Israeli embassy official smears solidarity campaigners following Glasgow protest

Israeli embassy spokesperson Yiftah Curiel has attacked Palestinian solidarity campaigners as “thugs” guilty of “incitement and violence”, following a peaceful protest against his appearance at Glasgow University this week.

Scheduled to give two talks on campus, Curiel’s visit was met with a quickly-organised protest by local activists – scenes that now take place almost every single time the Israeli Ambassador or other state representatives visit a university.

According to an account in the Glasgow Guardian, Curiel’s first talk was interrupted by a protester inside the venue, while a demonstration took place outside. Curiel’s speech did not go ahead, and the second scheduled event was cancelled.

The paper noted that “there was a complete lack of violence from protesters.”

This, however, did not stop Curiel from smearing protesters including in an interview on Scotland’s STV. Speaking on the channel about recent “stabbings…incited by the Palestinians”, Curiel then mentioned the protest against his visit to Glasgow University as a “local example” that had “to do with incitement and violence.”

Claiming that protesters were “shouting obscenities” in the room, Curiel said that he had to be “evacuated” due to a threat to his personal safety. The spokesperson then bemoaned the fact that “freedom of speech is curtailed so easily on a UK campus.”

Curiel also lashed out on Twitter, repeating his charge that “incitement & hate speech lead to violence”. He included in the same tweet an image of a recent story about an assault on a worker at Israeli cosmetics outlet Kedem, an association as baseless as it is desperate-looking.

When queried about how non-violent protesters could be described as “thugs“, Curiel was unable to deny the fact that the protest was in fact entirely peaceful, and instead just continued his diatribe about alleged threats and abuse.

The embassy spokesperson’s smearing of anti-apartheid activists could well be born out of frustration with the repeated targeting of state officials by protesters, in the context of a growing solidarity movement and Israel’s deteriorating image.

In addition, Curiel’s complaints about ‘freedom of speech’ are particularly ironic, given that he was personally involved in his embassy’s efforts to have my book launch at Amnesty International UK cancelled.

This sort of shameless disingenuousness is par for the course, however. ‘It’s about extremists vs. moderates’, he repeats incessantly – the representative of a state that perpetrates routine war crimes, racial segregation, and ethnic cleansing.

Update: November 17th, 2014

Activists from Glasgow Palestine Action have released this video from their peaceful disruption of Israeli embassy spokesperson Yiftah Curiel’s event last week. This footage makes Curiel’s allegations that protesters ‘shouted obscenities’ and that he had to be ‘evacuated’ due to a threat to his personal safety even more ludicrous than they were already.

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