EZRA LEVANT ｜ Ezra reports from New York as local law enforcement raid Columbia University
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Summary
The latest from Columbia University in New York City on the latest from the "Hamas Camp" protest, and the tactics and tactics used by the protesters to keep journalists out of the camp. And a conversation I overheard about the demographics of the protesters, and how they differ from those in other cities.
Transcript
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Tonight, Marxists Gone Wild, the latest from Columbia University in New York City.
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It's May 1st, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
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Well, hi there. I'm back in New York City in front of Columbia University.
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This is the gate that we entered for a two-hour First Amendment window when we were here the other day.
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That is, from 2 p.m. till 4 p.m., they opened the gates for journalists.
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And if you recall, there were hundreds of them in line to see firsthand the protesters inside the Hamas encampment.
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I call them protesters because I suppose that is what they're doing, but there wasn't a lot of talking from those protesters.
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They were instructed by their leaders not to talk to journalists, not to talk even to friendly journalists,
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but rather to have hand-picked official spokesmen dealing with the media at large.
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In fact, if any journalist tried to get in the actual encampment, they were blocked by a combination of students, but also teachers, too.
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I think it was yesterday that an eviction notice was given where they were told that if they didn't leave by,
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I think it was 2 p.m. or some particular time, they would start to be suspended.
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Well, they did not go. In fact, a ring of faculty surrounded the students.
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Those students were threatened with suspension, so the faculty blocked the students.
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Things got out of hand, though, after dark when the Hamas protesters managed to break into various buildings
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Vandalism, of course, graffiti, but also reports that several maintenance staff, janitors, other staff like that,
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were trapped in there, a kind of hostage situation, if you like,
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which echoes what Hamas is doing in Israel and Gaza, I suppose.
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It was interesting to me, I saw an image of a maintenance worker at Colombia
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who probably makes less in a year than tuition is for a single student,
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that this maintenance worker loved Colombia and the physical plant of it so much
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that this maintenance worker was trying to stop one of these protesters from desecrating this beautiful university,
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that maintenance worker caring more about the university than the university's own administration or security team.
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Of course, it's private property, and you can evict anyone from private property for any reason or no reason.
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Now, if someone pays tuition, they have certain rights,
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but those are enumerated in what was called in my day the university calendar,
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which was a fancy way of saying the entire rule book.
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If you are camping overnight, if you are engaging in various acts of trespass,
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if you are engaging in violence, vandalism, breaking and entering into buildings,
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The university, however, to this day, lacks the courage to expel them.
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Like I say, we're not allowed in there, but the protesters are still in there.
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Of course, there are protesters on the street who are not members of the university
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That's an interesting thing to me because the Columbia University is easy to steal off.
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Other universities, including where I was yesterday,
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the University of British Columbia so clearly have outside organizers.
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But there was a tactic I noticed in the footage from Columbia last night
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that I recognized from elsewhere, namely Antifa.
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The complexion of the protesters is different in the various cities I've been.
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As you may recall, a few months ago, I went to London in the United Kingdom
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and I saw two main demographic streams from the protests.
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You had about 10 or 15 percent who were typically old communists,
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socialist workers party types in the UK and some woke students.
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But the vast majority of pro-Hamas protesters in London are recent immigrants,
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They are the voice of Pakistani Britons and Bangladeshi Britons, etc.
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In Canada, I think you have a fair bit of that too,
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especially since Justin Trudeau has emphasized immigration
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from countries with Muslim-majority populations,
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and there have been some woke professors and woke white kids
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Here in the United States, at least at Columbia
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and the Fashion Institute of Technology that we visited last week,
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it is in the main woke, self-hating, white, Marxist communists.
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And I think that's just the demographic difference.
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I overheard an official spokesman talking to a friendly journalist.
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but I overheard this spokesman talking about how this is but a single chapter
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Take a listen to this snippet of a conversation that I overheard.
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You know, it's not just something that has happened now,
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but the foundation has been built a long time ago.
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And I think students also realize that this is not just one issue,
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but it's like this issue has become the center of the struggle,
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You know, our struggle doesn't begin and end with Palestine,
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but it ends and begins with the liberation of all people.
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And we see that Palestine, like the freedom of the liberation of Palestine
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being crucial to the liberation of all people everywhere.
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Because by far, the vast majority of protesters here at Columbia
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and at the Fashion Institute of Technology and other U.S. campuses,
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In fact, many of them are old-stock Americans, to use a phrase.
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And by woke, I mean they believe in critical race theory
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and a Marxism that's transposed not just on gender and race,
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but on, in general, the oppressed versus the oppressors.
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And the week after that, it'll be a transgenderism issue.
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I think that what that young spokesman was saying
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is actually the true nature of the protesters here.
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They are, for want of a better term, communists,
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who want to tear down America and all its systems.
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And Gaza just happens to be the excuse du jour.
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The fact that Jews pay the price for that in terms of anti-Semitism,
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It's important for me as a Jew, also as an Israeli,
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to come out and just stand here in the face of evil,
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and show my support for my country and my people.
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and so I just want all my friends and my family to know,
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I mean, it's daylight and there's a big cop right over there,
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but have you ever been scared when it's not daylight,
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Has there been a moment where you have been scared?
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Um, I don't get scared often, but, you know, it is scary.
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If I'm alone, I definitely have to consider where I'm going,
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Um, some man, some man from the pro-Palestinian protest
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Um, so it is scary, but I, I trust the police right now,
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or are you just walking by the neighborhood coincidentally?
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And, well, here in New York, one of the most Jewish cities in the world,
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Columbia, a university in part funded by Jewish philanthropy.
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Um, like, it just seems very shocking that there would be such sharp anti-Semitism
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in a city that's really known as a Jewish city.
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Um, you know, till now they tried to disguise behind, uh, uh, different things,
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And, you know, some people are walking by there and, uh, with the LGTB flags and gay stuff,
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you know, I don't even know if they know how it looks if they go into Gaza with that stuff.
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Uh, you, you wear a Jewish yarmulke on your head visibly.
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What, uh, kind of comments, if any, have you received for that?
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Well, so far we haven't because we've been walking this way and they've been walking that way.
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But, um, I'm, I'm ready to receive the hate, but I'm not embarrassed.
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I assume there's about 100 protesters still in there.
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And maybe out here there's, I'd say, less than 100.
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Are these just sort of a rent-a-mob protester who, if it's not Gaza this week, it's, uh, a climate protest.
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And if it's not a climate protest, it's a Trump protest.
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Like, are these just a rent-a-mob or are these dedicated Palestinian activists?
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Um, I'd say they might be rent-a-mob, but I'd also say that they're not pro-Palestinian activists.
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They're here to terrorize Jews and the Western world and America.
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Uh, you could, there's a reason why people won't talk to you on that side.
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Um, but that's because they'd have no idea why they're even there.
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So I'd say if they knew why they were there, they'd be open, willing to talk to you like
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That was me yesterday outside Columbia University in New York City.
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I'm back in Toronto, and I wanted to interrupt to say hours after I recorded that, the NYPD,
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the New York Police Department, had a massive raid.
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I think there probably were more than a thousand officers involved, certainly in the hundreds.
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They had buses in place to take the protesters away.
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It was an enormous exercise, completed in about two hours time, with no injuries.
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You can see on the screen some of the incredible video.
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Speaking of riots on the other side of the country, take a look at this.
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I'm going to play it with the sound up for a minute.
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It's incredible to me that they had this commentary.
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Here is an actual riot at UCLA, University of California at Los Angeles, a very large school,
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And, um, and I think my point there is that the police and campus security didn't do anything
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And there was a Jewish girl who was actually beaten to the point of being made unconscious,
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And so ordinary people in the community, including, I presume, some Jews,
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Somebody is being beaten with a stick and punches in the middle of the lawn.
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Somebody is being badly beaten at the bottom of that brawl right there.
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Somebody is being dragged and beaten in the front of that plywood wall.
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It is something I have never covered without any sign of enforcement, law enforcement,
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This has gone now on for over an hour and a half.
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And it is absolutely appalling, in my estimation, that we have not seen any response.
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You know, this may be a sign of things to come, or this may be what, you know, society
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I have never seen this level of violence without any response from any kind of law enforcement
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Somebody just took a, somebody just took a pallet to the head.
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The plywood, excuse me, the boards of plywood are moving up.
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They've been dislodged from that makeshift wall where they were set up with tripods almost.
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And now you can see them manually being moved up into the crowd of counter protesters.
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And you're seeing these scuffles break out one after another.
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Lots of very heavy sticks, very heavy barricades, scooters, all types of things being employed
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Of course, I don't support violent vigilante action, but the police basically abandoned it.
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I presume they were instructed to do so by UCLA, so the community did something about it.
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Here is a shot from outside Columbia before the raid.
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Why should the university be obligated to provide food to people who have taken over a building?
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Well, first of all, we're saying that they're obligated to provide food to students who pay
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But you mentioned that there was a request that food and water be brought in.
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I mean, well, I guess it's ultimately a question of what kind of community and obligation Columbia
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Do you want students to die of dehydration and starvation or get severely ill, even if
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If the answer is no, then you should allow basic...
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I mean, it's crazy to say because we're on an Ivy League campus, but this is like basic
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Like, could people please have a glass of water?
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But they did put themselves in that very deliberately in that situation and in that position.
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So it seems like you're sort of saying we want to be revolutionaries.
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Now, would you please bring us some food and water?
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We're asking them to not violently stop us from bringing in basic humanitarian aid.
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We are looking for a commitment from them that they will not stop it violently.
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Well, I don't know to what extent it has been attempted, but we're looking for a commitment.
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The amount of money it costs to go to that school in Canadian dollars is close to $100,000
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But to her, the apex, the place that they all dream to be, is the top of the victim pyramid.
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And my God, we're going to be dehydrated and starve if we don't get free food every hour.
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They're doing some sort of role-playing, like they're starving in a famine in Gaza.
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Or as the kids say, LARPing, live-action role-playing.
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Yeah, they'll have to do some grown-up stuff now that they're facing criminal charges.
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I read the police charges as outlined by the NYPD.
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There were some organizers, clearly, who were worse than others.
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A lot of followers, as I've been demonstrating.
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There were some counter-protesters, some Jewish kids who brought a Star of David flag.
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And some frat kids who defended the American flag and wouldn't let it fall.
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That is heartwarming to see that there are still,
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And I found that when I went to Columbia, you might have seen that I bumped into those
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twin brothers, by the way, who said that they don't believe in what's going on.
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In addition to actual students, there are some very sophisticated professional organizers.
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Some of the protesters barricaded themselves into various halls at Columbia.
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I don't think an ordinary person would have thought of this.
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Smashing the windows and using a bike lock to lock a building so it couldn't be open with
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By the way, at least three people said they were held hostage, effectively kidnapped by
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Would you know to smash windows like that and use a bike lock like that?
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I just don't think ordinary people typically would.
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And I want to show you one more thing that Andy Ngo, a friend of ours, has brought to public attention.
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It's out there in Oregon, in Portland, where, of course, Antifa is the dominant street gang.
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And they have used the excuse of Gaza to occupy a multi-story university library, which looks like a tremendous and valuable and lovely place.
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They've turned it into an autonomous zone, as you may recall, happening a few years ago with the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, the CHAZ.
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And Andy points out that he doesn't think that Portland's police have the resources to liberate that building.
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I mean, as we showed you a moment ago, in New York City, there were hundreds, perhaps more than a thousand police, very specialized, lots of equipment, operating in a very well-organized extraction process.
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Two hours, the whole thing done without injury.
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Andy Ngo, who knows a lot about Portland, says he doesn't think Portland has the resources.
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They've had ties cut with neighboring police forces.
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He thinks that, I guess, theoretically, they could go in there and extract them all.
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But that would take basically all the police in the city.
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So, incredible things happening overnight since I recorded that on the streets of New York.
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All right, back to my pre-recorded show from New York.
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Hey, I was walking by and I noticed the name Pulitzer, or Pulitzer as it's sometimes pronounced, on the wall here.
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There's a lot of buildings that are named after philanthropists.
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And you probably know the name Pulitzer, the Pulitzer Prize.
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And Pulitzer was actually, Columbia's very famous for journalism, the Columbia School of Journalism.
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I think someone could win a Pulitzer if they did investigative journalism into who is funding and organizing these protests.
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I saw earlier a bunch of prefabricated, pre-printed, corporate-style placards for the Palestinian side, indicating that they themselves didn't home-make them.
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As we can see, there's a lot of these protesters who are not students on campus.
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In Canada, we know that there are 100, 700, in fact, Iranian agents working freely in the country, fomenting anti-Semitic hatred, including, for years, they've done the annual Al-Quds Day hate festival in Toronto.
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I think someone could win a Pulitzer for connecting the dots.
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If you said to students, hey, bring a tent to school, you would have all sorts of different kinds of tents, either that the kids had at home or that they went out to buy.
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But when you see dozens of identical matching tents, you know that someone bought them.
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When you see an organization that tells its cult members not to speak but to direct all inquiries to the leaders, well, who's training them?
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But I guess the one last thing I would say about the Pulitzer Prize is the man after whom it was named, won't surprise you to hear this, was a Jew.
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Born in Hungary, came to America, loved the freedom of the place, donated back to the university in thanks for the help it gave him.
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That's the story of so many of the buildings, not just here at Columbia, but also at the Fashion Institute of Technology that we visited last week.
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I wonder what Mr. Pulitzer would have to say about the Jew hatred emanating from inside the university.
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How would you rate the response by different authorities?
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I'm going to ask you about the university administration.
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I'm going to ask you about the New York Police Department.
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So let's start with the university administration.
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If they want them gone, they can have them gone.
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And there's obviously a bigger agenda behind this.
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I mean, I mentioned Jewish philanthropy, which has been an important part of American charitable life for 100 years.
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But now the OPEC dictatorship of Qatar is one of the largest funders of American universities.
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Maybe the administration is following the money.
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And they say there's more money from Qatar than from the Jews.
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Well, the only thing I can answer is always follow the money.
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I have a high regard for the NYPD as a police force.
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I'm guessing they're just following instructions from the brass.
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How have you felt about the work they have been doing?
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I mean, I guess from one point of view, it's not really their turf.
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They're not going to go in there and enforce a trespass rule if the university doesn't ask them to, right?
00:27:10.100
Honestly, I wouldn't be able to answer that because I don't know.
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There's always people behind the scene that they answer to, which we don't know.
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I mean, I know they were given an ultimatum or whatever, but then the professors all went to the front.
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I don't know the status of it yet, but hopefully, you know, who knows?
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These guys can only last for so long, you know?
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On the one hand, I mean, these guys are on the sidewalk.
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It's all virtually, so that means they don't have to be here.
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From what I heard, the campus is also closed, and so we can't get on either.
00:28:03.540
I mean, I would imagine that there's a lot of rules that the campus could use.
00:28:15.140
Well, the university could enforce the rules if they really wanted to.
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If they wanted to, but, you know, I think you...
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There's a lot of theories going on, but they want to allow the students to have free speech.
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I think there's a line where you just draw the line, you say, no more, and this is already past that line.
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I hope they can do more for the Jewish students, and not only for the Jewish students.
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It's unshamed that there's also non-Jewish students here who will have to stop their education.
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Their graduation is threatened, and it's just because of these people who might not even be going to the school.
00:28:48.180
And I assume these guys don't go to the school because they're not on campus.
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If they were going to the school, they could get access.
00:28:53.560
Maybe some of them are wearing masks for hygiene reasons, but I think a lot of them are wearing masks just to hide their identity, don't you think?
00:29:02.560
These people don't care about hygiene, but, you know, we get to see their faces once they get arrested, so that's interesting to see who's behind these masks.
00:29:13.940
I mean, Joe Biden claims to be a friend of the Jews and of Israel.
00:29:18.860
I think he's in the mold of Obama, which is he actually wants to undermine Israel, promote Iran, and he doesn't want to upset genuine, rock-solid anti-Semites because they're part of his electoral base.
00:29:31.740
I think Joe Biden is trying to thread the needle here, including in states like Michigan, where we have a large Muslim population.
00:29:38.800
That's my view as an outsider, but I'm not an American.
00:29:43.440
Joe Biden will do whatever he has to do to appeal to his voters, and unfortunately, his voters here, the only one he can appeal to are the far left, and the far left is part of this entire protest and agenda.
00:29:55.500
So he has to do what he has to do to be able to stay relevant, but he's an absolute disgrace to Israel.
00:30:03.460
Not only is he not sticking up, he's kind of bluntly coming out against them.
00:30:10.320
Well, I was actually down in New York today because I did an interview with John Stossel, the great American journalist.
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He is an independent shopper right now, but he used to be in places like ABC and Fox Business.
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Just an outstanding, freedom-oriented journalist, and I'm very proud to have spent an hour with him talking about freedom of speech in Canada, including Justin Trudeau's threats to it, specifically C63, Trudeau's latest censorship act.
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So I was down in New York City for that, delighted to have the platform.
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I really think it's important that people around the world know what's going on in Canada, not just Canadians.
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And I thought, well, I've got to stop by Columbia University to see what the latest is.
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And there's really not a lot to report from the outside because they've locked the whole thing in.
00:31:11.160
I'm going to be back in Canada tomorrow, of course.
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Until next time, on behalf of all of us at Rebel News, to you at home, wherever you are, good night and keep fighting for freedom.