Connect with us

News

Columbia Scolds Students for “Unsanctioned” Gaza Rally Where They Were Attacked With Chemicals

Published

on

Columbia Scolds Students for “Unsanctioned” Gaza Rally Where They Were Attacked With Chemicals

Administrators at Columbia University responded to reports of students being injured by a chemical attack against an on-campus rally for Gaza by chiding students for holding protests without official authorization. Meanwhile, students told The Intercept that even as the school’s public safety department has said it is investigating the incident, school administrators themselves have yet to contact the victims — some of whom have had to seek medical care for their injuries. 

During a rally on Friday, according to attendees, two individuals sprayed a hazardous chemical that released an odious smell. Dozens of students have reported an array of symptoms, such as burning eyes, nausea, headaches, abdominal and chest pain, and vomiting.

The campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine publicized the incident on Saturday morning, identifying the substance as “skunk,” a chemical weapon used by the Israel Defense Forces against Palestinians and one that U.S. police departments have reportedly acquired in the past. SJP also alleged that the assailants have ties to the Israel Defense Forces, a claim that The Intercept could not independently confirm.

Advertisement

In a statement to The Intercept, a university spokesperson seemed to blame the students for the attack. “Friday’s event was unsanctioned and violated university policies and procedures which are in place to ensure there is adequate personnel on the ground to keep our community safe,” the spokesperson wrote.

The incident marks the latest escalation against students protesting for Palestinian rights at Columbia. Last semester, the university suspended the student groups Jewish Voice for Peace, or JVP, and SJP for holding an “unauthorized event” (a walkout and art display in support of a ceasefire). More broadly, students at campuses across the country have been met with university discipline and even criminal charges as they have called for their universities to divest from companies with ties to Israel’s military — or at least for their universities to have public meetings about their investments.

Public officials have devoted extensive resources to discussing reports of antisemitism on university campuses, including in a headline-grabbing congressional hearing. The repression of student protests for Gaza has gotten comparatively little attention, not to mention abject acts of violence, including the stabbing of a 6-year-old boy in suburban Chicago and shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont. 

Advertisement

Rashid Khalidi, a renowned Palestinian American historian who teaches at Columbia, said that university administrators should respect the student protesters’ motivations. “For a lot of young people, this is one of the most significant events, worst humanitarian crises, certainly in their lifetimes,” said Khalidi. “And many of them have a strong sense of justice and see injustice. I think university administrators — whatever alumni and whatever donors and whatever trustees are telling them, and whatever the politicians are saying, and whatever the media bias leans towards — I think they have to respect that that’s what’s driving a lot of these students: a strong sense of injustice.”

On Monday morning, interim university provost Dennis Mitchell sent a campus-wide email that did not reference the attack but seemed to be in response to it. Mitchell noted that placing someone in, or risking, bodily harm is a violation of school rules, while also describing school rules around unauthorized protests. “Columbia University is committed to defending the right of all members of our community to safely exercise their right to expression and to invite, listen to, and challenge views, including those that may be offensive and even hurtful to many of us,” he wrote. 

The message followed a vague Sunday night statement from the school’s Department of Public Safety, which is investigating the attack after receiving reports from students. The department noted that it is working with local and federal authorities, with the New York Police Department taking the lead. The NYPD and the Department of Public Safety did not respond to requests for comment. 

Advertisement

“This message does not even mention that a hazardous illegal chemical was sprayed, let alone that a hate crime occurred,” Maryam Alwan, a member of SJP, told The Intercept.

On Friday, Columbia students gathered on the steps of Low Library in below-freezing temperatures and snow flurries to demonstrate at a “divestment now” rally, organized by Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of 94 student groups that was revived after SJP and JVP were banned. They called for financial transparency from the university, which has a $14 billion endowment, working to mobilize students for a tuition strike to push the administration to divest from companies implicated in Israel’s occupation of Palestine and retaliatory war on Gaza. (Students at Columbia College and at Barnard College voted in favor of divestment from Israel in recent years; both efforts were dismissed by the administration.)

At the protest, some Jewish students raised a banner that read “CU Jews for ceasefire.” They were approached by two individuals who called them “traitors” and “self-hating Jews,” according to Layla, a student who asked The Intercept to identify her only by her first name due to safety concerns.

“They kept on going up and harassing people. They were filming people, they were calling people Jew killers,” Layla said. “They were also referring to people as terrorists. And they really did not like my Jewish friends in particular.”

Advertisement

“NYPD hasn’t made any arrests, even though we have multiple witnesses. It’s been a nightmare.”

According to students, the people who were harassing the protesters were the same ones who later sprayed the chemical. “I’ve been having to look stuff up on Reddit to figure out what’s going on. [The university] didn’t even tell us, like, ‘Oh, we should go to urgent care or anything,’” Layla said. “We were the ones that figured it out. We were the ones — I actually took the photos of the people and helped identify them. They haven’t done anything. NYPD hasn’t made any arrests, even though we have multiple witnesses. It’s been a nightmare.”

Suffering from nausea and fatigue, Layla went to urgent care over the weekend. She said she attended the protest to honor the memory of 14 of her family members who were killed by Israeli bombings on Gaza. “I wanted to attend this protest as a way to honor their memory and just to fight for the human rights of Palestinians. And I just — I never imagined it would end up this way at all. It still feels like a nightmare. And I remember there was just this mist in the air. And I remember just thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, like, it smells like somebody died.’”

Skunk is notorious for its intense side effects. “Skunk is liable to cause physical harm, such as intense nausea, vomiting and skin rashes, in addition to any injury resulting from the powerful force of the spray,” the Israeli newspaper Haaretz once reported. “Examinations by police and army medical teams in the past also indicated that the excessive coughing caused by exposure can result in suffocation.”

Advertisement

Layla said her account of the incident was met with skepticism by the NYPD, who asked that if the weapon was as serious as she said, why she did not go to the hospital right away. The lack of clear police action has left her and others feeling uneasy. “I don’t really feel safe, frankly, going back on campus. I’m supposed to go back on campus today to report to public safety and go to campus health, but my body — like when I went on Saturday after it happened, my body physically recoiled at being on campus.”

Advertisement

Another student who is involved with JVP and requested anonymity out of safety concerns told The Intercept that while campus public safety seemed sympathetic and receptive, the NYPD investigators they spoke with were less interested.

“The frustrating part was that they seemed to not really care about what evidence we did have because no one actually saw them holding the spray canisters and using them,” the student told The Intercept. Even after another student told NYPD investigators that they saw one of the alleged perpetrators holding an object and heard a spraying sound before smelling the odor, that did not seem to be enough.

“They kept saying ‘so none of you ACTUALLY witnessed the crime?’” said the student, who is still suffering from headaches and nausea three days later. She said that she’s been unable to get the smell out of her clothes, including a coat her grandmother handed down to her before she died.

Advertisement

News

Video: Our Photographers’ Favorite Campaign Trail Photos

Published

on

Video: Our Photographers’ Favorite Campaign Trail Photos

How did they get those photos? Doug Mills, who has been photographing former President Donald J. Trump for The New York Times, and Erin Schaff, who has been photographing Vice President Kamala Harris, tell the stories behind their favorite photos of the candidates.

Continue Reading

News

Donald Trump victory bets and strong US economy power dollar gains

Published

on

Donald Trump victory bets and strong US economy power dollar gains

Unlock the US Election Countdown newsletter for free

The dollar has roared to its biggest monthly gain in more than two years, propelled by bets that strong economic data and a victory for Donald Trump in next week’s presidential election will lead to interest rates staying higher for longer.

An index measuring the dollar against a basket of six other currencies, including the pound and Japan’s yen, jumped 3.2 per cent in October, its best month since April 2022.

Economists and strategists said the greenback’s sharp rise reflected persistent signs of economic resilience, including surprisingly strong September payrolls data and evidence of higher consumer spending.

Advertisement

“It’s been the perfect storm of dollar-supportive information over the last few weeks,” said Eric Winograd, chief economist at AllianceBernstein. “Our data continues to paint a picture of an economy that isn’t really slowing.”

Market participants said increasing expectations in the market of a Republican election victory had bolstered the dollar’s appeal.

The latest polls put Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris virtually neck and neck, setting the stage for an extremely tight race on November 5.

Investors believe that if Trump wins and trade tariffs and tax cuts are implemented, then inflationary pressures would be compounded and the Federal Reserve would be less likely to cut interest rates rapidly.

“It’s a combination of better than expected economic data. [And] also the growing consensus that Trump is likely to win the election,” said Andrzej Skiba, head of Bluebay US fixed income at RBC Global Asset Management. “With Trump, you could expect greater pressure on inflation than otherwise would be the case.”

Advertisement

While Trump has stated his preference for a softer dollar, strategists said it is logistically difficult to weaken a currency.

After policymakers lowered rates by an unusually large 0.5 percentage points in September, markets priced in at least one more jumbo-sized cut before the year-end.

But those expectations have been scaled back over the past month. Futures markets are pricing in a quarter-point reduction at next week’s Federal Reserve meeting and those views were cemented after October payrolls came in much lower than expected on Friday, albeit distorted by major hurricanes and worker strikes, while the unemployment rate held steady.

Markets at the end of this week showed rising odds of another quarter-point cut in December.

Still, were Harris to win the election, Mark McCormick, head of FX strategy at TD Securities, does not “think Harris is fundamentally negative for the dollar”.

Advertisement

Some positions may unwind if Trump loses the election, he said. “But that’s a dip,” he added. “Data, central banks, the economic outlook — all of those things are moving back in favour of the US.”

For AllianceBernstein’s Winograd, “the extent of that [currency] weakening has to be limited by the [recent economic] data being positive . . . I don’t think the dollar will undo an entire month’s worth of gains.”

Continue Reading

News

Who is Liz Cheney? Trump fantasises her being shot during chat with Tucker Carlson

Published

on

Who is Liz Cheney? Trump fantasises her being shot during chat with Tucker Carlson

Donald Trump has the latest violent fantasy days before elections and features Liz Cheney. During a recent campaign appearance, the former president fantasised about the attorney being shot in the face. He also called her a “radical war hawk”. His remark resulted in massive outrage and backlash from the netizens.

Donald Trump recently made violent remarks about Liz Cheney, suggesting she should be shot. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque(REUTERS)

Also Read: US election in numbers: Who won the donation race, Kamala Harris or Donald Trump?

Who is Liz Cheney?

Liz is a 58-year-old attorney and former republican politician. She served as a former congresswoman from Wyoming who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2017 to 2023. She is known for her strong conservative views and for being a vocal critic of Trump. She has been a sore spot for Trump since she switched to Kamala Harris’ side.

Previously she was a supporter of the Republican presidential nominee, however, this support went for a toss after the January 6 Capitol attack. She stated that Trump’s actions during the Capitol riot in 2021 showed he “can never be trusted with power again,” as reported by BBC. In the past month, she has campaigned alongside Harris to connect with disaffected Republicans in key swing states.

Advertisement

Liz is the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney under George W. Bush and was a key architect of the Iraq War. She has often defended her father’s decisions regarding military interventions and has been an advocate for a strong American presence on the global stage. However, she has also faced criticism for her support of the Iraq War and has taken a stand against the withdrawal from Afghanistan. This is another point where she locked horns with Trump because of the latter’s approach to foreign policy and national security.

She has co-authored three books with her father: his autobiography My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir (2011), Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America (2015), and Heart: An American Medical Odyssey (2013), the latter written with her father’s heart surgeon.

In 2023, she published her own memoir, Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning, which details the January 6th attack, its causes, and its aftermath.

Also Read: Melania Trump leaves NYC with son Barron for next ‘big move’ ahead of the US elections

What was Trump’s violent fantasy about Liz Cheney?

Trump joined conservative broadcaster, Tucker Carlson on Thursday night at an event in Glendale, Arizona. He criticised the Iraq war, highlighting Cheney’s decision to pardon Scooter Libby, who was convicted of lying to investigators in 2007.

Advertisement

He then took a jab at his daughter Liz as he said, “His daughter is a very dumb individual, very dumb. She’s a radical war hawk.” Trump added, “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Let’s see how she feels about it. You know when the guns are trained on her face,” as reported by The Independent.

He also criticised the government officials before one final blow at Liz. The former president said, “They’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, ‘Oh, gee, well, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.” He continued “But she’s a stupid person. And I used to have meetings with a lot of people and she always wanted to go to war with people.”

Netizens were infuriated with Trup’s violent comment as one user wrote on X, “As a woman I do not tolerate threats against other women, I stand with Liz Cheney. Trump is not fit for office.” A second user wrote, “Isn’t it the mark of a true Coward to threaten a Woman?” A third user wrote, “As a man and an American I DO NOT tolerate threats against women…Anyone for that matter!!! I stand with Liz and all who are threatened by weak men who feel they are entitled to make threats and try to exhibit dominance over anyone…”

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Trending