The Israel society at one of Britain’s leading universities has been forced to cancel an event where a former IDF soldier was due to speak after he was bombarded with death threats.
Ely Lassman was the target of protests which included false accusations of war crimes and calls for a jihad against him.
Mr Lassman, who fought for the Israeli army but now runs a non-profit, non-partisan charity called Prometheus on Campus, was due to discuss the conflict with another speaker but the event was shut down for security reasons.
In a statement to King College’s student newspaper, Roar the organisers said there were dozens of threats to Mr Lassman’s life and they were saddened at the ‘unfathomable levels of hostility within the King’s community regarding anything remotely Israeli.’
The ex-soldier said that the event was supposed to be a small-scale discussion about different perspectives on the Palestine-Israel conflict.
Ely Lassman was due to speak at an event organised by King’s College London Israel society but was forced to cancel after receiving so many death threats
The former IDF soldier and charity boss was the target of protests against the event which included false accusations of war crimes and threats to his life
The Israel Societ said they were shocked at the ‘unfathomable levels of hostility within the King’s community regarding anything remotely Israeli’
Mr Lassman said protesters published his personal social media accounts and directly threatened to harm him – with some going as far as to call for jihad
The other speaker was Kiyah Willis, who describes herself as an ‘Advocate for the Secular Liberal Right’ and works for the Objective Standard Institute.
In a post on X, formerlyTwitter, she said she also received death threats and said that ‘vicious lies’ were spread about her.
She also claimed shehad been banned from speaking at KCL.
Protests had initially been organised against Ms Willis’ social media posts and Mr Lassman’s history as an IDF soldier.
The last record of the charity boss’ military service for the IDF was in December 2017.
The pair had agreed to continue with the event but after personal details of Mr Lassman were posted online with instructions to harass and intimidate the charity organiser, the event was cancelled.
Mr Lassman told Jewish News that the authors of a social media post pinned the comments with his personal social media accounts and directly threatened to harm him – with some going as far as to call for jihad.
Some protesters such as Dilly Hussain, a prominent journalist and contributor to Al Jazeera English, posted on X that Mr Lassman had committed war crimes but he later deleted the post and issued an apology stating that this was untrue.
However he followed his apology by saying: ‘ Does this mean that King’s College students and pro-Palestine campaigners were wrong to peacefully protest against his planned event today to discuss ‘conflict resolution’ with the Zionist genocide enabling @kiyahwillis? Absolutely not.’
He also criticised the London university for allowing the event ‘given the death and destruction meted out by Israel in its collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza.’
Aurele Tobelem, president of KCL Israel Society said that the society had had multiple meetings with the student union as well as the security team to protect the speakers but ultimately the pair had received too many death threats for it to proceed.
The last record of the charity boss’ military service for the IDF was in December 2017 (pictured second from the left in the second row)
The society had had multiple meetings with the student union as well as the security team to protect the speakers but the security concern was too high – the event took place online from a secure location instead
Instead the event had to be live-streamed from a secure location.
The death threats received by the charity boss come as London is declared the most anti-Semitic place in the West, by Israel’s diaspora minister.
Amichai Chikli, who is a far-Right Israeli politician, said that a combination of the far-Left, Islamic extremism and open immigration meant the capital too dangerous for Jews.
‘The anti-Semitism we see today in the West is the worst since the 1930s and it is because of a ‘red and green’ alliance – the combination of the radical Left and the radical Islam groups that work together,’ he told a press conference of European journalists in Jerusalem.