Anti-Israel student demonstrators who marched through the campus of Columbia University on Friday claim they were sprayed with a chemical that reeked of “raw sewage and dead mouse.”
Members of the suspended university groups Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace have said that two unidentified men came up to them outside the Low Library and sprayed an unknown chemical — which caused them to experience headaches, fatigue and nausea.
Maryam Iqbal, a freshman at Barnard, said she “started smelling this horrible smell” about halfway through the protest.
“I can only describe it as raw sewage and dead mouse,” she told the New York Times.
Of 24 students at the protest who were surveyed in the aftermath, 18 reported a putrid smell, 10 reported physical symptoms like burning eyes, headaches and nausea — with three having to seek medical attention, and eight reported damage to their personal belongings, according to the school newspaper.
The students at the unsanctioned protest on Friday have since said they saw two men approach the group of protesters and flee the scene as the smell spread.
Maia, a Barnard College senior who was only identified by her first name, said she saw two people with their faces “pretty much all covered” by keffiyehs — the traditional Palestinian head scarf.
They stood out to her, she said, because their keffiyehs appeared to be a slightly different color and pattern from the black and white ones sold by student groups.
“I noticed them come up behind different people at the edges of the protest and [they] would stand there for like a second,” she recounted to the Columbia Spectator.
Eventually, Maia said she got close enough that she could hear and smell the spray.
“Once they were closest to me, behind someone that was near me, I heard a little spraying sound.”
She then said she noticed the two men walk away “and then it started smelling really bad.”
Layla Saliba, a 24-year-old Palestinian-American graduate student at Columbia’s School of Social Work, also described the two men as looking as if they wanted to get into a confrontation with the protesters, whom they called “terrorists.”
She said they seemed “especially aggressive” toward students holding up signs saying “Jews for ceasefire,” who they called “self-hating Jews.”
Saliba later shared photos of the alleged suspects online, showing one man in a puffy orange jacket and sunglasses and another in dark clothing with an army-green Israeli flag hat.
She also said she started feeling fatigued and had headaches and nausea in the aftermath, and checked herself into an urgent care facility.
There, she said, the doctors diagnosed her with “exposure to a harmful chemical” and told her that she would have to miss class “for a few days” due to her “severe pain,” according to the Spectator.
She said she was still experiencing symptoms on Monday and could still smell the odor on her clothes and hair — even after nearly a dozen showers.
Meanwhile, Iqbal said she reported the incident to the college’s Public Safety Department on Sunday and showed personnel there a jacket she was wearing at the protest as evidence.
But when she smelled the jacket, Iqbal said she became sick again and had to be treated for nausea at a local hospital.
Students for Justice in Palestine — one of the student groups that the university banned from campus in November — has claimed the spray was “Skunk” — a crowd control chemical developed by the Israeli military, and alleged that the perpetrators were members of the Israeli Defense Forces without providing any evidence.
The Post could not verify those claims.
On Monday, Interim Provost Dennis A. Mitchell emailed all Columbia and Barnard College students and faculty, saying university officials “received additional information Sunday night.
“As a result, the alleged perpetrators identified to the university were immediately banned from campus” while police investigate “what appears to have been serious crimes, possibly hate crimes.”
One day prior, the Ivy League’s Department of Public Safety announced it is “actively working with local and federal authorities in this investigation, with the NYPD taking a lead role.”
But so far, there have been no arrests and the investigation is ongoing, police said.
It remains unclear how many people have been barred from campus or whether they were students at the school. It is also unclear what substance was sprayed and what led up to the incident.
A spokesperson for the university, however, emphasized to The Post that “Friday’s event was unsanctioned and violated university policies and procedures which are in place to ensure there is adequate personnel on the ground to keep our community safe.”
University delegates reportedly distributed flyers to the protesters chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” demanding they stop the “disruption” and threatening “interim sanctions by the Provost up to and including suspension for the rest of the semester,” according to the Spectator.