One of the leaders of the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, Khymani James, is walking back comments that were posted on Instagram last January where he says that "Zionists don't deserve to live" and when discussing fighting a Zionist, he wrote, “I don’t fight to injure or for there to be a winner or a loser, I fight to kill."
James was being interviewed by a school administrator who was investigating other comments James had made.
“Do you see why that is problematic in any way,"? asked the administrator. Mr. James replied, “No.”
Mr. James received a slap on the wrist instead of being banned from campus. Better late than never, Columbia has now banned James from campus.
However, it's not clear if he's been suspended or expelled.
Other protest groups are a little smarter, condemning the comments. They claimed that "one student’s statements do not reflect the tenor of the movement as a whole," according to the New York Times.
Early Friday morning, Mr. James posted a statement on social media addressing his comments. “What I said was wrong,” he wrote. “Every member of our community deserves to feel safe without qualification.” He noted that he made these comments in January before he become involved with the protest movement and added that the leaders of the student protests did not condone the comments. “I agree with their assessment,” he wrote.
Mr. James did not respond to a request for comment, and student protesters declined to address the matter at a news conference on the Columbia campus Friday afternoon.
In other words, now that he's a big-shot in the campus pro-Palestinian protest movement, he's going to have to behave himself.
It seemed to fool at least some pro-Palestinian Jews who congratulated James on his conversion from a fascist antisemite to a good guy.
“We believe that all people have the capacity to transform — many of our own members once supported Israel’s violence against Palestinians,” the statement from the pro-Palestinian group Jewish Voice for Peace, said, adding that “within the movement, we are committed to holding one another accountable to respecting the dignity of all human beings.”
Mr. James is not now nor has he ever been Jewish. He's a rank antisemite who is playing at being reformed to get back in the good graces of the pro-Palestinian protesters.
In a later statement, James pulled out the old antisemitic trope: "Hey! I don't hate the Jews. I just hate 'Zionism.'"
“There is a difference” between hating the Jewish people and hating the Jewish people who live in Israel, he said. “We’ve always had Jewish people as part of our community where they have expressed themselves, they feel safe, and they feel loved. And we want all people to feel safe in this encampment. We are a multiracial, multigenerational group of people.”
According to a profile in the Bay State Banner, James wanted to get elected to Congress and thought of working for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He served on the Boston Student Advisory Council where he resigned in protest because of “blatant disrespect and adultist rhetoric."
James and six other students also stepped down from the Boston Student Advisory Council, Boston.com reported at the time.
After their resignation, James sparked controversy by saying during a committee meeting that “I, too, hate white people” while discussing two former members accused of discriminating against white people, the Boston Globe said.
One X user posted a clip of the comment and tagged Columbia with the caption, “Is this the type of student you want at your school?”
I think what this demonstrates more than anything is the empty words of school administrators. They only care about antisemitism when the spotlight is on them. Otherwise, it's business as usual.
James is a symptom of a horribly sick higher education system. The only way to fix it is to discard the current crop of presidents and high-ranking school administrators and bring in people who can be held accountable for their actions.
