Courtesy of David Chetrit

When Israeli politician Simcha Rothman came to speak at the Jewish society Shabtai at the John C. Anderson Mansion on the rainy night of Jan. 24, he was met with a crowd of New Haven and Yale Israelis protesting in front of the event’s location. 

The protest was organized by a group of Israeli Yale affiliates and New Haven residents who came together in January 2023 to hold protests in response to the controversial judicial overhaul led by Rothman, a prominent member of the Knesset — Israel’s parliament — who aimed to limit the power of the Israeli Supreme Court. 

These efforts headed by Rothman have led some of the protestors to call him indirectly responsible for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, in which Hamas killed 1,200 people and took about 250 as hostages. Rothman ignored the advice of top Israeli military leaders — including the Israeli Defense minister and Israel’s Air Force Chief— when they warned government officials in the spring and summer of 2023 that controversial judicial legislation was leading to political instability that threatened military preparedness, per Reuters. 

“He is not welcome anywhere in Israel,” David Chetrit, an Israeli Associate Research Scientist at the School of Medicine and protestor, said. “He is not appreciated in Israel. He should not be welcome anywhere he goes.” 

According to Naftali Kaminski, a professor at the School of Medicine who was at the demonstration outside Shabtai, protestors chanted the Hebrew words “Busha,” meaning disgrace, “Ashem” which means guilty, “Fascist” and “Bring them all home,” referring to the Israeli hostages still being held by Hamas. 

At the event, Rothman placed blame for the Oct. 7 attacks on others and said the only way to solve the conflict is to “extinguish every last piece of hope that Palestinians have,” per Liam Hamama ’24, a British-Israeli who attended the event. 

Following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, Israel responded with a formal declaration of war against Hamas and a full-scale military assault on Gaza. As of Jan. 26, Israel’s attacks have killed at least 26,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials.

Hamama added that Rothman said Palestinians have engaged in terrorism because Israel has given them “too much hope” – an “extreme” assertion Hamama said contradicts all literature on the origins of terrorism.  

The event itself was not publicly advertised, and members of the New Haven Police Department stood outside. 

Reporters from the News were told the event was off the record, and attendees’ phones were collected as they entered. Per attendees who spoke to the News afterward, the event featured dinner, followed by a 40-minute speech by Rothman who then took questions from the audience. Some protestors were invited inside and posed questions to Rothman at the end of the event. 

The five protestors interviewed by the News noted Rothman’s role in the 2023 judicial reforms, his mishandling of the war with Hamas and his going abroad during wartime as motivations for the protest. 

Noam Savion Gaiger, an Israeli postdoctoral associate who was at the protest and the event, particularly expressed concern about Rothman’s dismissal of security warnings amid his push for judicial reform. 

“He received repeated warnings from senior figures in Israeli security. They cautioned that Rothman’s push for undemocratic legislation was creating division inside Israeli society and endangering Israel’s security,” Savion Gaiger wrote. 

Savion Gaiger said that Rothman chose to ignore these warnings and continue to advance his legislative agenda – a disregard that she claimed calls for “serious reevaluation of his responsibilities and actions.” 

Shmully Hecht wrote to the News that blaming Rothman for the Oct. 7 attacks would be equivalent to “blaming the Holocaust on a single German Jewish Banker in Berlin, or the 9/11 attacks on a Christian hedge fund manager in the World Trade Center.” 

Rothman did not respond to requests for comment.

Aaron Schorr ’24, who protested the event, added that the protest served to advocate for the safe return of Israeli hostages. Schorr said that members of the Israeli government, specifically Rothman, have not prioritized efforts to bring the hostages home.

On Jan. 27, the Associated Press reported that around 100 hostages have been freed, with around 130 still captive, while “a number” have since been confirmed dead. According to reporting by CNN on Jan. 18, the Israeli Defense Force said that they believe 27 of the hostages still being held captive by Hamas are dead. 

Savion Gaiger also noted that Rothman, as a prominent politician, should not unnecessarily leave his home country in times of crisis.

“As Israel faces a significant war, Rothman, a member of the Israeli parliament, is traveling internationally to drink cocktails with the American Jewish community instead of contributing to the war effort,” Savion Gaiger wrote.

The night following his appearance in New Haven, Rothman spoke at a Shabtai event in New York City which included cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, per the event’s invitation. 

Schorr echoed Savion Gaiger’s sentiments, adding that Rothman could have been paying his respects to the 21 Israeli soldiers who were recently killed while fighting in Gaza rather than speaking abroad at Shabtai. 

At the talk, Rothman, in addition to blaming the Oct. 7 attacks on other Israeli leaders, described Israel’s ongoing military action in Gaza as “miraculous,” with no mention of the loss of Palestinian lives, per Hamama.

In an Israel National News article on the event, Rothman is quoted as having said that Israel “must end the hopes for the establishment of a Palestinian state between the sea and the Jordan” in order to eradicate terrorism.

Joshua Li ’26, who said that he was not specifically familiar with Rothman or his policies before attending the event, told the News that he left the event with a better understanding of Rothman and the “radical” perspective within Israel.

Li said that he felt the event promoted discussion and supported the opportunity for attendees to pose questions directly to Rothman.

“I don’t think Shabtai should be ashamed of inviting the speaker because they allowed for completely free discourse regarding the speaker’s actions,” Li said. “They’re […] promoting an opportunity to see what a controversial figure has to say for himself in response to the Yale community’s overall view of him.”

Hamama, however, critiqued Shabtai’s choice to invite Rothman to speak, given that someone as extreme as him should be “completely ostracized from all civil discourse,” particularly at an institution like Yale. 

Hamama described Rothman as someone who’s “not only a racist, a Jewish supremacist, a messianic, and a religious fanatic,” but someone responsible for the Oct. 7 attack, given his persistent efforts towards the judicial overhaul, regardless of military-preparedness concerns raised by top generals and the defense minister.

On behalf of Shabtai, director Toby Hecht wrote to the News that Shabtai is “the sole sacred space in the Ivy League where honest conversation flourishes in an intimate, intellectual and welcoming setting.”

Three attendees interviewed by the News said that students were not afraid to challenge Rothman at the event, many of whom came to call him out and shame him – a “hostile” audience that Hamama said Rothman seemed not to expect.

Schorr said that Yale students and community members might have a “difficult” time understanding who this group of protesters is, specifying that the group’s simultaneous support and critique of Israel does not fit into clear ideological categories discussed in the United States. 

“It’s important that people understand that Israel still has a vibrant civil society and a society that people really care about,” Schorr said, adding that, “even when this war is happening, there is discourse happening and tension between the government and society.” 

Shabtai was founded in 1996 by graduate students Ben Karp, Michael Alexander, future Senator and presidential candidate Cory Booker and Rabbi Shmully Hecht.