BDS demonstrators disrupt talk by Israel’s UN ambassador
Danny Danon tells anti-Israel students to ‘sit down instead of inciting – maybe you’ll learn something’
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
A lecture by Israel’s ambassador to the UN Danny Danon was disrupted Monday as supporters of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divest and Sanctions campaign burst in on the event.
The protesters shouted “Palestine will be liberated from the river to the sea,” “Israel is a terror state,” and “Israel has no right to exist.”
Danon, who was addressing some 300 students from New York’s Columbia University, told the protesters, “Instead of inciting and lying, sit down on the chairs and maybe you’ll learn something,” the Ynet news site reported.
“We won’t remain silent in the face of the lies that you are spreading about Israel,” he added. “We will continue to make our voices heard and to stand up for our just truth.
“This is just the problem with the Palestinians,” Danon said. “They lie, incite and do not recognize Israel’s right to exist. But I have a message for those students — the Jewish people will never leave the Land of Israel.”
Danny Danon, #Israel's Ambassador to the UN is currently speaking at #Columbia University. Audience members have shouted him down 7 times pic.twitter.com/LQ9azGcVZt
— Maccabee Task Force (@MacTaskForce) February 14, 2017
Pro-Israel students applauded Danon and booed the intruders, who retreated from the hall.
The demonstration began outside the lecture hall, with some 100 activists chanting against Danon, Israel and the Trump administration’s immigration policy.
Danon spoke about what he described as a “distortion” whereby the United Nations made endless “anti-Israel” decisions.
“With the help of the new administration in the US, we will bring about a new era at the UN,” he said, “an era where Israel is treated fairly like all the nations of the world.”
Asked by a student what could be done to counter the BDS movement, Danon said, “The best answer to lies is the simple truth. You should act against the lies and for the State of Israel, and show the truth to the indifferent majority. Only by presenting the facts will we beat the boycott movement’s campaign of hate.”
The Palestinian-led BDS has become a global campaign to challenge what it calls “Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism.”
