Harvard students snubbed Israeli diplomat speech in 2019, not 2023

The war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas has sparked angry debates on the campuses of US universities, with students, professors and administrators fielding allegations of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. A video of students protesting, however, is unrelated to the current conflict. While the clip does show students at Harvard University protesting during a talk by an Israeli diplomat, the demonstration took place in 2019.

"The Consul General of Israel in New York, a member of the Israeli Embassy in the US, gave a speech at Harvard University about 'Israel's Just War'. He said it was anti-Semitic to be neutral about the conflict or to say Israel had committed war crimes in the Palestinian territories," reads a Weibo post, written in simplified Chinese and shared on November 5.

"The students all stood up and left the hall as a sign of protest against Israel and in support and sympathy for Palestine," it adds.

"In less than a month, Israel had brutally murdered more than 4,000 Palestinian children."

The video, which has more than 110,000 views, shows students abruptly standing and leaving a lecture theatre as as a man begins speaking.

Text overlaid on the clip says: "A group of Harvard Law School students walked out of a talk entitled 'The Legal Strategy for Israeli Settlements' by Dani Dayan, the Consul General of Israel in New York."

Students held up signs that read "Settlements are a war crime" as they left the room, leaving it nearly empty, the text continues.

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Screenshot of the misleading Weibo post, captured on November 20, 2023

The video surfaced in similar posts on X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok as fighting continued in the Palestinian territory of Gaza, with the war between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas leaving thousands dead on both sides.

The war was triggered by an unprecedented attack by Hamas, whose fighters stormed into southern Israel from Gaza on October 7, killing approximately 1,200 people -- mostly civilians -- and taking around 240 hostages, according to the country's latest estimates.

In retaliation, Israel launched a relentless bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza. According to the Hamas government, the war has killed more than 14,000 people, including nearly 6,000 children and close to 4,000 women.

The current conflict has also sparked bitter debate on the campuses of US universities, with the White House saying on October 30 that it would take steps to counter an "alarming" rise in anti-Semitic incidents at schools and colleges since the Israel-Hamas war broke out.

At Harvard, a statement signed by student groups saying they "hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence" sparked an explosive response.

While the video circulating online genuinely show Harvard students protesting a talk by an Israeli official, it was filmed in 2019.

Israeli settlements protest

Keyword searches on Google found a longer version of the footage posted by news website Middle East Eye on Facebook and YouTube on November 15, 2019 (archived links here and here).

Subsequent keyword searches led to more videos of the protest posted on the same day - one from the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee which shows students leaving the lecture theatre from a different angle and another one from the Middle East Monitor, which published the same video shared in misleading posts (archived links here and here).

Dayan held the post of Consul General of Israel in New York until 2020, and was later appointed president of Yad Vashem, Israel's World Holocaust Remembrance Center, in 2021 (archived link).

As of November 22, 2023, the Acting Consul General of Israel in New York is Aviv Ezra (archived link).

A search of Dayan's X account found that he also posted about the event and the protest in a thread on November 18, 2019 (archived links here and here).

"When I started speaking some 100 well organized demonstrators left the room, fists raised, with anti Israeli signs. Some 80-90 stayed and we had a great event, incl Q&A," he wrote.

AFP has previously debunked other misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war here.