At a talk by prominent Israeli activist Yaron Brook on Friday, protestors occasionally interrupted and tensions came to a head when UTPD forcibly escorted one protester out of the room and handcuffed them.
UTPD has not yet provided comment at the time of initial publication. This story will be updated as information becomes available.
The McCombs Salem Center hosted the talk, titled “Israel’s Moral War.” Brook argued that Israel should see “the Palestinian population at large as an enemy,” according to the event description, and engaged in a question-and-answer segment that lasted almost an hour.
Throughout the talk, individual protesters periodically stood up, made short statements and left the room. One protester spoke several verses from the Qur’an before leaving, prompting some audience members to curse at him. One of those audience members turned to the rest of the room and said if anyone agrees with the protester, they can “find (him) outside.”
“As soon as you walked in the room, you felt tension,” said Etai, an audience member who did not provide his last name for safety reasons. “Screaming was bound to happen.”
Brook compared the current crisis in Gaza with the United States fighting Germany and Japan in World War II, saying defeat caused their societies to change for the better. He said the same must happen in Gaza, where there exists “a primitive society.”
“There needs to be a fundamental shift in Palestinian culture,” Brook said. “That shift will only come when they have lost every ounce of hope that they can beat Israel.”
One attendee, radio-television-film sophomore Ethan Rubenstein, announced he was an anti-Zionist Jew during the question-and-answer portion of the event. While some audience members scoffed in response, others clapped.
“There’s a (Jewish) saying that ‘when you save one life, you save an entire world; you save an entire universe,’” Rubenstein said. “I think that in this war, we should be protecting lives at all costs, whether they’re Jewish or Palestinian.”
Brook argued that the Israeli government has shown restraint towards civilians. According to a Jan. 21 article from AP News, the death toll in Gaza is over 25,000.
“So many Israeli soldiers are dying on the field because Israel refrains from defending them and places the lives of civilians on the other side as more valuable than its own soldiers,” Brook said. “That is a mortal travesty.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces domestic backlash from families and friends of hostages who have become frustrated with his failure to get them out of Gaza, including his refusal of offers to have Hamas release all hostages in exchange for a ceasefire, according to an article from the Financial Times.
When questioned by an audience member about the deaths of some Israeli hostages in Gaza caused by the Israel Defense Forces, Brook said, “Israel cannot sacrifice victory for the sake of saving the hostages.”
