Students say pro-Israel group spreads hate at Columbia University

Students Supporting Israel’s Rudy Rochman with billionaire donor to anti-Palestinian causes Sheldon Adelson. (via Facebook)

Students at Columbia University say that a display by Students Supporting Israel includes racist and anti-Semitic imagery and messaging. (via Facebook)

Ali Abunimah-3 March 2016

Students at Columbia University have expressed concern to administrators about what they see as racist and demeaning displays on campus from a group led by a soldier involved in Israel’s 2014 massacre in Gaza.

The Columbia University chapter of Students Supporting Israel this week put up large placards on College Walk, a central thoroughfare at the prestigious New York institution.

The display was meant to counter a model of Israel’s separation wall erected by Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine and a Jewish Voice for Peace information table as part of Israeli Apartheid Week.

Students Supporting Israel is funded by a prominent Islamophobe.

Its Columbia University chapter is led by Rudy Rochman, who participated in the Israeli invasion of Gaza in the summer of 2014 that killed more than 2,200 Palestinians, including more than 550 children.

Now a continuing education student in general studies, Rochman posted a video on Facebook of himself and members of his unit dancing and singing “The Jewish people lives” just as they were about to enter Gaza to take part in the slaughter.

More recently, Rochman has championed revenge against Palestinians. In the context of the upsurge in confrontations since late last year between Palestinians and Israel’s occupation in the West Bank, Rochmancalled on the Israeli goverment to “please take out the trash already, the smell is unbearable!”

Rochman also posted a photo of himself with Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino mogul who bankrolls Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the US Republican Party.

Rochman is also a member of Alpha Epsilon Pi, a right-wing Jewish fraternity with close ties to Israel lobby groups.

The fraternity’s University of Chicago chapter recently made headlines over leaked emails revealing members’ racist views of African Americans and Muslims.

Another member of Students Supporting Israel at Columbia is Alexandra Markus, a continuing education student who has referred to Jewish Voice for Peace activists as “kapos,” a term used to describe Jews who collaborated in the Nazi genocide during the Second World War.

Markus has also offered to help Canary Mission, the shadowy McCarthyite group that collects information about Palestine solidarity activists on campus with the aim of harming their future careers.

Rudy Rochman and Students Supporting Israel at Columbia University did not respond to requests for comment from The Electronic Intifada.

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