NEW YORK A crowd of pro-Israel protesters gathered just outside the Columbia University campus on Thursday evening, chanting through the gates at a group of pro-Palestinian students inside to go to Gaza!

Go home, terrorists! the pro-Israel crowd screamed at the students. Go back to Gaza! they yelled. Stop wasting mommy and daddys money! one man said through a megaphone. You want to camp? Go camp in Gaza! said another man, referring to the Palestinian territory where Israels siege has killed some 33,000 people, and where this week local health officials said medics had discovered mass graves at hospitals raided by Israeli troops.

The White House which under President Joe Biden has continued to send aid and weapons to Israel months after the International Court of Justice ruled that Palestinians in Gaza were at risk of experiencing a genocide responded to HuffPosts video of the incident in a statement Friday.

Every American is an American, full stop, deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said. It is bigoted and outrageous to suggest that anyone should go back anywhere. These kinds of statements degrade all of us, whether its telling someone to go back to Gaza, or telling someone to go back to Belarus and Poland, which was captured in other videos yesterday countries where Jews were victims of the Holocaust and pogroms. President Biden stands against hateful rhetoric, and believes we must constantly respect the dignity of all people, regardless of disagreements about policy.

The pro-Israel demonstration Thursday was helmed by a group of far-right Christian nationalist figures. Sean Feucht, the prominent MAGA pastor and musician , was the main organizer of the Unite for Israel rally. Feucht is closely tied to a slew of prominent Republican lawmakers, once bestowing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis with a Defending Freedom award at a Miami Let Us Worship event, meeting with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Capitol Hill, and praying over former President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. He has appeared multiple times on Fox News, is a regular on Steve Bannons War Room podcast, and is close with Jack Posobiec, the far-right influencer who has a history of making antisemitic remarks.

Ahead of the rally Feucht said in a livestreamed video that the rise in antisemitism on college campuses was another welcome harbinger of the end days. Many American evangelicals, like Feucht, see the return of Jews to Israel as key to an End Times prophecy that would usher in the Second Coming of Christ and commence true Christians ascent to heaven. These evangelicals believe at that moment Jews will have to convert to Christianity or perish a belief grounded in antisemitism.

Members of the group screamed at the students from beneath a giant Israeli flag theyd fastened to the top of the tall black gate at the schools Amsterdam Avenue entrance. A phalanx of NYPD cops stood behind them. The scene was the culmination of a tumultuous week at the Ivy League university, where on Apr. 17 pro-Palestinian students formed an encampment on Columbias West Lawn, setting up tents in a Liberated Zone to occupy the space. The students want the university to agree to divest from companies they say are profiting from Israels war, its illegal occupation of Palestinian land, and a social system the students argue amounts to apartheid.

Last week Columbias president, Minouche Shafik, took the shocking step of summoning the New York Police Department to quash the encampment, with cops removing the tents and arresting over 100 students. The university suspended some students and evicted them from campus housing. But the encampment returned shortly thereafter, inspiring dozens of other pro-Palestinian occupations at universities across the country.