Israeli Ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely was prevented from speaking at the London School of Economics on November 9. |
Yesterday, although Israeli Ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotevely was not prevented from delivering her lecture at the London School of Economics, she was met by a Gaza-like, pro-Palestinian Jew-hating mob that hooted and growled like wild beasts as we have seen,brandishing Palestinian flags, yelling “shame, shame, shame,” until she was whisked away by her security detail.
While she herself was safe, her authority was damned, her ideas, her words, were utterly disappeared, silenced, abolished.
Researcher Hadi Nasrallah tweeted: “This is how colonial war criminals must be treated everywhere.” Hotoveley was also described as a “war criminal and Nakba denier.”
The woke propagandists, statue topplers, history revisionists, and those who scapegoat Israel for crimes committed by others, have done their job well. The noose tightens... Israel is currently surrounded, not only by the mobs at her gates, but by Jew-hating mobs-of-menace in the West, rioters who behave in the very same way that Gaza “surging” rioters behave at the borders of southern Israel, lobbing rockets and fire-kites.
The world sees it all but remains indifferent. Some blame the Jewish state for “provoking” such brownshirt-like attacks.
This latest outrage against Ambassador Hotovely was hardly the first time that a mob tried to prevent an Israeli diplomat from speaking. In 2002, in Montreal, at Concordia University, former Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu was similarly unable to speak; even with 100 police officers, the anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian mob could not be contained or dispersed. (I wrote about this way back in 2003, in The New Anti-Semitism.) A good friend, a Talmudic scholar, and her rabbi-husband were caught up in the melee and beaten.
Yes, beaten. Pummeled. Bruised.
Back in the day, Palestinian jihadists “merely” hijacked planes, shot up airports and synagogues, and passed resolutions at the United Nations. Then, they turned themselves into human bombs and blew up Israeli buses and their passengers, Israelis in their beds, at their seder tables, in nightclubs, study halls, and on the street. They also rammed cars into civilians and went on stabbing sprees.
Then they took it to the streets of foreign capitals in the West. For about 19 years, such Jew-hating mobs have been smashing windows, beating people, attacking vulnerable individuals, and also preventing pro-Israel speakers from being heard by utilizing mob tactics, not through open debate.
I have been tracking this for a while. Speaking out about it, I’ve also faced some menacing mobs of my own, as well as turned backs, and a lot of friendly fire.
I’m lucky, I’m retired as a professor. But American academics who are still on the job and who are—who are seen as pro-Israel—are similarly hounded out of their classrooms, jobs, friendships, and futures. Many do not recover. Those who return to their campuses must teach in agonizing, hostile silence.
Israel has creatively “managed” these relentless attacks. What, if anything, have we done about their counterparts in the West? What can we do? What must we do?
Phyllis Chesler, a writing fellow at the Middle East Forum, is an emerita professor of psychology and women’s studies and the author of twenty books, including Women and Madness, Islamic Gender Apartheid, An American Bride in Kabul, A Politically Incorrect Feminist., and A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killings.
