Some 100 people gathered outside the main entrance to Columbia University in New York City on Friday to protest the attack on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam overnight.

Columbia student Noah Lederman attended the rally before going to an event at the campus Hillel. 

“I am very concerned about what’s happening on campus,” he told JNS. “I was walking with my ‘I stand with Israel’ t-shirt just now, and a guy said, ‘The Nazis are coming.’ I asked him whether he was calling us ‘Nazis.’ He said, ‘You are all Nazi.’”

Lederman said that Jewish students weren’t safe at Columbia last semester, where there was an anti-Israel encampment in the spring. “Right now, I feel safe on campus but I see how dramatically this can change,” he said. “To be lulled into a false sense of security is very dangerous.”

The student sees a “lack of education” as part of the problem. “People don’t understand what they are standing up for, and that is a major issue,” he said. “A large thing that the other side has been doing so successfully is get people who don’t care to care by feeding them propaganda and misinformation, and saying, ‘This will make you a good person.’”

“These are supposed to be places for learning, and they’ve become places so polarized that nobody can even have any sort of respectful conversation,” he said. “There are compelling arguments to be had about ethical and moral issues that may arise in this conflict, and yet it’s become impossible to have these conversations.”

Shai Davidai, an assistant management professor at Columbia Business School, told JNS that there was a “direct link” between the events in Amsterdam and growing global calls by pro-Hamas students to “globalize the Intifada.” The latter is a reference to the 2000-2005 Palestinian terror war on the Jewish state.

“We saw in Amsterdam Jews being chased on the streets, being beaten up, attackers checking their passports to see if they were Jewish, throwing them into the river, making sure they couldn’t hide,” Davidai said.

“We are here, because it’s time to end Jew-hatred,” he said. “No one is going to save us unless we come and tell the world that it is not acceptable. The community has had enough.”

In the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, anti-Israel protests have surfaced across U.S. campuses, with Columbia at the forefront. Davidai has been one of those who have been most vocal in their criticism of the way that Columbia handled a pro-Hamas encampment on campus. 

Hundreds of students have reported increasing Jew-hatred at Columbia, according to an August report released by the university’s antisemitism task force. 

Ofri Reiner, a survivor of the Supernova music festival, told JNS that she was “in a battle to fight for Israel and bring the voice of my generation.”

“My brother was killed on Oct. 7 fighting for our lives,” Reiner said. (Her brother Shalev Dagan was an Israel Defense Forces soldier.)

“I came to New York yesterday and seeing what happened in Amsterdam, I felt the need to belong and to feel part of something bigger than me while reminding myself that I am surrounded by people that love me,” she told JNS.

The Amsterdam police department told JNS on Friday that it had “launched a major investigation into multiple violent incidents” and that as of Friday afternoon in Amsterdam, five people had been hospitalized and 62 were arrested.

Witnesses described about 100 men, whom they described as Arabs, assaulting Israelis in a coordinated manner. The country’s largest-scale antisemitic incident in decades has shocked many Dutchmen and especially Jews and Holocaust survivors, who said that recalls the time leading up to the Holocaust.

Amanda Mccallum, who described herself as a Zionist, told JNS that she came to Columbia, because she saw echoes of Nazi Germany in current developments.

“I am proud that I have some Jewish blood,” she said. “You don’t need to be Jewish or have Jewish friends to stand up for what’s right.” 

“The Jews are 0.2% of the world and it’s like ‘Oh, they’re the problem.’ It’s insane and so wrong,” she said. “I feel like history repeats itself and antisemitism is coming back, and I am scared for my Jewish friends.”

A 45-year-old New Yorker, who gave his name as David, attended the rally with a combined U.S.-Israeli flag draped on his back and a “make America great again” hat. 

“When someone tells you who they are, you must listen,” the man told JNS. “They have been screaming ‘death to America.’ They’ve been burning both Israeli flags and American flags. I’ve been at all these counter protests. I have watched the whole process.”

The man told JNS that wearing the hat, which draws on the catch phrase associated with President-elect Donald Trump, is new to him.

“I’ve always voted Democrat, but I feel betrayed by the party. I am afraid not only for Israel and Jews, but for the United States also when they say bring the Intifada to America,” he said. “When I see white American kids—the same liberals that I used to be aligned with—chanting these things, it makes me rethink everything about what America means.” 

“What happened yesterday reminds me of things that I read about, that I thought were in the past, but apparently we are not,” he added, of the attacks in Amsterdam. 

Felice Schachter, of the grassroot organization Mothers Against College Antisemitism, addressed the crowd at the rally on Friday, emphasizing that “‘Never again’ is not an empty slogan.”

“It’s a promise,” she said. 

“We go around the country to various universities where antisemitism is on display and we show up to protect and support Jewish students, because they are feeling scared and alone right now,” Schachter told JNS. 

Sandra Mimran, a member of the group from Montreal, told JNS that Jewish rights are civil rights. “We are here to stand for them,” she said. “Everybody needs to feel safe.”