A high-ranking administrator of Columbia University found his apartment complex wracked with vandalism and anti-Israel sentiments smeared with red paint, early Thursday morning, the New York Post reported.
Columbia chief operating officer Cas Holloway's Brooklyn Heights building was the target of unidentified pro-Palestinian protesters, terrifying neighbors, sources told the outlet.
The vandals smashed the glass door of the lobby and put up posters of Holloway with his name and photo, leaving a note that criticized his handling of the campus protests that engulfed Columbia in the spring.
"Did you enjoy our present? Did it make you uncomfortable? What you felt was incomparable to the pain you made Columbia students feel when you signed off on their brutalization because they stood against the genocide of Palestinians," the note said.
The group taunted Holloway further, saying that after the paint and glass had been cleaned up, he will remember the damage they inflicted.
"P.S. Even when the crickets are gone from your apartment, the memory will remain," the group wrote.
Columbia made international news in April when pro-Palestinian demonstrators broke into Hamilton Hall, resulting in dozens of arrests after a large-scale police operation. The protests lasted more than two weeks and forced the cancellation of in-person classes, final exams, and canceled the university's commencement ceremony. In late June, the City of New York dropped all criminal charges against the protesters.
One of Holloway's neighbors, who requested not to be named, told New York Post that such vandalism won't solve problems.
"They are protesting all these institutional investments in Israel — that's what they say it is. It's not helping the situation," she said. "I'm not scared, just mad. Protesting is great, but not like this."
Markings left in red paint caught the attention of Mark Treyger, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, who called the vandalism a "disgusting and despicable act."
"Red triangles were used as badges placed onto Jews by the Nazis in concentration camps during the holocaust," he told the Post, describing the scene. "There is an orchestrated effort to disassociate Jewish identity from colleges, museums, hospitals and everyday life — which is straight out of the 1930s Nazi playbook."
James Morley III ✉
James Morley III is a writer with more than two decades of experience in entertainment, travel, technology, and science and nature.
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