 At a Columbia rally in solidarity with Palestine in 2002, he declared, “The heritage of the Holocaust belongs to the Palestinian people.The State of Israel has no claim to the heritage of the Holocaust.The heritage of the oppressed belongs to the oppressed, not the oppressor.” Later, with respect to Bollinger's hostility to a campaign by Columbia University faculty for divestment from the Israeli military, De Genova stated that Bollinger "has set himself up as an apologist of war crimes and apartheid,” and called upon Bollinger to resign.