A prominent Palestinian Arab human rights activist received death threats from radical BDS protestors during a lecture at Chicago University last Thursday.
While Israelis speaking abroad at universities have frequently been targeted by anti-Israel movements and campus groups in the past, now even pro-Palestinian human rights organizations are feeling the heat.
Bassem Eid is the head of the Palestininian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG), an organization and a former member of the far-left wing Israeli group B’Tselem.
While Eid would appear to be an unlikely target for anti-Israel smear groups, BDS demonstrators nevertheless showed up to disrupt his lecture at the University of Chicago last week. The anti-Israel activists, incensed that Eid had leveled criticisms against Hamas and the Palestinian Authority for human rights violations, attempted to shout him down.
Eventually, demonstrators began to hurl expletives at Eid and threatened to murder him. The disruptions forced an early end to the lecture as BDS activists pledged to “kill this motherf---er”.
Demonstrators also threatened in Arabic to bomb the university hall and pledged to pursue Eid after the lecture.
Shaken by the incident, Eid said he was “terrified” by the demonstrators and noted that the police were called to help him “escape” from the lecture hall.