Swiss university bans violent pro-BDS activist from event
Activist banned from German Bundestag.
By BENJAMIN WEINTHALBDS(photo credit: WIKIPEDIA)
Switzerland’s oldest university, the University of Basel, pulled the plug on an event next month with David Sheen, a violent pro-BDS activist who has been accused of antisemitism.The Swiss paper Basler Zeitung first reported the cancellation on Friday, writing the Canadian-Israel is “known for his antisemitic and Holocaust-relativizing statements.”The university is still examining a second planned anti-Israel lecture slated for a week later, noted the Swiss daily.The Swiss-Palestinian Society invited Sheen to several university events, at which he is expected to address the question: “Why did [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's Likud party establish the most reactionary rabbinical immigrants from America and its local supporters as the spearhead of a Jewish-Israeli expulsion movement?”Basler Zeitung’s Sebastian Briellmann reported that the university said it canceled Sheen's appearance because the planned event has a primarily political concern.Sheen is also slated to speak at universities in Bern and Zürich, which have not been canceled.The University of Basel, founded in 1460, has a student enrollment of nearly 13,000.The Jerusalem Post reported in 2014 that the largely anti-Israel Left Party in Germany canceled an event with Sheen, a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, in the German parliament because of Sheen’s political extremism.The German Bundestag banned Sheen and the pro-Bashar al-Assad extremist Max Blumenthal from entering the parliament after they sought to harm Left Party MP Gregor Gysi.Gysi, one of a few Left Party MPs who has showed sympathy toward the Jewish state, told the Post at the time that he canceled the Sheen event in 2014.
A 2014 YouTube video shows Sheen screaming and chasing Gysi through a hall of the Bundestag. As Gysi apparently sought refuge in the bathroom, Sheen sought to force himself into the bathroom while Gysi barricaded himself against the door.The antisemitic scandal earned the moniker “Toilet-gate” in the German media and blanketed the German press for several days.