A student at the Ivy League university, Cornell, who pleaded guilty to posting a series of threatening, antisemitic messages on a campus message board last year, has been sentenced to 21 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release.
Engineering student Patrick Dai, 22, used several different usernames including “Kill jews,” “Hamas Soldier,” and “Sieg Heil” to post a series of messages.
In one message he wrote: “Watch out pig Jews. jihad is coming. nowhere is safe. your synagogue will become graveyards. your women will be raped and your children will be beheaded. glory to Allah [sic].”
He also threatened to “shoot up” the University’s kosher dining hall, and described Jews as “rats” who “need to be eliminated”. Mr Dai said that he was going to “bring an assault rifle to campus and shoot all you pig Jews.” He also threatened to “slit the throat” of any Jewish men whom he saw on campus, to “rape and kill Jewish women” and to “behead Jewish babies in front of their parents,” the court heard.
With around 2,500 students who identify as Jewish, Cornell reportedly has the highest number of Jewish students of any Ivy League university.
Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department declared in court that every student had “the right to pursue their education without fear of violence based on who they are…or how they worship.”
She said that “antisemitic threats of violence” like Mr Dai’s “vicious and graphic threats” violated that right. The sentencing, stated Clarke, “reaffirms that we will hold accountable those who violently threaten and intimidate others based on their religious practice or background”.
Before imposing the sentence, the court had determined that Mr Dai’s actions constituted a hate crime. US Attorney Carla B. Freedman said that Mr Dai’s threats had “terrorised the Cornell campus community for days” and had “shattered the community’s sense of safety.”
Craig L. Tremaroli, the agent from the FBI’s Albany Field Office in charge of investigating the threats, said that Mr Dai’s actions served as “a disturbing reminder of the terrifying hatred our Jewish communities encounter.”
He added that it was “thanks to the strong partnerships” between the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, the New York State Police and the Cornell University Police Department, that Mr Dai was quickly identified and charged, and that he had remained in custody.
Last year, in response to Mr Dai’s hateful messages, police were stationed at Cornell’s Jewish Centre and Rabbi Ari Weiss, the Executive Director of Hillel at Cornell, said that the Jewish community interpreted the online posts as “a call for our genocide.”
Following his arrest, Mr Dai was diagnosed with autism, which his lawyer, Lisa Peebles, claimed, explained his crime.
“He believed, wrongly, that the posts would prompt a ‘blowback’ against what he perceived as anti-Israel media coverage and pro-Hamas sentiment on campus,” Ms Peebles wrote in pre-trial court papers adding that his “flawed logic” was a result of his autism.”
She wrote that he was “depressed” and “struggled with autism that had not been diagnosed yet”. She claimed that he “had a breakdown and came up with this idea to do these posts.”
Prosecutors argued that “he had “terrorised a campus community for days” and had “horrified the nation at a very volatile time.” His autism, they argued, “was not a defence”.
Campaign Against Antisemitism reports on news and incidents relating to antisemitism throughout the United States.
Photo credit: Broome County Sheriff
