Dani Dayan, Consul General of Israel in New York, on Thursday delivered a lecture at City College which dealt with the tensions in southern Israel as well as with anti-Semitism in its various forms and the delegitimization of Israel.
Outside the hall in which the lecture was held, a demonstration initiated by the Students for Justice in Palestine organization was held. The demonstrators waved the flag of "Palestine" and shouted slogans condemning Israel and Dayan, whom they called a "war criminal."
During his lecture, Consul Dayan said that Jewish haters should not be allowed to raise their heads, saying, "It is forbidden to accept any kind of anti-Semitism, but the neo-Nazi one is the deadliest. Between the Pittsburgh massacre and the events in Charlottesville, the fact that waving a Nazi flag throughout the United States is legal is worrisome."
"On the other hand," he added, "only last week a congresswoman who claimed that Israel hypnotized the world was elected, an elegant way to provoke anti-Semitism."
Dayan did not spare criticism of those who seek to harm Israel, especially from within it. "If I said that neo-Nazi racism is the most lethal form of anti-Semitism, then anti-Semitism that pretends to be anti-Zionism of the extreme left is the most hypocritical. There is not a more progressive movement than Zionism, which took people who suffered from oppression and boycotts and brought them to their homeland. The fact that the progressive movements oppose it is undoubtedly anti-Semitic."
He turned to the Israeli students in the audience and said, "Raise your head, be proud that you are fighting for Israel, be proud that you are Zionists. You are on the right side of justice, on the right side of history."
After the lecture, the Consul General insisted on remaining on stage and responding to the students' questions as well as to those who spoke out against him.
Following the lecture, Dayan said, "The protest we saw is the result of an aggressive campaign against Israel, which is taking place inside the universities and presenting information that contains a lot of anti-Semitism and a few facts.”
“This phenomenon leads to real fear among students who try to hide their Jewishness and pro-Israel activity. We were not deterred, and my responses to the demonstrators strengthened the pro-Israel cell on campus," Dayan concluded.