Nikolay Remizov and Alessandro Mattina, students at Saint Louis University, are facing disciplinary action from their school for displaying a 9/11 memorial on campus that happened to mention Israel.
Remizov, a senior originally from Russia, set up the display with permission from the administration. It involved an array of American flags, and a banner showing the 9/11 Memorial in New York, as well as the 9/11 Memorial in Israel.
“Everything was approved,” Remizov told Breitbart News.
“We got 3,000 flags to demonstrate respect to each lost life … We had a banner, and this banner had an American flag and it had an Israeli flag, and it showed the 9/11 Memorial in New York, and the only 9/11 memorial outside the United States is in Israel, so we showed it.”
The 9/11 Memorial in Israel, the only such memorial outside the United States. (US Embassy Jerusalem)
There was no other political intent, he said.
“There was nothing about Israel and the Palestinians. It was just about the 9/11 Memorial, and an American and Israeli flag. … Nothing about Palestine, and Gaza, et cetera.”
Nonetheless, anti-Israel students apparently reported the 9/11 memorial to the administration. The student newspaper also published an anti-Israel op-ed that put the word “Israel” in quotes, as if to deny the legitimacy of the state, and used profanity in the course of accusing Israel of “genocide” in Gaza.
The op-ed author objected to a phrase on the 9/11 banner: “Tolerance over Terrorism.”
Remizov and Mattina decided to remove the banner, but started receiving warnings from the Saint Louis University administration.
An email landed in Remizov’s inbox accusing him of having violated the university’s rules, without explanation.
On calling the author of the email, Remizov was told that the display violated a rule against touching the physical infrastructure of the university. He approached a lawyer, who found there was no such rule.
As discussions with the administration continued, the explanation about what rules the display had violated kept changing.
He and Mattina ended up receiving a warning that will, he says, be reflected in their permanent academic records.
“You want to cry, but at the same moment, you want to laugh,” he says.
“People are starting to forget what terrorism is, that our nation was under attack and that 3,000 people died that day.”
“Everybody is shocked that the university decided to punish us for a 9/11 Memorial.
“It’s just crazy.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.