A guest lecture at a London university was abandoned when protesters backing Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood chased the speaker from the stage.
Speaker Mohamed El-Nabawy had to be ushered off stage by security guards when around 30 demonstrators stormed a lecture theatre at Bloomsbury’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), which is part of the University of London.
They were said to have targeted the public discussion, focusing on the challenges facing Egypt, because of Mr El-Nabawy’s ties to the Tamarod group which opposed ex President Mohammed Morsi.
Footage which has emerged online shows the chaotic scenes as chanting demonstrators take control of the lecture theatre and guests are led to safety by security guards.
The scene is eerily familiar. It is exactly what the BDSers do when Israelis try to speak on campuses.
Yet here was the reaction from the sponsor:
A spokesman for the university’s Palestinian Society, which organised the event, said: “While we fully respect, and understand, the highly-charged context of any discussion on contemporary Egyptian politics, we believe that the disruptions pre-empted any possibility of fruitful exchange.Do you think that the Palestine Society minds when Israelis or Zionists are interrupted and barred from speaking, or even playing music, at universities worldwide? Do you think that SOAS PalSoc ever said a word against that?
Zvi writes in the comments:
We have seen many times that terrorism has no "off switch" - that if a society condones terrorism as long as it is against unpopular people (Israel, Jews) or "in a just cause" (against Israel, Jews), then it itself becomes the victim of terrorism.
BDS and Academic Boycott proponents be warned!!!
The same is true of the soft terrorism - threats of violence - practiced by BDS supporters who regularly attempt to threaten and intimidate university speakers, artists and others who are related to Israel in some way. Society as a whole failed to oppose such tactics, even condoning them at the highest levels - and now they have metastasized, like the evil cancer that they are.
To university BDS advocates: YOU introduced tactics of violent violent intimidation into British universities in your war against the Jewish state. You created a climate of fear for Jews on campus. You created a climate that cheered the censorship of Israeli voices, and the intimidation of voices that dared to sing in Israel. And now those same tactics are being used elsewhere on your campuses, against someone else. Those same tactics will be used more and more frequently, targeting more and more people.
You should feel terror when you read about this event; it is a sign that you have created your own hell.