College and University Monitor

We also have similar bad news even from the United States. On September 18, 2018, New York Post published a news item titled ‘Israeli student at Columbia says she’s being bullied by Palestinian group’. In this news, it is said, Dani Dayan, the 24-year-old daughter of Ofir Dayan, Israel Consul General in New York is harassed and threatened over her background by the group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and that Columbia University authorities are failing to protect her.

The political science major had her initial run-in about a month into the fall 2017 semester, when she was in the lobby of Knox Hall — home to the Middle East Institute — having a phone conversation in Hebrew.

“A girl heard me and started screaming, ‘Stop killing Muslim ­babies! . . . You’re a murderer!’ ” Ofir said. “Then she screamed, ‘Zionist, get out!’ A nearby public-safety ­administrator did nothing.”

In October 2017, Ofir said, she and four members of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) — she is the vice-president of the Columbia chapter — were leaving an on-campus event for Israeli beauty queen Titi Aynaw. “The ­moment [members of SJP] saw us, they started screaming their slogans with a microphone to intimidate us. There were at least 50 SJP members blocking the walkway.

“They were really angry and it was scary,” said Ofir, a vocal supporter of the Jewish state. “I believed it would escalate to physical violence.”