Texas Sen. Ted Cruz teed off on New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's criticism of New York Police Department's (NYPD) actions at Columbia University in response to pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protests.
Protests kicked off at Columbia University last week and have inspired countless similar protests at other universities across the country. Last Thursday, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik called on NYPD to disperse the crowds of protesters across campus. Over 100 people were arrested.
In a Wednesday X post, Ocasio-Cortez threw criticism towards NYPD's presence at the university.
"Not only did Columbia make the horrific decision to mobilize NYPD on their own students, but the units called in have some of the most violent reputations on the force," Ocasio-Cortez wrote. "NYPD had promised the city wouldn't deploy SRG [strategic response groups] to protests. So why are these counter-terror units here?”
Cruz responded to the New York representative's remarks on Thursday.
"Between law enforcement and pro-Hamas protestors who threaten Jewish students, tragically, Dems side with the antisemites," Cruz wrote.
Earlier in the week, Cruz discussed the ongoing protests erupting across university campuses during an episode of his podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
“That is not peaceful,” Cruz said. “Threats of violence and calling for the murder of your former students is not remotely peaceful.”
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/867-verdict-with-ted-cruz-56253661/episode/israel-ukraine-tiktok-bill-in-170353287/
“AOC, this is a sitting member of Congress, she’s singling out Columbia and Yale, she’s praising what’s happening at Columbia and Yale,” he continued. “Understand, she supports this vicious anti-Semitism, and there is Joe Biden happily sitting there.”
The Texas senator then referenced a recent report which discussed remarks made by Shafik after Sept. 11, 2001, referring to the terrorist attacks as a "form of protesting against a system."
“You’ll always have individuals who will have extreme views,” Shafik said at the November 2001 event at the University of California-Berkeley’s Institute of International Studies. “But what’s really troubling in the region is that there’s actually quite a broad base of society which has some sympathy for the terrorists, not so much because they approve of their methods, but it’s a form of protesting against a system which is not delivering for them on the economic or the political front.”
“In today’s leftist academy, using the president of Columbia’s own word, they have some sympathy for that,” he said. “No, there is no sympathy. Terrorism is not a form of protest. Terrorism is a horrific form of violence that targets civilians, that targets women and children, that commits murder and acts of cruelty. And that’s exactly what Hamas did.”
Cruz then noted Columbia University Prof. Shai Davidai, a Jewish man, had his access card revoked and was prevented from entering a portion of the campus last week.
"This is the administration of Columbia, they decided between a professor on their faculty who happened to be Jewish, or the anti-Semitic protesters who are threatening violence that the problem was the professor who dared to be Jewish," Cruz added.
