Columbia Bars Student Who Said ‘Zionists Don’t Deserve to Live’

A Columbia University student who posted a video in January in which he said, “Zionists don’t deserve to live,” has been barred from the campus—where he is one of the leaders of a pro-Palestinian protest camp that has rocked the Ivy League school. The New York Times reports that it was not immediately clear if Khymani James, 20, was being suspended or expelled. According to the newspaper, James uploaded the video after a disciplinary hearing that centered on a social media post about how he would fight a Zionist: “I don’t fight to injure or for there to be a winner or a loser, I fight to kill.” In that hearing, he denied that there was anything “problematic” about that statement. “The existence of them and the projects they have built, i.e. Israel, it’s all antithetical to peace. It’s all antithetical to peace. And so, yes, I feel very comfortable, very comfortable, calling for those people to die,” he said. “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.” On Friday morning, after video of his comments resurfaced, James took to social media to disavow them, saying, “What I said was wrong.”