A talk by an Israeli colonel on May 11 turned into a protest accusing the speaker of war crimes.

Protesters, which included both Palestinians and Americans and both students and individuals unaffiliated with the unviersity, hardly allowed Col. Bentzion Gruber of the Israeli Defense Force to speak at an event hosted by the Institute for the Study of Israel in the Middle East (ISIME) and Hillel at the Cyber Café in the Josef Korbel School of International Studies last week, sources said.

“When the colonel arrived and started giving his talk there was some heckling and interruptions, it began right away, his talk was interrupted throughout the event,” said Deborah Schlueter, of ISIME who organized the talk.

The protesters accused the colonel of committing war crimes during the 2009 Israeli invasion of Gaza and of lying in his presentation.

The colonel also showed a short film about a suicide bomber near the border of Gaza and Israel, the authenticity and accuracy of which was hotly contested, sources said.

“Pretty much as soon as the colonel got up they started protesting and yelling at him. They were accusing him of lying and yelling at him about Gaza,” said sophomore David Kloeckner, who was in the audience at the event.

Kloeckner estimated that about half of the 90 audience members present were there to protest the speaker.

Eventually, other members of the audience began responding to the protesters, escalating the tension, Schlueter said.

Campus Safety had been asked to be present at the event, as organizers were aware that there would be protests ahead of time.

The situation grew so heated that the Denver Police Department was called. At least three protesters were removed from the talk by Campus Safety.

Kloeckner said that the speaker handled most of the protesting calmly, even with a bit of humor, except for once.

Several sources said that at one point the colonel responded to protesters saying, “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.”

“That really set people off. Even people who were there to hear what he had to say and not to protest were turned off by that,” Kloeckner said.

Schlueter said, “He made a derogatory remark … I asked him to apologize to the crowd, the audience, he did so.”

Gruber’s talk, which he did give, despite the protests, was about the difficulties and experiences of a soldier in a war situation dealing with terrorists inside a civilian population.

A question and answer session was provided at the end of the talk, according to Schleuter. She said she hoped to encourage a “healthy exchange.”

“We don’t want to suppress people from speaking out, we just don’t want the discussion disrupting the event,” she said.

The event was opened by a Palestinian student who is also a member of the Student Interfaith Peace Project. The student said that while she might not agree with what the colonel had to say, she thought it was important to listen to his perspective, she said.

According to Schleuter, ISIME brings a number of speakers to campus from both sides of the conflict.

“Well I’m disappointed that it turned out the way that it did. We bring a lot of different viewpoints to the table. If you look at the whole year, it’s very balanced and I was disappointed that people couldn’t take the long view of it.”

She also said that it is important for people to listen to all perspectives on the issue.

“We don’t condone every speaker that we bring or what they say, we merely ask people to listen, and listening does not imply agreement and neither does sponsoring. I want people to respect speaker’s right to speak even if they do not agree with one word that they say. On both this issue we need to develop [the ability to] listen to people with whom we don’t agree. This was one angle,” she said.

The opposition to the speaker, however, said that it was important to address the issues they had with the colonel’s talk as they came up during the event.

“Gruber was interrupted constantly by individuals one-by- one who constantly challenged his facts. The resistance resulted from the efforts of eight to ten people who called a Mother’s day strategy meeting in a Denver park. They know the only way to refute Gruber was not to allow one lie to pass unchallenged. It worked,” wrote blogger Charles Carlson on the website The People’s Forum last night.

An event that was originally planned for tonight was aimed at giving students an opportunity to peacefully discuss the concerns that were raised during last week’s event and debrief.  The event was cancelled.