Welcome to the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” a sprawling tent city with a first aid center, a counseling tent, a “People’s Library for Liberated Learning,” a writing center, an art corner, a media corner, and a “laundry area” for drying clothes after a rainfall. ...

Columbia students are camping out in their quad to stand up to “the violent Zionist settler entity” of Israel, a student named “W” told reporters at a Tuesday press conference. Another student named Khymani James, who identified himself as the spokesperson for the encampment, claimed that the school has financial ties that are “directly funding the genocide that is happening in Palestine.” 

Genocide is a word that gets thrown around incessantly among the college students. There is infinite anger toward Israel, and none toward Hamas, the terrorist group that murdered 1,200 people on October 7, 2023, and still holds 129 hostages. There is no mention of the 500,000 Syrians so far murdered by the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad. Not a single person expresses outrage over the Uyghurs of China, who are facing an actual genocide and forced labor simply because they are Muslim.