Hundreds of students gathered on the campus of the prestigious Columbia University in New York City on Wednesday, in a demonstration against former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who was on campus to give a speech, calling him a "war criminal."

Student demonstrations have swept across most American universities across the country since Israel began its war on the Gaza Strip, which Israel waged with unprecedented brutality, targeting Palestinian civilians in the wake of the Hamas attack known as “Al-Aqsa Flood” on October 7, 2025 on the Gaza envelope area.

“The decision to host a man with a history of violence and open discrimination sends a message that the university values some voices over others,” a spokesperson for the Columbia Palestine Solidarity Coalition, one of the groups involved in the protest, said in a statement.

A university spokesperson told the campus newspaper, The Columbia Spectator, that officials coordinated with the pro-Israel student branch of Hillel on security preparations for the event, “including regarding any protest activity on campus and to minimize potential disruptions to academic activities.”

It is noteworthy that Bennett did not just boast about killing Palestinians and Arabs, but he previously pledged to do everything in his power to displace Palestinians from the besieged Gaza Strip, as well as from the occupied West Bank.

Bennett said in 2018, when he was education minister and three years before becoming prime minister, that he would order the army to shoot and kill Palestinian children who breach the border fence with Gaza, saying: “They are not children — they are terrorists.”

In a statement released ahead of his speech, the student committees that organized the protest said they learned of the conversation from a leaked email in which organizers allegedly sought to keep the rally under the radar and urged that the speaker's identity be kept secret.

“The decision to host a man with a history of violence and open discrimination sends a message that the university values some voices over others,” a spokesperson for the Columbia University Palestine Solidarity Coalition, one of the groups participating in the protest, said in a statement.

“They are bombing Israel left and right, they are bypassing Congress and encouraging ethnic cleansing, they are encouraging them to expel people in Gaza. Now, students are facing expulsion from the university,” said one protester.

It is also noteworthy that between October 7, 2023 and January 19, 2025, Israel committed genocide in its war on Gaza, leaving more than 160,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 14,000 missing, with full American support, in terms of weapons, equipment, money and diplomacy.

Police called on protesters to leave the university after announcing a bomb threat on the campus of Barnard College.

After the police demanded that the university be evacuated, the police forces entered and arrested a number of demonstrators.

Earlier on Wednesday, pro-Palestine students gathered at the university library building to protest Bennett's visit, wearing Palestinian keffiyehs and waving the Palestinian flag.