Posted on 08/27/24
| News Source: NY Post
Anti-Israel vandals defaced a building at Cornell University on the first day of classes Monday — smashing the glass of a doorway and scrawling hateful messages like “Blood is on your hands.”
“We had to accept that the only way to make ourselves heard is by targeting the only thing the university administration truly cares about: property,” the vandals said in an anonymous statement to the Cornell Daily Sun, the student newspaper that broke the story.
The vandals struck sometime overnight or in the early morning, shattering the glass at an entrance to Cornell’s Day Hall and spray-painting messages including “Israel bombs and Cornell pays.”
“With the start of this new academic year, the Cornell administration is trying desperately to upkeep a facade of normalcy knowing that, since last semester, they have been working tirelessly to uphold Cornell’s function as a fascist, classist, imperial machine,” the activists said.
Joel M. Malina, vice president for university relations, said those responsible would be “subject to suspension and criminal charges.”
“We are appalled by the graffiti spray painted, and glass shattered overnight along the front entrance of Day Hall,” Malina said in a statement. “Acts of violence, extended occupation of buildings, or property damage (including graffiti) will not be tolerated and will prompt an immediate response from public safety.”
Cornell Law professor William A. Jacobson said the crimes sent a message at the start of the semester.
“Given the weak response at Cornell last academic year to intimidation tactics by anti-Israel activists, it is no surprise that they have upped the aggressiveness by opening the semester with vandalism and destruction of property,” said Jacobson, founder of EqualProtect.org. “This is a bad omen.”