Mamdani-backed socialist Dem Darializa Avila Chevalier, the likely next congresswoman from New York’s 13th District, was part of the 2024 campus takeover at Columbia University and a key player in a radical anti-Israel group that once declared it was “fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.”
Chevalier, 32, who joined Students for Justice in Palestine in 2014 after a summer internship in the West Bank city of Nablus, co-founded Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a campaign aimed at coercing the Ivy League school to cut financial ties with Israel.
CUAD led the charge in the disruptive tent encampment protests that took over the school’s Morningside Heights campus in 2024.
She told the Associated Press at the time that they were “beautiful,” wearing a keffiyeh scarf draped over a t-shirt bearing the name of the group, which was permanently barred from campus after the takeover.
“I’ve done a lot of community organizing, but when students were asking for support, I’m still connected with the alumni network so I’m very happy to support anytime they need me,” the Columbia alumna told a reporter.
She talked up the organization of the encampment, which stretched for weeks in the spring of 2024 before police finally stormed the campus and arrested members of a pro-terror mob.
“They really are prioritizing one another’s safety, ensuring all of their needs are met in terms of health and security and protecting one another from doxxing and all of those worries,” she said.
“On days like today where it’s very hot you see students walking around with electrolytes and water, and then in the evening when it starts to cool down, hand warmers, blankets, things of that nature. It’s been just a really beautiful thing to see.”
The protests resulted in numerous injuries, damage to campus buildings and created a climate of fear among Jewish students and faculty. More than 70 students were hit with lengthy suspensions in the wake of the takeover, and a handful were expelled.
Chevalier mused “The administration, [then-president Minouche] Shafik, could end this today by meeting the students’ demands,” noting the university has divested from other interests in the past including those related to private prisons and South African apartheid.
“So I think it’s not am atter of if the university is going to divest, but rather when, and for them to continue to hold out in this way only hurts them,” she said blithely.
Shafik resigned from her post weeks after the protests ended, citing a “period of turmoil” that marred her tenure.
Other past members of CUAD include Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested by immigration agents in March 2025, and is now appealing to the Supreme Court in a last-ditch effort to avoid deportation.
The anti-Israel group made its intentions clear in a long-since-deleted Instagram post outlining its mission.
“We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization. We stand in full solidarity with every movement for liberation in the Global South. Our Intifada is an internationalist one — we are fighting for nothing less than the liberation of all people,” the missive begins.
“We reject every genocidal, eugenicist regime that seeks to undermine the personhood of the colonized,” it continues.
“As the fascism ingrained in the American consciousness becomes ever more explicit and irrefutable, we seek community and instruction from militants in the Global South, who have been on the frontlines in the fight against tyranny and domination which undergird the imperialist world order.”
Chevalier’s office did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Read the full article here
