U.S. demonstrators display Palestinian flags and banners during a protest against former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett's visit to Harvard University. (Photo: Getty)
Boston, March 11 (RHC)-- Israel’s former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has said to an audience during an address at the Harvard Business School (HBS) that he would give “a pager” to those who protest his tour of universities in the United States, alluding to the September 2024 terrorist pager explosions in Lebanon.
Bennett was speaking at the HBS as part of his recent university tour of the United States.
According to six people present at the speech, HBS professor Paul A. Gompers began the event by explaining Harvard’s guidelines on disruption, noting that dissenting audience members who interrupted the speaker would be removed. Bennett himself interrupted to say, “I think we’ll just give them a pager.”
The deadly September 17-18 pager blasts targeted members of the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement and their affiliates. Lebanon has lodged an official complaint with the United Nations over the unprecedented attacks.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Bennett’s university tour in the States was centered on whitewashing the war crimes of Israel.
Bennett, a tech millionaire claiming to be “more right-wing” than current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, served as the 13th prime minister of the regime from 2021 to 2022 and is now making efforts for a political comeback.
His speech at Harvard, titled “From the Boardroom to the World Stage,” was hosted by the Israel Business Club and was largely centered on his business background, according to multiple event attendees. He also briefly talked about the Israeli campaign of genocide in the Gaza Strip.
Bennett has refused to respond to multiple requests for comment. However, the Harvard Israel Business Club hosting him claimed in an emailed statement that Bennett made it clear to them that his remark about pagers was a "joke.”
“It was delivered within the context of his first words — explicitly thanking every single person in the room for being present.”
Bennett’s very presence at Harvard drew backlash from more than 100 demonstrators. Pro-Palestinian protesters marched from John F. Kennedy Park to Klarman Hall at the HBS, where the event was held.
Before his speech at the HBS, Bennett made several visits to other U.S. universities. The Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and two Jewish student centers hosted Bennett for an invite-only event just two days before his HBS talk.
Unlike at the HBS talk, Bennett’s remarks at Columbia focused mostly on politics while trying to whitewash the crimes of Israel. He told the audience at Columbia that if he were to be re-elected as the Israeli prime minister, he would put the “Zionists” in power in the future.
According to Israeli media sources, at a 2012 speech Bennett said: “I will do everything in my ability, forever, to prevent a Palestinian state from being founded within the land of Israel.”
Also, Bennett in 2013 said: “I’ve killed many Arabs in my life, and there’s no problem with that.”
The Israeli prime minister claims responsibility for personally ordering detonation of thousands of communication devices across Lebanon in September. The Israeli regime did not initially claim responsibility for the pager attacks, but a spokesperson for Netanyahu accepted the crime in November 2024.
Netanyahu later gifted a golden pager to U.S. President Donald Trump, thanking him for his all-out support for Zionism.
