Roughly 300 Jewish students at Columbia University signed an open letter addressed to their peers, appealing for “empathy” over recent campus tension and protests over the war in Gaza.

Columbia was the sight of perhaps the most nationally visible campus protests against Israel, highlighted by protesters’ seizure of a college building, which, in turn, prompted the New York City Police Department to storm the building and encampment. Amid the heightened tension, hundreds of Jewish students appealed to the empathy of their classmates, disavowed Jewish students siding with the protesters, and claimed that Zionism was central to Judaism.