Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, attracted more-than-interested Northwestern community members to Norris University Center Monday evening.
About 10 to 15 protestors stationed themselves on Sheridan Road next to Fisk Hall. Some were nearly arrested during Oren’s speech after repeated attempts to protest outside of Norris with a megaphone and a large Palestinian flag.
“He shouldn’t be in the U.S.,” said 26-year-old Awad Hamdan, a member of American Muslims for Palestine, as he was escorted off campus.
The protestors hailed from the greater Chicago area and represented different, sometimes oppositional, groups including Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Illinois at Chicago and American Muslims for Palestine as well as some members of Jewish Voice for Peace.
Shireen Mirza, a Weinberg senior, planned to protest the event by holding a Palestinian flag and passing out literature promoting Students for Justice in Palestine.
“As Israeli ambassador, Michael Oren is party to vast war crimes,” she said.
The protesters in Norris were asked to leave. Mirza, a member of the executive board of NU’s Students for Justice in Palestine, invited members of the Chicago community to come to the event but said she urged people to be respectful and would “personally call the police” if they were disruptive or disrespectful. Similar events featuring Oren at other universities, including the University of California, Irvine, faced protesters who shouted over Oren’s speech.
“I realize it is part of free speech to give etiquette to people and not to shout at them,” Mirza said.
Also protesting the event on Sheridan Road were pro-Israel, anti-settlement Jews. These protestors stood on one side of Fisk Hall, while other groups were escorted by University Police across Campus Drive. With the road between them, the two groups began yelling across it, throwing out accusations of “anti-Semitism” on one side to responses of “Zionism isn’t Judaism,” from the other.
“I guess we’re not on the same side,” said Tracy McLellan, a Bucktown resident and member of Jewish Voice for Peace as well as other Palestinian advocacy organizations. “Israel cannot get away with what it gets away with.”
Sam Fleischacker, a professor of philosophy and director of Jewish Studies at UIC, said he protested the event to raise awareness that many Jews are against the idea of settlements.
But he said it was difficult to imagine a peaceful outcome now.
“There’s so much hostility,” he said.
Other protestors were more brazen in their attempts to disrupt the event. One repeatedly posed as a student and said he lost his WildCARD, which was required to get into the event. He was still denied entrance.
“If we’re trying to ruin this event, you got any suggestions?” Basil Ali, a member of American Muslims for Palestine, asked a UP officer before being escorted off campus property.
UP would not comment on the protestors during the event. Several police officers and Cmdr. Darren Davis Sr. were on campus monitoring the event and the protestors.
A group of young, non-NU protesters attempted to return to campus again as many as three or more times, causing members of UP to threaten arrest. These protesters briefly succeeded in using a loudspeaker to air their views against Oren and NU’s hosting of the event.
Mirza was ultimately allowed to hear Oren speak because she is a student. She said she was “disappointed” by the question-and-answer portion of the event and did not understand why the University did not allow her to pass out flyers.
“In the end, I just hope that students realize that there is this other voice on campus,” she said. “I really hope they understand what this man is really representing.”
