Columbia Janitors Sue Their Pro-Hamas Tormentors

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At Columbia, in April 2024, forty pro-Hamas brownshirts — both students and non-students — invaded Hamilton Hall, barricaded themselves inside, and proceeded to vandalize the building, painting slogans on walls, smashing furniture and causing tens of thousands of dollars in damage. They remained inside for four days, and were finally pulled out and arrested by the NYPD, in an operation that cost the city $200,000. Several janitors who were inside the building when it was taken over had tried to stop the mob from vandalizing, but were instead attacked, beaten, and held hostage. Now two of the janitors, who are still suffering from PTSD a year later, and have been unable to work ever since their ordeal inside the building, are suing their captors.

More on this lawsuit can be found here: “Columbia janitors sue pro-Palestinian protesters who ‘held them hostage’ – report,” Jerusalem Post, April 27, 2025:

Two Columbia University janitors claiming to have been held hostage during campus protests last year are suing their alleged captors for battery, assault, and conspiracy to violate their civil rights, the Free Press reported on Saturday.

The lawsuit, filed by Torridon Law and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law on behalf of Mario Torres and Lester Wilson, alleged that over 40 Columbia students and “outside agitators” “terrorized” both men “into the early morning of April 30, assaulted and battered them, held them against their will, and derided them as ‘Jew-lovers’ and ‘Zionists.’”

Both Torres and Wilson noted that the break-in felt “highly coordinated,” with the two observing people with “cases of water and food,” “rolled-up mattresses,” and “tape and rope,” according to the lawsuit.

Shortly after the event, Wilson told the Free Press he thought he “could have been killed in there.”

The occupation of Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall occurred almost exactly a year ago, and, according to the lawsuit, both men have struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that required medical care.

Neither one has returned to work; both instead “subsisting on interim Workers’ Compensation payments,” which have not been able to pay for basic needs and medical bills, according to the suit.

“Mario and Lester are decent, honest, hardworking men who have been through hell. None of this ever should have happened,” Tara Helfman, one of the lawyers on the case, said….

The lawsuit described the protesters as “reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan,” claiming they were “part of a broad pro-Hamas, antisemitic network of organizations, groups, and cells that are connected through a largely untraceable underground communications system. They promote and resort to violent and illegal tactics, and are motivated by invidious discrimination against Jews and supporters of Jews.”

That alliance of leftists and jihadists, howling their hatred of Israel and of Jews, is now being sued by two janitors, members of the very working class that the campus leftists — most of them well-heeled spoiled brats — claim to support. Now those workers will be able to testify as to how they were held hostage, assaulted, and terrorized by that pro-Hamas mob that had taken over Hamilton Hall.

It is not legitimate free speech that pro-Israel groups are trying to curb, both at Columbia and at Berkeley, but violent conduct by maddened mobs who attempt to intimidate and harass Jewish and Israeli students and professors, and to pressure universities, through such acts as seizing Hamilton Hall, to adopt BDS and other anti-Israel policies. This difference must be kept in mind.

Meanwhile, watch the janitors at Columbia bringing their lawsuit against the forty members of the mob that prevented them from working, roughed them up, and held them hostage for four days. The trial will pit working men against rich-kid salon Bolsheviks and antisemitic jihadists. If the janitors prevail, they could bankrupt the forty. Lawfare seems to be the thing.