New York’s universities stand up against BDS and anti-Semitism
ASAF ROMIROWSKY and BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
Daily News
Fri May 01 2020
...Columbia, for its part, is the same university that gave a platform to the then-president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in 2007. Iran’s regime is the world’s top state sponsor of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. Tehran plays a role in supporting BDS activists and campaigns across the globe. The Iranian regime-sponsored al-Quds rallies, which were called into international action in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of Iran’s militant regime, support BDS. The annual al-Quds event calls for the abolition of the Jewish state.
Still, Columbia President Lee Bollinger rightly opposes the upcoming undergraduate student BDS referendum recommending that Columbia divest from eight companies doing business with Israel that profit from work in the disputed West Bank territory.
Bollinger appears to have internalized the growing danger presented by the link between anti-Semitism and the BDS campaign at his school. In a statement, he places BDS in the context of the widespread rise of Jew-hatred. “When a swastika appears on campus, it is not just an isolated event. When there is a rising anti-Semitism in this country and around the world, even a single instance of it in any context is more alarming than it might otherwise be,” wrote Bollinger....
