WASHINGTON — The White House on Tuesday denounced the overnight takeover of a Columbia University building by anti-Israel protesters — calling it “not peaceful” and saying President Biden “condemns” the use of the word “intifada,” which a two-story banner at the site now reads.
Dozens of masked protesters stormed Hamilton Hall under the cover of darkness after at least one of them used a hammer to break a window of the academic building, which was named after Founding Father Alexander Hamilton — and previously seized by student protesters during a 1968 anti-Vietnam War showdown.
“President Biden has stood against repugnant, Antisemitic smears and violent rhetoric his entire life,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement. “He condemns the use of the term ‘intifada,’ as he has the other tragic and dangerous hate speech displayed in recent days.
“President Biden respects the right to free expression, but protests must be peaceful and lawful. Forcibly taking over buildings is not peaceful — it is wrong. And hate speech and hate symbols have no place in America,” Bates said.
The term “intifada” means uprising and in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been applied to at least two bloody insurgencies — most recently the “Second Intifada” of 2000-2005, in which Palestinian terrorists murdered hundreds of civilians, including in suicide bombings.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby added of Columbia, “A small percentage of students shouldn’t be able to [disrupt] the academic experience … for the rest of the student body — students paying to go to school and want an education and be able to do that without destruction.
“They ought to be able to do it, feel safe. And they certainly deserve to be able to graduate and participate in a graduation ceremony … [What Columbia protesters are doing] does not comport with the idea of peaceful protest.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the pro-terror protests at colleges across the US:
- Tear gas sprayed at UCLA encampment as cops face off with anti-Israel protesters wielding fire extinguishers
- Stanford submits ‘deeply disturbing’ photo of campus anti-Israel protester wearing Hamas headband to FBI
- Iranian college offers free tuition to US students expelled for participating in anti-Israel protests: ‘Our people’
- MAP: US colleges where students have been arrested over anti-Israel protests
“[We] continue to believe in the freedom of speech and the right to protest policies and ideas that you want to protest. You just got to do it peacefully; you can’t hurt anybody,” Kirby said. “And you can’t be disrupting the educational pursuit of your fellow students.”
The anti-Israel protesters entered the Columbia building after defying college administrators with a tent encampment, as they called on the Ivy League school to divest from the world’s only Jewish-majority nation in protest of the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip after the Oct. 7 massacres by Hamas terrorists.
Columbia University leaders asked police to clear out the disruptive tent city April 18, and the school suspended some student participants, including Isra Hirsi, 21, the Barnard College-attending daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), at the time. Barnard is part of Columbia.
But college administrators failed to crack down on other protesters in and around Columbia accused of using pro-Hamas and antisemitic language toward students whom they perceive to be Jewish.
The day before the building takeover, a group of 21 House Democrats, led by Reps. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Dan Goldman of New York, wrote to Columbia’s Board of Trustees demanding that it crush the student protest encampment or resign.
Biden, 81, has not yet personally commented on the Columbia takeover — as the Israel-Hamas conflict threatens to doom his re-election campaign in an echo of President Lyndon Johnson’s inability to manage intra-party divisions over Vietnam.
He also has said little generally on-camera about large protests sweeping college campuses across the country — after he’s repeatedly found himself as the focus of rallies in the nearly seven-month conflict.
He is frequently heckled as “Genocide Joe” during public remarks, and thousands of protesters chanting “F–k Joe Biden!” descended on the White House in November and defaced the front gates with that nickname and red paint.
Polls shows younger voters, Arab Americans and Muslim Americans oppose Biden’s pro-Israel position, which includes massive US aid to support the anti-Hamas campaign.
Additional reporting by Caitlin Doornbos
