Representative Ilhan Omar, a member of the ‘squad’, showed solidarity with the student activists protesting on the Columbia University campus against Israel while calling the Jewish State’s military operation in Gaza a ‘genocide.’
Omar’s statement came after her own daughter, Isra Hirsi, was one of approximately 100 activists arrested during a protest at the Ivy League school.
“On Thursday, Columbia arrested and suspended its peacefully protesting students and have now started a national Gaza Solidarity movement,” the controversial Democrat wrote in X.
‘This is more than the students expected and I am happy to see this kind of solidarity. But to be clear, this is about the genocide in Gaza and the focus must remain on that.”
Protests have been widespread on college campuses for a week, with activists holding often violent demonstrations at New York University, Yale and MIT.
On Monday night, a riot broke out following a protest by pro-Palestinian students at California Polytechnic University in the city of Arcata.
Omar’a’s statement came after her own daughter, Isra Hirsi, was one of approximately 100 activists arrested during a protest at the Ivy League school.
Omar’s daughter says she has nowhere to live or eat after being suspended for participating in anti-Israel protests at Columbia University.
Hirsi (pictured right with her mother), 21, was part of a days-long protest in support of Palestine that has drawn strong condemnation from both sides of the political spectrum, including the White House.
In the wake of protests in New York, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft announced that he had withdrawn his donation money from the school.
“The school that I love so much, the one that welcomed me and gave me so many opportunities, is no longer an institution that I recognize,” the Patriots owner and Columbia graduate said Monday.
“I am deeply saddened by the virulent hatred that continues to grow on campus and across our country.”
Kraft added: “I am hopeful that Columbia and its leaders will confront this hatred by ending these protests immediately and work to regain the respect and trust of many of us who have lost faith in the institution.”
The billionaire also said he hopes Columbia’s Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life will serve “as a source of security for all Jewish students and faculty on campus.”
hirsi and two of his classmates from Barnard College (the college is a sister school to Columbia) are among the more than 100 protesters who have been arrested, an NYPD spokesperson confirmed to DailyMail.com.
Hirsi, junior Soph Askanase and freshman Maryam Iqbal were suspended. Hirsi has now revealed that she has been evicted from campus housing and banned from the dining hall, leaving her without shelter or food.
‘I was a bit frantic, like, where am I going to sleep? Where am I going to go? And also all my shit gets thrown away in a random batch. It’s pretty horrible,” she said. teen fashion.
“They tied me up for about seven hours and didn’t release me until about eight,” adding that he didn’t leave until a total of 13 hours after his arrest.
However, Hirsi saved his harshest words for Laura Rosenbury, Barnard’s president, who he felt overreacted.
“I think it’s really on a school-by-school basis, and Barnard has decided to take a very egregious stance against us,” Hirsi said.
He said Rosenbury and Barnard leaders ‘feel like there’s not a lot of attention on them right now and that they have the ability to do it, because [Columbia President Minouche] Shafik was on stage at Congress and is being actively harassed for what she is doing.
The protests have pitted students against each other, with pro-Palestinian students demanding that their schools condemn Israel’s attack on Gaza and divest from companies that sell weapons to Israel.
Meanwhile, some Jewish students say much of the criticism of Israel has veered toward anti-Semitism and made them feel unsafe, and they point out that Hamas is still holding hostages taken during the group’s Oct. 7 invasion.
Tensions remained high Monday at Columbia, where campus doors were closed to anyone without a school ID and where protests broke out both on and off campus.