Sahar Tartak, a Jewish Yale University student and the editor-in-chief of the student-run of the Yale Free Press, was stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag while she was reporting on an anti-Israeli protest at the Yale University.
The protests saw hundreds of students camping at the Ivy League school campus in support of Palestinians. Sahar said that while she was covering the protests she was suddenly surrounded by demonstrators and jabbed in the eye with the butt of the flagpole by one of the protesters.
Her assailant has gone unpunished despite Tartak reporting the matter to the police on campus, who told her that they could not do anything about the incident.
She told the New York Post that she and a friend of hers were singled out for wearing Hasidic Jewish attire. She said demonstrators formed a blockade around them to disturb their filming.
“There’s hundreds of people taunting me and waving the middle finger at me, and then this person waves a Palestinian flag in my face and jabs it in my eye,” Tartak was quoted as saying by the New York Post.
The attack on Tartak by the crowd is reminiscent of the attack on 2021 Miss Israel winner Noa Cochva who was hit with the butt of protest placard while she was holding a counter demonstration during a pro-Palestine rally in New York City.
University and college campuses across the US have become focal points of major protests, rallies, and vigils amid the situation in Palestine and the war in Gaza, with both pro-Palestine and pro-Israel groups organizing marches and demonstrations.
Critics of the pro-Palestinian groups have also said claimed that authorities are not doing much to curb antisemitism on campus.
Incidents of violence and alleged targeting of Jewish students forced a prominent rabbi at Columbia University to urge Jewish students to not return to Columbia University campus on Sunday due to “extreme antisemitism”.
“The events of the last few days, especially last night, have made it clear that Columbia University’s Public Safety and the NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy,” Rabbi Elie Buechler told his students via messaging app WhatsApp, according to the New York Post.
“It deeply pains me to say that I would strongly recommend you return home as soon as possible and remain home until the reality in and around campus has dramatically improved,” he further added.
His warning came after 200 students protested against Israel in Columbia University on Saturday, with some students allegedly saying that students who wave Israeli flags on campus will be their next target. They were also calling for the school to divest from corporations profiting from the war in West Asia.
Several students involved in the protest said they also were suspended from Columbia and Barnard College, including Isra Hirsi, who is the daughter of Democratic US representative Ilhan Omar.
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