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Columbia University Leaves Door Open for Student Who Called for Death of Zionists to Return to Campus
Khymani James, ex-Columbia University student who filmed himself saying Zionists should be murdered. Photo: Screenshot
Columbia University has denied the reapplication of a student who said Zionists do not deserve to live and are lucky he has not resorted to killing them himself but left the door open to the anti-Israel protest leader returning to campus this fall, according to documents filed in a New York court.
Khymani James filmed himself making the comments during the 2023-2024 academic year, a period in which Columbia students amassed in the hundreds to set up a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the New York City campus to show solidarity with Hamas in the aftermath of the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
“These are all the same people. 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,” James said in 2024.
“Zionists don’t deserve to live,” he continued, proclaiming that people should “be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”
James warned, “I don’t fight to injure or for there to be a winner or a loser. I fight to kill.”
Facing criticism from lawmakers and Jewish advocacy groups over its hesitance to discipline students who perpetrated antisemitism, Columbia suspended James in April 2024, saying he would be eligible to return in the fall of 2025. In response, he sued the university, alleging that the measure was racist and aimed at “privileging a subset of Jewish people.”
The suit charged twice that Columbia University favored Jews over “nonJews [sic].”
“James as a person of color is squarely within a protected class of black and brown-skinned students who have been the major targets of Columbia’s disciplinary actions arising from pro-Palestinian expression,” the suit stated. “James has been a victim of Columbia’s anti-Palestinian bias, severely punished, though not himself a Palestinian, as a supporter of the rights of Palestinian people. Third, James has been a victim of reverse discrimination, as Columbia privileges a class of self-described ‘Zionist Jewish’ people over everyone on campus who does not share their views.”
Since being suspended, James has continued to endorse political violence as a means of resolving ideological disputes. In September 2024, he expressed support for the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University and called for additional killings, saying “MORE. MORE!!! … Down with all fascists.”
In a newly revealed letter filed in December as an exhibit in the lawsuit, Columbia refused James’ request to return to campus in the fall of 2025.
One year later, in August 2025, Columbia again rejected his request to reenroll in a second letter filed in the lawsuit. Both letters were first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
“Your written submissions do not demonstrate a clear understanding of the impact of your conduct,” the second letter to James stated.
Written by a college dean whose name is still redacted from the document, it explained that James’ online speech since being suspended prevented his re-enrollment, as it showed “insufficient ‘reflection on your activities’ that resulted in your suspension.” The letter cited that James had defended his wish to kill Zionists while being suspended and publicly said on social media that “anything I said, I meant it.”
“Your use of language tending to reaffirm those statements during your suspension raises serious concerns about your readiness to return to Columbia and engage with others appropriately,” the letter continued. “That only reinforces our concerns, rather than alleviates them.”
However, the university stressed that James was entitled to due process and would be “eligible to reapply to return” for the fall 2026 semester.
“You will be eligible to reapply to return for the fall 2026 semester under the conditions provided for in your Aug. 7, 2024, suspension letter,” it added. “It is our hope that you will use the months ahead to engage in more substantive and careful reflection on the behaviors that led to your suspension.”
The potential for James to return prompted concerns that Columbia may be reverting back to a cavalier attitude toward antisemitism, after pledging to never again allow brazen affronts to the civil rights of Jewish students who were assaulted, harassed, intimidated on campus.
“Universities should take responsibility for the students they admit to their campuses,” US Rep. Tim Wahlberg (R-MI), chairman of the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, told The Algemeiner on Friday. “Under federal civil rights law, Columbia has the duty to prevent antisemitic harassment on its campus. I expect that Columbia’s incoming president will take this responsibility seriously.”
Columbia’s decision not to permanently expel James comes as the school continues to face scrutiny for its handling of antisemitism and pro-Hamas activism on campus.
This year, the university retained a professor who celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel — in which the Palestinian terrorist group sexually assaulted women and men, kidnapped the elderly, and murdered children in their beds — allowing him to teach a course on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The professor, Joseph Massad, teaches modern Arab politics and intellectual history. On Oct. 8, 2023, he published an encomium to Hamas in The Electronic Intifada which lauded the Oct. 7 atrocities as “astounding,” “awesome,” “incredible,” and the basis of future assaults on the Jewish state. Additionally, Massad went as far as to exalt the Hamas paragliders who flew into a music festival to slaughter the young people attending it as the “air force of the Palestinian resistance.”
“Perhaps the major achievement of the resistance in the temporary takeover of these settler-colonies is the death blow to any confidence that Israeli colonists had in their military and its ability to protect them,” Massad wrote.
In July, former interim university president Claire Shipman said the institution will hire new coordinators to oversee complaints alleging civil rights violations; facilitate “deeper education on antisemitism” by creating new training programs for students, faculty, and staff; and adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism — a tool that advocates say is necessary for identifying what constitutes antisemitic conduct and speech.
Shipman also announced new partnerships with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other Jewish groups while delivering a major blow to the anti-Zionist movement on campus by vowing never to “recognize or meet with” the infamous organization Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a pro-Hamas campus group which had serially disrupted academic life with unauthorized, surprise demonstrations attended by non-students.
However, it’s unclear to what extent Columbia will follow through on these initiatives under new leadership.
Columbia recently hired a new university president, Jennifer Mnookin. As chancellor of University of Wisconsin-Madison, Mnookin struck a deal with pro-Hamas protesters that called for hiring Palestinian instructors and once issued a “land acknowledgement,” a hallmark of leftist ideology which fostered popular support against the higher education establishment. In 2020, she endorsed the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement even as some of its supporters started riots, promoted antisemitism, and demoralized law enforcement.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Israel Competes in World Cheerleading Championships for First Time Ever
Israeli national flags flutter near office towers at a business park also housing high tech companies, at Ofer Park in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 27, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Israel is competing for the first time ever in the 2026 ICU World Cheerleading Championships.
The competition begins on Wednesday, which is also Israel’s Independence Day.
The ISCU, the official cheerleading organization in Israel that is supported by EL AL Airlines, made the announcement and posted footage on Instagram of the athletes and their final rehearsal before flying to the US for the competition, which will take place until Friday in Orlando, Florida. Ludmila Yasinskaya-Demari is the president of the Israel Cheer Union.
“Today, on Israel’s Independence Day, the Israeli cheerleading team has the honor of competing on the world stage,” the ISCU wrote in an Instagram post. “It’s a very moving and meaningful moment for us to represent Israel on such an important day — with pride, strength, and love for our country. Thank you to EL AL for supporting us in this way. There’s something symbolic and special about flying and competing with Israel’s national airline. From Israel to the world — the Israeli team is ready.”
The championship is being held at the ESPN Wide World of Sports complex at Disney World, and is organized by the International Cheer Union, the official world governing body for cheerleading. Israel is a member of the European Cheer Union and the International Cheer Union. It will compete in the POM category and in two doubles pairs competitions.
Team USA is after its ninth, consecutive co-ed premier world title at the World Cheerleading Championships. The US has won gold since 2021 and also won the competition from 2016 through 2019. The competition was not held in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2015, the US came in second place behind Team Chinese Taipei. The US is also the defending champion in the All Girl Premier category.
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Rachel Goldberg-Polin Talks in ’60 Minutes’ Interview, New Memoir About Grief After Son Murdered by Hamas
Rachel Goldberg, mother of killed US-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin whose body was recovered with five other hostages in Gaza, speaks during his funeral in Jerusalem on September 2, 2024. Photo: GIL COHEN-MAGEN/Pool via REUTERS
In a new memoir and “60 Minutes” interview this week, American-Israeli Rachel Goldberg-Polin, a mother of three, opened up about grief and the process of moving forward in life after her only son, Hersh, was murdered while in Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip.
“To know that your child is being tortured, tormented, starved, abused. He’s maimed. And that’s an excruciating form of suffering,” she told “60 Minutes” correspondent Anderson Cooper in a segment that aired on Monday, which was also Israel’s Memorial Day (Yom HaZikaron). “And then what’s so fascinating to me is that when they came to tell us that Hersh had been executed, then I realized that those 330 days had been the good part, because he was alive. And now I’m in this place and this is the rest of my life. How do I walk through this place without a piece of me here?”
“I’m trying to re-understand what it means to be in this world,” she added. “There are millions of us right now who have buried children. There’s nothing unique about me. But it creates light for me to try to give words to the pain.”
Hersh was one of 251 people kidnapped by Hamas-led terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023. The 23-year-old was attending the Nova music festival in southern Israel, near the Gaza border, with a friend when he was abducted. Terrorists murdered 1,200 people during the onslaught, including 378 festivalgoers, and wounded thousands more. Hersh hid inside a bomb shelter with others and had his left arm blown off by a grenade before he was taken hostage.
Goldberg-Polin and her husband campaigned tirelessly and met with world leaders around the globe to try to secure the release of the hostages, but on the 328th day of his captivity, Hersh was executed by Hamas terrorists. Israeli soldiers found his body in a tunnel in Rafah on Aug. 31, 2024. Hersh, who was shot six times at close range, and five other hostages had been executed.
Goldberg-Polin further details her grief and talks about the kind of person Hersh was, even as a child, in her memoir “When We See You Again,” released on Tuesday. The book is a “searing portrait of a mother’s grief and strength in the wake of unthinkable tragedy,” according to a description of the memoir published by Penguin Random House.
“There are days when I break completely,” Goldberg-Polin writes in her book. “I have cried for an entire day straight. I didn’t think it was physically possible, but the weeping never let up. That is a very long time to cry. I kept hoping I would run out of tears. And then there are days when there is a whisper of sun. Not out there in the sky. In me. In us.”
She also describes grief, saying: “People want hope, resilience, recovery, strength, survival, healing. They want thriving and rising from the ashes, like the phoenix from the days of yore. But the pain is chronic, ever present, constant, gnawing, circular, not linear.”
Goldberg-Polin told Cooper on “60 Minutes” that she now thinks “grief is actually just this precious badge of love that you wear because someone has died and your love is continuing to grow.”
Former Hamas hostage Or Levy was released in February 2025 along with two others and talked to “60 Minutes” about spending three days with Hersh in a tunnel. He told Cooper that during their time together, Hersh kept repeating the mantra, “He who has a why can bear any how.” The line is from “Man’s Search for Meaning,” a 1946 concentration camp memoir by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, who adapted a similar saying by Fredrich Nietzsche.
“It became our mantra … The only reason why I survived was him,” Levy told Cooper on “60 Minutes.” Soon after his release, Levy got the mantra tattooed on his arm.
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Iran Seizes Ships in Strait of Hormuz After Trump Extends Ceasefire
Ships and boats in the Strait of Hormuz, Musandam, Oman, April 22, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
Iran seized two ships in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, tightening its grip on the strategic waterway after US President Donald Trump called off attacks with no sign of peace talks restarting.
Trump maintained the US Navy blockade of Iran‘s trade by sea, and Iran‘s parliament speaker and top negotiator Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said a full ceasefire only made sense if it was lifted. Reopening the strait was impossible with such a “flagrant breach of the ceasefire,” Qalibaf said in a post on X.
“You did not achieve your goals through military aggression, and you will not achieve them by bullying either. The only way is recognizing the Iranian people’s rights,” he said in his first response to Trump’s ceasefire extension.
Iran‘s semi-official Tasnim news agency earlier said the Revolutionary Guards had seized two vessels for maritime violations and escorted them to Iranian shores. It was the first time Iran has seized ships since the war began at the end of February.
The Revolutionary Guards also warned that any disruption to order and safety in the strait would be considered a “red line,” Tasnim said.
NO NEW DEADLINE FOR CEASEFIRE
Trump said on social media late on Tuesday that the US had agreed to a request by Pakistani mediators “to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal … and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.”
A source briefed on the matter confirmed on Wednesday that Trump had not set a timeline for the extension of the ceasefire.
In a show of defiance, Iran showcased some of its ballistic weapons at a parade in Tehran on Tuesday evening, with images on state TV showing large crowds waving Iranian flags and a banner in the background with a fist choking off the strait.
Captions read: “Indefinitely under Iran‘s Control” and “Trump could not do a damn thing,” referring to the waterway, the closure of which has caused a global energy crisis.
PAKISTAN STILL WORKING TO FOSTER TALKS DESPITE ‘SETBACK’
Pakistan, which has acted as a mediator, was still trying to bring the sides together for negotiations after both failed to show up for talks on Tuesday before the two-week-old ceasefire had been due to expire.
“We were all prepared for the talks, the stage was set,” a Pakistani official briefed on the preparations told Reuters. “If you ask me honestly, it was a setback we were not expecting, because the Iranians never refused, they were up to come and join, and they still are.”
Throughout the war, Iran has effectively shut the strait to ships other than its own by attacking vessels that attempt to transit without its permission. Around a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas normally passes through the waterway.
The Revolutionary Guards accused the seized ships, the Panama-flagged MSC Francesca and Liberia-flagged Epaminondas, of operating without required permits and tampering with their navigation systems.
The Greek-operated Epaminondas reported being fired upon about 20 nautical miles northwest of Oman. It said it had sustained damage to its bridge after being hit by gunfire and that no one was hurt in the incident.
Greece and the company have not confirmed the seizure of the vessel. MSC, the world’s biggest container shipping group, did not respond to a Reuters request for immediate comment.
A third, Liberia-flagged container ship was fired upon in the same area but was not damaged and had resumed sailing, according to maritime security sources.
DIFFERENCES REMAIN ON KEY ISSUES
With his announcement on Tuesday, Trump again pulled back at the last moment from warnings to bomb Iran‘s power plants and bridges, a threat condemned by the United Nations and others as potentially constituting war crimes. Iran had said it would strike its Arab neighbors if its civilian infrastructure was hit.
Oil prices reversed course to head higher after the shipping incidents on Wednesday, with Brent crude futures up almost 4% at $102.2 a barrel.
A first session of peace talks 11 days ago produced no agreement.
Washington wants Iran to give up highly enriched uranium and forgo further enrichment to prevent it getting a weapon. Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, wants an end to the war, the lifting of sanctions, reparations for damage and recognition of its control over the strait.
An Israeli strike killed two people in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, Lebanon’s state news agency reported, and Hezbollah said it launched an attack drone at Israeli forces in the south, further straining a ceasefire between the Iran-backed terrorist group and Israel.
The Lebanon ceasefire had been a precondition for Iran agreeing to talks.