nowadays, because it supports Israel. And the kind of people who support America, that settler-colonial state built on land stolen from the Indians, also support Israel, that apartheid settler-colonial state built on land stolen from the Palestinian people. The Iranians reached that conclusion first; for decades they have been denouncing both “the Great Satan” — America — and “the Little Satan” —Israel — in the same breath. America is also perceived, by Muslims and their willing collaborators on college campuses, as the main obstacle to the spread of Islam across our giddy globe. And it is now Islam, not Communism, that threatens to undermine the civilization of the West.

Universities have to be quick to call in the police at the first sign of student protests denouncing the Jewish state and praising Hamas, so that they may disperse crowds before they can solidify. And the punishments for violence and antisemitic behavior by students should be made clear — they must include expulsion from the university, with no hope of being readmitted.

While I [Zina Rakhamihova] been fortunate to know some incredible non-Jewish allies, the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7, how people outside the Jewish community abandoned their Jewish friends, and the disgusting support that Hamas received across the world showed me that in the end, we only have each other.

Is her gloomy conclusion warranted? Is it really true that “people outside the Jewish community abandoned their Jewish friends”? Haven’t there been non-Jews showing up to join counter-protests? And what does it mean to say that “we [Jews] can depend only on ourselves”? Last I looked, the American government approved another $14 billion of military and financial aid for Israel, after a vote of overwhelming support, coming just as much from Congressmen who represent states where the Jewish population is minuscule, as from New York, Florida, and California, where the Jewish population is significant. In fact, the pro-Hamas anti-Israel protests in our cities, blocking pedestrian and vehicular traffic on streets, highways, and bridges, are now in danger of boomeranging, causing frustration and rising anger against those whose protests have been holding everyone up. These protesters, on and off campuses, are not winning supporters; they are instead alienating the great mass of the American public.