Columbia University protester calls Jewish donor a 'Nazi' in disgraceful clash

A Palestine protester outside Columbia University branded a Jewish donor a 'Nazi' in a heated exchange on Wednesday as tensions at the school flared. 

The donor, who gave his name only as Elliot, told DailyMail.com he was a 76-year-old lawyer who'd been contributing to the university for years after studying at Columbia in the 1960s. 

He recalled protesting the Vietnam war and said he was only curious about today's protest when he heard the crowd chanting 'from the river to the sea', and demanding the entire state of Israel.

When he approached the crowd on 116th Street, the middle aged man in a keffiyeh screamed: 'I’m not going to talk to a f***ing Nazi’.

While Elliot said he supports the next generation of students’ right to demonstrate, he felt many have been ‘crossing the line’ by making Jewish students fear for their safety.

The donor, who gave his name only as Elliot, told DailyMail.com he was a 76-year-old lawyer who'd been contributing to the university for years after studying at Columbia Law in the 1960s

A middle aged man with a keffiyeh wrapped around his head called the Jewish donor a Nazi

‘Protest all you want, and say that the Zionist regime should be abolished - which I don’t agree with - but don’t make people feel unsafe because of their ethnicity,' he said. 

'There’s no possible justification for that.’

Elliot added that he’s ’a big fan of Columbia for many reasons’ and he donates a ‘small amount’ to his Alma mater each year.

He said Columbia President Minouche Shafik, who has called for the ‘Gaza plaza’ encampment to disperse, was doing ‘as good a job as she can’. 

‘It’s a very tough spot that she’s in,’ he said, adding that he was inclined to increase his donation to the university this year.

People participate in a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside Columbia University in New York, the United States, on April 23, 2024

The Columbia encampment, launched last week, sparked similar demonstrations at college campuses across the country, including Yale, Boston and Michigan universities.

Today, students in Austin and USC in California also came to blows.  

Dozens of cops clad in riot gear were patrolling the Columbia campus perimeter Wednesday while security guards barred non-students from entering the grounds.

NYPD on Wednesday morning gave the students 48 hours to leave the camp or face arrest.

But defiant students have vowed to stay.

Tahia, a New York resident in her late twenties who was leading the 116 Street curb-side rally said older demonstrators would also take to the surrounding streets for as long as the student camp continued.

An encampment protesting the genocide in Gaza, goes into its second day, on the grounds of the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States on April 23

Student demonstrators occupy the pro-Palestinian 'Gaza Solidarity Encampment' on the West Lawn of Columbia University on April 24

‘We’re here in solidarity with the student encampments in Columbia, and in full solidarity with their demands for divestment, for full financial transparency,’ Tahia, who was wearing a keffiyeh over her hair, told DailyMail.com.

‘We’ll be here every day as long as the encampment is going on,’ she added.

‘We’ll be out on the streets for a grander, bigger demand to stop the genocide in Gaza, an end to all US funding in Israel, an end to western complicity in Zionism.

‘The fact that 40,000 Palestinians have died, have been murdered, and the US is complicit in the 75 year occupation of the Israeli state.’

As protesters started chanting ‘genocide Joe has got to go’ she added: ‘I am by no means voting for Biden.

‘I think the uncommitted vote speaks for itself.

‘Hundreds of thousands of people in the United States are saying that the two party system does not represent them.

‘Whether it’s Biden or Trump, both sides are supporters of genocide… Biden does not represent us.’

Texas took a different tact, removing protestors immediately from the campus 

Tahia added that she considered Biden, Hillary Clinton and Eric Adams ‘war criminals’.

Speaker Mike Johnson is due to hold a conference at Columbia in support of the Jewish students on Wednesday afternoon after describing the pro-Palestine protests as a sign of ‘a troubling rise of virulent antisemitism on America’s college campuses’.

Tahia rejected this characterization, telling DailyMail.com that ‘students are on the right side of history right now’.

‘We know we are on the side of justice and peace and we will stay on that side,’ she said.

Another protester, Emmanuel, 19, said he ‘didn’t even know Palestine was a place’ until the Hamas attack on Israel last year.

‘Ever since October 7, that’s when I opened myself up to the situation,’ the teen, who is not a student and lives in upstate New York, told DailyMail.com.

‘I didn’t even know Palestine was a place to begin with until what happened recently.

‘It’s opened my eyes to a lot of stuff that’s happening now politically.

‘I’m here just trying to help out the students.’