Chaptzem Blog!      

The recent return of Israeli hostages and the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas has offered a brief glimmer of relief to Jewish students across UK campuses. But the recent disruptions to learning and calls for violence on the City, University of London's campus reminds us that the battle is far from over.

As reported by British media, masked thugs stormed into Professor Michael Ben-Gad's lecture and sought to create a threatening and hostile environment in order to pressure the university into taking action against him. A member of the security team at the event independently verified that one of the protesters threatened to chop off the professor's head.  

Despite being employed by the university since 2007, the professor has only recently been targeted by the non-university affiliated group, 'City Action for Palestine'.

The intruders claimed Ben-Gad was 'part of the genocide in Gaza' and chanted slogans including the infamous' From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free'. This phrase has been widely condemned since October 7th as grossly antisemitic and calls for Israel's destruction. The phrase denies the right to self determination for Jewish people and does a disservice to all those in the region who seek peace.

The most concerning element of this saga is their justification. The masked thugs deemed him a 'terrorist', because he was a soldier as a young man in the early 1980s, earned an academic degree at one Israeli university and taught at another. Due to the many existential threats that Israel has faced since its inception and continues to this day, national and/or military service is mandatory for all citizens. By their definition, every single Israeli adult "deserves" to be murdered in cold blood and threatened in public. This is not a legitimate moral position; it is a precursor to another genocide of Jews. 

Ben-Gad is not the only victim of these vicious campaigns at City, University of London. Prof Sir Anthony Finkelstein was also targeted by the same group despite not having any direct ties to any Israeli institutions. In his case, the stated reason was that he oversees the institution's multi-million pound investments in Israeli companies and happens to be Jewish. What an interesting coincidence.