Two Jewish New Yorkers outside Columbia University this week shared wildly different perspectives as pro-Palestinian protests are erupting on college campuses nationwide — and accusations of antisemitism are following.
“I think in the current moment the concept of antisemitism is getting used as a bludgeon,” one pro-Palestinian protester told The Recount Senior Social Media Manager Danielle Wolf on Monday. “None of the pro-Palestine rallies, protests, movements have ever been antisemitic. And I think any accusation that they are is just trying to sort of pave the ground to continue this genocide.”
A Jewish New Yorker who attended a counterprotest, meanwhile, told The Recount that some of the students in the Columbia encampment who were condemning the war in Gaza were “very confused.”
“The word antisemitic is very broad,” the counterprotester said. “I think some of them are well-intended. They want peace. Everybody wants peace. But in World War II in the concentration camps, there were groups called the Sonderkommando. And they were Jews who sided or helped and were complicit with the Nazis for a little extra bread, some freedom. They just lost their way. And I equate them to the Sonderkommando.”
