Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Video: Mass walkout at Wayne State leaves "IDF" spokesman lecturing to empty room

By Ali Abunimah




"Students at Wayne State University in Detroit staged a silent protest and mass walk-out that left Israel Army reserve spokesman and Jerusalem Post correspondent Gil Hoffman lecturing to a virtually empty auditorium on November 1.
A video of the event just posted on YouTube shows Hoffman lecturing to hundreds of students. Many of them have their mouths symbolically covered in red tape, or have signs pinned to them protesting Israeli war crimes and calling to hold Israel accountable.
At a certain point, the students walk out of the large auditorium en masse leaving only a handful of people listening to the speaker.
Hillel, the national pro-Israel advocacy organization which sponsored Hoffman’s talk, billed him as “Chief Political Correspondent and Analyst for the Jerusalem Post.”
But Hoffman’s personal website identifies him as “A reserve soldier in the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.” Perhaps only in Israel can someone be taken seriously as an objective journalist reporting on military and political affairs while at the same time acting as an official mouthpiece for the army."

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