At universities across Britain, anti-Israel bigotry is the new normal, but Professor Michael Ben-Gad refused to be cowed in his own classroom
ITbegan as an ordinary Wednesday afternoon in October. Students filtered into a lecture hall at City University of London — takeaway coffees in hand, laptops open, chatting about upcoming essays and exams and the London winter weather outside.
At the front, Professor Michael Ben-Gad set up his slides for an economics class on monetary policy. He’d taught it many times before. He knew when to expect questions, where the jokes would land, which graphs made students groan.
Then the door was pushed wide open.
At first, students assumed it was latecomers. Then came the shouting. “Free, free Palestine!” “Zionist murderer!” “Nazi!” — that last word echoing through the lecture hall. Within seconds, around a dozen masked figures had forced their way down the aisles to the front of the lecture hall, filming on phones, screaming in Professor Ben-Gad’s face and waving flags.
The protesters surrounded the lectern, accusing Ben-Gad of being a “war criminal” for his compulsory service in the Israeli army four decades earlier.
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