As the fighting rages on between Israel and Hamas, the division on college campuses is growing too. At Cornell University, the tension between student groups supporting Israel and student groups supporting Palestine has reached a breaking point. NBC News correspondent Antonia Hilton spoke to the two groups separately about the divide, and she joins us now. Hey, Antonia. Good morning.

Good morning, Savannah. For weeks now on college campuses across the country, there has been immense heartbreak and pain as students who are directly affected by the fighting in Israel and in Gaza try to, at times, have conversations. But more often right now, they are retreating into their own communities and circles. And what we hear from students who are Jewish and have connections to Israel and to students who are Muslim and have connections to Palestine is that it's simply too early to come to a table and to think about peace or dialog. Take a look.

For weeks now, Cornell University's campus has been divided. Heartbreak over the war in Israel and Gaza is transforming campus life.

We're getting threats on campus, so it's like, how can you mourn?

We asked students from the Jewish organization Hillel and Students for justice in Palestine if they wanted to meet together. Both groups declined.

If you have family and friends in the region, it's not an intellectual exercise to debate and discuss.

I don't know what both sides sounds like. I don't know what both sides looks like. I don't even think it's possible in this moment.

Jewish students like Zoe and Simone, who are the descendants of Holocaust and Pogrim survivors, say they've been horrified by people tearing down the posters of hostages.

Every time I see one of them ripped or vandalized, it's like a knife into my chest. I saw one on campus just as I was walking home from class one day, and they were crossed out the name of the four people in the picture, and they're a family of four taken by Hamas terrorists, and it said, Free Palestine. Palestine is not going to be freed by vandalizing hostage posters.

Palestinian students like Melak say some classmates have denied her people even exist. She says her grandparents were expelled from their homes in 1948, and her relatives now live in Rafa City and the 75 year old Jabalia refugee camp.

My family is still there, and I grew up hearing the stories of what Israeli militia did to them, the family members that they killed and how they got away with it. And one of my aunts, she witnessed a bomb, Israeli airstrike drop in front of a bus right in front of her. And it's been hard to reach out to them with service being cut out so frequently. It's hard for them to get access to water, food, electricity.

My cousin is a paratrooper in the Israeli Defense Forces. He's 20 years old, and within the first day of the war, 20 of his friends were killed or taken hostage.

How would you describe the climate right now, what you're seeing, what you're hearing on campus?

I've noticed a lot more stares, a lot more unease just around me being around. There was an instance where I noticed someone taking a video of me from his car, and he wasn't even really trying to hide it. I wasn't doing anything. I was just walking out of Friday prayer.

It's been immensely challenging to be in this campus when I'm seeing my peers march down the streets where we have to walk to get to class every day, chanting things like from the river to the sea, which we've seen as really a call for genocide or an ethnic cleansing of Jewish people.

Our coalition, our individual organizations, all came together and condemned antisemitism because we utterly believe antisemitism is abhorrent and has a deeply violent history.

Some of those classmates tell me that some of the chants and phrases like from the river to the sea to mean the extermination of Jews, what do you have to say to them?

Okay, everybody in this vicinity, regardless of religion, of race, of ethnicity, should live free under one state, under one secular state with equal citizenship. That's what it meant. And a question I have to ask people then where is it? From the road to the sea, palestinians shouldn't be safe.

I want peace in the Middle East too, just as much as anyone else. My problem is with that slogan in specific, not whatever message anyone thinks they're sharing with it, because Hamas has used it. It's been appropriated by a terrorist organization. So you can't say it anymore and think that it means peace.

What would you say to a Palestinian person who said that when they hear the word Zionist or Zionism, that they think it means me and my family need to leave the region, that we have to leave our homes.

So the definition of Zionism, right, is the self determination of the Jewish people.

To their ancestral homeland.

Saying that we have a right to a land and a right to exist as a people is not saying we're agree with the right wing government in Israel right now.

Cornell has released several statements in response to student fears, increasing security and promising new programs to fight anti Semitism and to bring in experts in Jewish history.

The university is taking it very seriously, right? We've seen support on a federal and a state level, which is really comforting.

Really nice, as people who are Muslim or Arab on campus, we see the administration clearly has a bias.

Cornell's initial statement did not mention Islamophobia or Palestinian people. They tell NBC News they condemn all forms of discriminatory bias.

What would it take to bring the temperature on campus down to maybe just slightly open the door to either healthier dialog or more dialog here on campus?

I would really encourage students who are interested in dialog to reach out to me, to each other, I think it's something that's really scary and really hard.

For no one on this campus to use the slogan from the river to the sea, palestine will be free again. I think it's just too painful for Jewish students to hear.

Until I can be seen as a human and until my humanity of being a Muslim, of being a Palestinian, is seen first, then it's hard to have a conversation I already know going in.

If that's the first question I'm being asked. That I condemn the killing of innocent civilians, that I'm not a terrorist. They can't see past my know.

Savannah what really struck me in my time on Cornell's campus is just how much language and the different meanings these words hold to people of different communities impacts this debate and makes it really hard for people to sit down and just have a conversation about their pain. Simple things like what Zionism means, what from the river to the scene to the sea represents to people they truly have such different cultural contexts. And so long as people believe that their own classmates, the people who live in the room down the hall from them, don't want them to exist or don't respect their humanity, it's really hard to see a path forward. And I think college campuses, in a way, are, of course, representing what's happening all across our country and the world right now.

Absolutely. Such a microcosm. Great conversations. Antonia Hilton, thank you so much. Good to have you here with us.

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