‘Believe all women’ — unless they’re Jewish

Student activists have overtaken Cornell’s campus this school year in response to the Cornell gang rape case, which has made national news. This week, student protestors staged a mock trial outside a Board of Trustees meeting.Earlier this month, Cornell’s Day Hall’s glass door was smashed, a security camera was painted over, and a message was left on the wall: “AT CORNELL RAPISTS ARE PROTECTED PROTESTORS ARE EXPELLED.” The anonymous vandals claim they acted for “Jane Doe,” the former student who sued Cornell and seven Chi Phi fraternity members last month.The district attorney has reopened the criminal case, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) says Cornell has agreed to an independent review. More interesting is the manifesto the vandals left behind, along with their rationale. They weren’t doing this just to call attention to allegations of rape and sexual violence. They’re also upset that Cornell suspended pro-Palestinian protesters while allegedly treating accused rapists leniently.A serious rape allegation has been co-opted into one big collective grievance alongside Gaza, Greek life abolition, and the firing of Cornell administrators. Cornell Students for Justice in Palestine, Cornell Young Democratic Socialists of America, CGSU, and The Coalition for Mutual Liberation co-sponsored the mock trial held outside the Board of Trustees meeting this week, alongside two Ithaca groups, People’s University Ithaca and Food Not Bombs Ithaca.This is a disservice to Jane Doe, whose case deserves to stand on its own.Eleven days before the vandalism, the same people claiming they stand for justice for survivors of sexual violence filled Sage Chapel to listen to a man who said rape “doesn’t matter.”On Sept. 24, Cornell’s Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Young Democratic Socialists of America hosted Twitch streamer Hasan Piker. Piker has trivialized Hamas’s use of sexual violence as a weapon of war, proudly stating, “it doesn’t matter if rapes f***ing happened on Oct. 7, like that doesn’t change the dynamic for me.” He has called Hamas “a thousand times better” than Israel and said he would “vote for Hamas over Israel every single time.” When Cornell Hillel and Cornellians for Israel objected to the decision to platform Piker, Cornell JVP replied that criticizing Zionism is not indicative of antisemitism. The women Hamas subjected to sexual violence on Oct. 7, 2023, didn’t matter.The United Nations’s Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict testified before the Security Council that there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that Hamas raped women during the 2023 attack and “convincing information” that hostages were sexually abused in captivity. A 2025 report by the Dinah Project further documented Hamas’s use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.The protesters Cornell suspended in September 2024 were not sitting quietly with signs. Cornell said they shut down a career fair, “pushed and shoved” police officers, and knocked the body camera off one of them.I’ve witnessed what real accountability looks like: A lawsuit that a federal judge lets proceed, a reopened criminal case, and an outside review with teeth. Not a smashed door. Not a movement that discovers rape is a crime only when the accused are fraternity brothers — but falls silent when the victims are identifiably Jewish.”THE ISRAEL GENOCIDE LIE: DECEPTION BY DESIGNIf these activists actually cared about women and about Palestinians, they would not be hosting and promoting a man who proudly supports an organization that actively uses rape as a weapon of war.American Jews noticed who was silent when Hamas used rape as a weapon of war on Oct. 7, 2023. Last month, we saw our peers fill a chapel to support the man who said it didn’t matter. A movement that checks a victim’s identity before deciding whether her rape counts has no standing to lecture anyone about justice for survivors. Jane Doe deserves better allies. So did the women of Oct. 7.Shabbos Kestenbaum is a political commentator at PragerU and a former lead plaintiff in a civil rights lawsuit against Harvard University.