The Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman condemned the incident (in an email), as well as the strikingly similar incident, also on Monday, in which Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon was shouted down with like-minded epithets at Oxford University: “Anti-Israel activists on our campuses are increasingly resorting to undemocratic, bullying, confrontational tactics in order to silence Israeli officials and the expression of pro-Israel views.”

J Street had this to say (also in an email):

While appropriate and respectful protests are a legitimate and important part of the conversation on campus, anti-Semitic, racist, disruptive, and inflammatory actions and language are simply unacceptable.

In particular, we were profoundly offended by the anti-Semitic rhetoric used by a student to attack Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon during a recent talk at Oxford University. We were also deeply disappointed to hear about attempts to interrupt Ambassador Michael Oren’s remarks at the University of California, Irvine, with heckling aimed at drowning out the Ambassador’s speech.

UC-Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake, who was present at the speech, said afterwards that he was embarassed by the welcome Oren got.

Meanwhile, roughly a dozen students were arrested after Oren’s speech, prompting the Muslim Public Affairs Council to request an investigation—they argue that it is unclear what if any laws the students broke.

Muslim Students Shout ‘Killer’ During Oren’s L.A. Speech [Haaretz]
Muslim Group Wants Investigation Into Arrests During Oren Lecture [AP/Vos Iz Neias?]

Earlier: Israeli Minister, Historian Welcomed in Britain

Unfortunately for J Street, the blogosphere was alive with chatter about another issue altogether: the apparent desire among leaders of its student arm, J Street U, to shorten J Street’s ubiquitous “pro-peace, pro-Israel” slogan to just “pro-peace.” “We don’t want to isolate people because they don’t feel quite so comfortable with ‘pro-Israel,’ so we say ‘pro-peace,’” Lauren Barr, an American University junior and J Street intern who sits on J Street U’s board, told Jerusalem Post reporter Hilary Krieger. (On Sunday, at the opening session of the conference, Barr warned older people in the audience that people her age were being “driven away” from a vibrant relationship with Israel because of their doubts over the country’s handling of the Palestinian issue.) J Street’s executive director, Jeremy Ben Ami, told U.S. News and World Report’s religion blogger that he wanted to “honor” the questions some Jews have and didn’t seem to mind the change of mottos: “We can’t force them to use language that makes them uncomfortable.” But by this afternoon, J Street publicists were insisting that the original story was wrong, dismissing it as college students mouthing off, and referring reporters to a statement from J Street U director Tammy Shapiro, who reiterated the requirement that all work “be done in a context that always embraces the right of a state for Jewish people in the land of Israel to exist beside a state for Palestinian people in the land of Palestine.”

As it happens, Shapiro was also behind J Street’s decision to cancel a poetry session planned for the conference,after it emerged that some of the poets had made potentially offensive links between the Holocaust and Israel’s actions in Gaza. But, here’s the ironic part: the louder the bloggers gloat over every perceived stumble, the more enthusiastic, and righteous, the true believers at the Grand Hyatt seem to get. That’s politics, folks.

J Street’s Campus Branch Drops Pro-Israel Slogan [JPost]
J Street’s College Arm Drops ‘Pro-Israel’ From Its Slogan [USNews]
Top Obama Aide: U.S. Commitment to Israel is Not a Slogan [Haaretz]