Protesters at Baruch College call for “bringing the war home” at a rally against Campus Hillel

A small group of protesters gathered outside Baruch College in New York and called for “war” in the United States, attacking the college’s Jewish student club Hillel – another sign of escalating rhetoric on campus just before the start of the semester on Wednesday.

On Saturday, protesters held a banner reading “Bring the war home,” next to an image of an assault rifle and a sign reading “Let the intifada pave the way for the people’s war.”

In an Instagram post about the protestBaruch’s branch of Students for Justice in Palestine called for “building a militant resistance against imperialism in all its forms.” The post about the protest was widely shared by other pro-Palestinian groups on the campuses of the City University of New York public college system.

According to the images posted on social media, the protesters carried a sign reading “Hillel, go to hell” and a inverted red triangle, a symbol used by the terrorist group Hamas to identify targets in propaganda videos. In the pictures, the activists are wearing Palestinian scarves and their faces are blurred. It was unclear how many of them were Baruch students.

Baruch’s Students for Justice in Palestine published a job advertisement who shows two assault rifles on his Instagram account.

Student groups from across CUNY, including John Jay, CUNY Law and Queens College, signed a “call to action” this week and called for protests across the vast university system to mark the start of the new academic year.

“We, the students, refuse to remain silent at the beginning of the school year while our brothers and sisters are being murdered by the terrorist state of Israel,” the student groups said said in a statement led by Within Our Lifetime, New York’s leading anti-Israel protest group. The hardline activist group approved the October 7 attack on Israel and its members are closely linked to the CUNY system.

“Baruch is appalled by the language used at a protest rally Saturday in a public square near our campus and condemns any speech intended to harass and intimidate others,” the college said in a statement when asked for comment by New York Jewish Week. “The NYPD and our security officers were on site to ensure the safety of our students, faculty and staff.”

The statement concludes: “Baruch remains committed to a respectful and inclusive campus environment for all students.”

Since the October 7 attack on Israel, college activist groups in New York have stepped up their rhetoric, including targeting Jewish student groups and the admission of terrorist organisations in the last few months.

In June, pro-Palestinian groups in Baruch organized a protest against Hilleland accused the Jewish campus group of murdering children and supporting fascism and genocide. Activists at the demonstration wore Hamas headbands and repeatedly made inverted triangles with their hands, holding out the Hamas symbol to counter-protesters.

Saturday’s protest, in which about a dozen people took part according to videos posted on social media, took place on a square next to the Baruch campus in Manhattan’s Kips Bay district.

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The Anti-Defamation League condemned the Baruch protest as a “call for violence” at the university and called on the administration to “take measures to protect the safety and well-being of all students.”

The director of Hillel at Baruch, Ilya Bratman, said the protesters have escalated their rhetoric because their demands of the CUNY administration are not being met. Pro-Palestinian student groups have called for a boycott and divestment from Israel, among other things.

“Students are at least anxious, but at best scared,” Bratman told New York Jewish Week. “They are frustrated because they are having to realize that campus may have changed for the worse over the summer and that they will be returning to a battlefield rather than a learning atmosphere.”

Responding to anti-Israel student activism is hampered by CUNY’s bureaucratic hurdles, says Bratman, who also serves as director of Hillel chapters at several other CUNY colleges. CUNY has 25 campuses across the city, a central administration and liaison with government officials.

“There are a lot of questions for the bureaucracy about who is really in charge here, so there is a chance of some balagan,” Bratman said, using the Hebrew word for “chaos.”

“CUNY should respond much more forcefully and make it clear to everyone, the entire community, what is allowed, what is not allowed and how to behave on campus,” he said.

Mitch Silber, director of the Community Security Initiative, which coordinates security for Jewish organizations in the New York area, said CSI forwarded the images of assault rifles and calls for war to CUNY and Baruch.

“This is not free speech, this is an attempt to intimidate Jewish students on campus. It is problematic and we call on CUNY to do something about it,” Silber said.

CSI expects the college protesters to pick up where they left off at the end of the spring semester, with Warehouse And Building takeoverssaid Silver.

“We think it’s going to be a pretty wild September,” he said.