Letitia James Responds to Cornell Jewish Threats

Antisemitic messages about Jewish students at Cornell University and threats made against a Jewish center on campus are “absolutely horrific,” New York Attorney General Letitia James has said.

University administrators were forced to alert campus police after a call for the Center for Jewish Living to be torn down and for Jewish students to have their throats slit were made on an online student forum, which the university said was not affiliated with Cornell. Cornell Hillel, which facilitates Jewish living on campus, urged Jewish students to avoid the center’s kosher dining hall.

“There is no space for antisemitism or violence of any kind,” James wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Campuses must remain safe spaces for our students.”

Among the messages screengrabbed by former Cornell alumni, one by a user called “Jew evil” entitled “Jewish people need to be killed” reads: “If you see a Jewish ‘person’ on campus follow them home and slit their throats. Rats need to be eliminated from Cornell.”

Another, by a user named “Hamas warrior,” says Israel “deserved” the attack by Hamas and Islamic Jihad on October 7, which left around 1,400 Israelis dead—among them many civilians, including children and the elderly.

The post read: “The genocidal fascist Zionist regime will be destroyed. Rape and kill all the Jew women, before they birth more Jewish Hitlers. Jews are excrement on the face of the Earth. No Jew civilian is innocent of genocide.”

A further post, by a user called “Jew jenocide,” told others to “eliminate Jewish living from Cornell campus.” It read: “The Jewish house on Cornell is yet another literal and symbolic form of apartheid and genocide on campus. It stands on land forcibly stolen from Native people who had their identity erased. It enforces strict dietary and religious customs. In my opinion it should be torn down and the illegal settlers relocated.”

Another, by a user called “kill Jews,” threatened that they were “gonna shoot up 104 West,” the name of the kosher and multicultural dining hall.

In 2021, Cornell acknowledged that its entire Ithaca, New York, campus was located on the traditional homelands of the Cayuga Nation, which were, as it put, stolen from Indigenous people by the federal government in 1862.

The university has 10 dining rooms, of which 104 West caters to religiously observant students, including Jews, Muslims and Seventh-day Adventists. Another also has kosher and halal dining stations.

On Sunday, Cornell Hillel said it was aware of the threats and that campus police were providing additional security “as a precaution.” It added: “At this time, we advise that students and staff avoid the building out of an abundance of caution.”

Another screengrabbed message on the student forum, posted to Reddit, reads: “If I see another Jew on campus…if I see a pig male Jew I will stab you and slit your throat. If I see another pig female Jew I will drag you away and rape you and throw you off a cliff. If I see another pig baby Jew I will behead you in front of your parents.”

All the messages are timestamped to have been posted over the weekend. The university said its campus police had notified the FBI of a potential hate crime.

Newsweek approached the FBI field office in New York via phone and the office of James via email for comment on Monday.

In a statement on Sunday, Martha E. Pollack, Cornell’s president, acknowledged the “horrendous, antisemitic” messages, writing: “Threats of violence are absolutely intolerable, and we will work to ensure that the person or people who posted them are punished to the full extent of the law.”

“We will not tolerate antisemitism at Cornell,” Pollack added. “The virulence and destructiveness of antisemitism is real and deeply impacting our Jewish students, faculty and staff, as well as the entire Cornell community. This incident highlights the need to combat the forces that are dividing us and driving us toward hate. This cannot be what defines us at Cornell.”

Since the outbreak of violence in the Middle East, there have been rising tensions on U.S. college campuses over expressions of support for Palestine, which in some cases have spilled over into expressions of support for Hamas’s actions.

At Harvard University, 31 student groups wrote in an open letter that Israel was “solely responsible” for Hamas’s attack, something that has lost some students job offers.

George Washington University has come under fire after controversial pro-Palestinian messages were projected onto a library, and a Jewish alumni of Columbia University has threatened to pull his funding of the institution over its handling of tensions on campus.

Since the October 7 attacks, Israel has conducted an intensive campaign of air strikes against Gaza—where Hamas is based—and began a ground incursion into the northern part of the Palestinian territory at the weekend. Figures by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, cited by the Associated Press, show that more than 8,000 have been killed in the violence so far.