A leader of students protesting the war in Gaza at Columbia University has apologised after video emerged of him saying “Zionists don’t deserve to live”.

Khymani James, 20, said he was “unusually upset” and “misspoke in the heat of the moment”.

On Friday, Columbia announced that he had been banned from campus.

Protests which began at Columbia in New York City have since spread to campuses across the US.

Mr James, who has acted as a spokesman for the protesters, posted the comments to Instagram in January. He also said: “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”

The comments were made both before and after Columbia administrators called him in for a disciplinary hearing.

“I don’t fight to injure or for there to be a winner or a loser, I fight to kill,” he said in a post.

In recent days, those comments were circulated by pro-Israel activists.

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