IDF reservist clashes with pro-Palestine protesters at Columbia while recounting bloodshed in Israel
A Columbia student and Israeli soldier tried to reason with the hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters that rallied at the Morningside campus Wednesday.
Guy Sela, 29, told The Post that he attempted to describe how he witnessed first-hand the horrors Hamas unleashed on his people and own family — but was only admonished as a “murderer.”
“Never in my life I’ve seen something so inhuman as raping a young woman and decapitating her. And I’ve seen it firsthand,” Guy Sela, 29, told The Post as the pro-Palestinan group screamed behind him.
“I’ve seen the babies that are lying there on the floor. I’ve seen this person that they cut his head off with.”
Sela had been inside the Ivy League university when he heard students and faculty erupt into an “emergency protest” outside.
The Israeli Defense Forces reservist had just returned to New York City last week after being called to fight for his country in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 surprise attack that left 1,200 Israelis dead and another 240 as hostages.
His sister’s brother-in-law and three of his friends were among those killed in the massacre. Two of his fellow soldiers that he was close with also died fighting in the terrorist attack, Sela said.
The former IDF Paratroopers Brigade member tried to engage with the boisterous crowd and tell them about the “horrors of this tremendous thing” he witnessed but was quickly berated for having a hand in the war.
“They started yelling at me because I told them that I’m an officer in the IDF,” Sela said.
“They asked me if I’m for or against cease-fire — I told them that I completely understand that there should be a true, some kind of peace in this region, but the only thing I’m going to ask them to acknowledge that we’re suffering also.
They started yelling at me, calling me names, calling me a murderer and stuff like that.”
Sela was disappointed with the protesters’ disinterest in hearing his point of view — especially because he had first-hand experience, where they likely only get a glimpse into the conflict through videos, he said.
The hundreds of ralliers chanted for a ceasefire and the removal of Jewish people in Gaza, while also boycotting the suspension of two far-left student-led groups by the school’s administration for “included “threatening rhetoric and intimidation.”
He accused the pro-Palestinian ralliers of falling back on their political ideology rather than looking into the conflict from a “neutral standpoint” and by listening to someone who could provide insight that clashes with their beliefs, which Sela believes is only furthering the divide.
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“It’s crazy for me that people here are screaming about the cause that they don’t even know and going back to sleep in their own cozy, bed eating their own warm food and people on the other side of the world are still fighting,” Sela said.
“They’re just fueling this hate, instead of fueling peace and love and whatever. They’re just fueling this whole conflict.”
Sela also believes his Israeli identity is blocking pro-Palestinian ralliers from relenting and giving him the space to share his experience.
Even if he entered their protest and joined them in demanding a cease-fire, Sela thinks he would be booted from the cause.
“I look at them as real human beings that are suffering, that have families. Even if not related, the stories that they hear might shock them. I feel bad for them. I feel bad that they need to go through this. Don’t think that I’m going to ask them that the equivalent to me will be the same,” Sela said.
“They don’t want you there. They hate you, just by being born in the other side of the border. It’s nothing that they can do. They just don’t like me as a person, as my nationality.”
The rally comes just one week after Columbia University launched an antisemitism task force to address the “terribly resilient” hatred that has swept across its campus since the Israel-Hamas conflict erupted last month.
The school said it was pushed to establish the task force after a notable increase in the amount of reported antisemitic attacks — a phenomenon that has been reflected in other major universities across the nation.
The reported incidents ranged from physical assaults — including the attack of an Israeli student outside the library of the Morningside Campus — to ideological rumblings that left Jewish students slamming the university for leaving them to feel “unsafe.”
The Ivy League also announced the formation of the task force the same day it activated a doxxing resource group to protect pro-Palestinian students.
The school was finally pushed last week to suspend opposing far-left groups Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) through the end of the fall term saying both had violated university policies.