Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's Monday lecture at Princeton University was interrupted by a fire alarm and activists charging him with supposed war crimes, according to social media posts by Bennett and anti-Israel groups.
הפלסטינים רוצחים ומתבכייניםפעיל פלסטיני ניסה לפוצץ את ההרצאה שלי עם צעקות ״גנוסייד״ וכו׳, אז אמרתי לו את האמת:כבר 80 שנה שהפלסטינים מתבכיינים.במקום לבנות לעצמם עתיד נורמלי הם מעדיפים להילחם בנו ולהתבכיין על התוצאה. pic.twitter.com/sLWMunO6F0
— Naftali Bennett נפתלי בנט (@naftalibennett) April 9, 2025
According to a Tuesday Princeton Palestine Liberation Coalition Instagram post, an alarm sounded in McCosh Hall, where Bennett was speaking as a guest of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Princeton Tigers for Israel and B'Artzeinu Princeton accused a protester of pulling the alarm to bring the event to an abrupt end.
Students and faculty held papers covered with red handprints as they filed out of the speech, according to American Muslims for Palestine New Jersey.
Activist Sayel Kayed heckled the former Israeli leader, accusing him of the death of Palestinian children during the Israel-Hamas war and decrying the placement of a blockade on Gaza following Israel's 2005 disengagement and the 2006 Hamas rise to power.
Bennett responded that "instead of whining for the last 80 years and building your future, you have focused on killing Jews. It's time that the Palestinians stopped whining and started building their future."
'Bennett more extreme than Netanyahu'
Kayed claimed that Israel was committing a "Holocaust" in Gaza.
"This is our land," said Kayed. "You came from Europe, running away from the Holocaust, and we welcomed you into our land."
Bennett retorted that the Palestinians had collaborated with the Nazis during World War Two.
J Street Princeton said in a Tuesday statement that Bennett had joked about giving protesters exploding pagers, a reference to the 2024 pager operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The group said it was disgusted by the joke, his "opposition to Palestinian statehood" and his "support of annexation of the West Bank."
Around three hundred protesters rallied outside McCosh Hall to demonstrate Bennett's visit, with AMP NJ stating, "Bennett should be in Prison, not in Princeton. Shame on this institution for its complicity in genocide."
Activists allegedly yelled that Jewish students proceeding to the event were "all f**king inbred" and "inbred swine." They chanted for them to "go back to Europe," according to a Tuesday letter from Princeton Tigers for Israel and B'Artzeinu Princeton to University President Christopher Eisgruber. One activist allegedly raised an inverted triangle hand gesture at students, referencing the symbol used in Hamas propaganda to denote enemy targets.
Anti-Israel activist groups claimed ahead of the event that Bennett was more extreme than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, highlighting a 2013 statement regarding the execution of terrorists and dismissing detractors by allegedly retorting, “I have killed lots of Arabs in my life – and there is no problem with that.” Bennett's office clarified that he was referring to killing terrorists in operations.
Campus pro-Israel groups decried the groups behind the "embarrassing spectacle" that occurred during the lecture, castigating SJP as pro-Hamas and anti-American. Princeton Tigers for Israel and B'Artzeinu Princeton called on Eisgruber to apologize to Bennett, ban the SJP chapter, ban masked protests, and take punitive actions against Monday's disruptors.
According to The Daily Princetonian, the university was investigating the incidents, and University President Christopher Eisgruber had personally apologized to Bennett.
