The room grew tense as the speaker’s audience became increasingly disrespectful. Ishmael Khaldi, the first Bedouin diplomat in Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, came to speak at a Hillel event at Rutgers University in 2010. He came to talk in a fair and diplomatic fashion about life in Israel for Arabs and Israelis, but his speech was sabotaged by supporters of BDS (the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement).
“A lot of BDS and anti-Israel students came and ruined our event,” said Liran Kapoano, a Rutgers graduate and now director of the Center for Israel Engagement (CIE) at the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey in Paramus. They got there early, sat in the front row and were “talking and hissing” throughout his speech. When it came time for Q&A they bombarded the speaker with “angry statements” and accusations. They were a disturbance to the event and ruined the experience for everyone else attending. No one got a chance to ask anything productive. “It’s the idea of uncivil discourse. People can’t sit comfortably in a room without feeling intimidated,” Kapoano said during an interview in his federation office.
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