Students protest Israeli soldier speaking event on campus

Students and community members gathered Thursday evening in a demonstration to oppose a speaking event with Israeli military soldiers organized by the Rutgers chapter of Students Supporting Israel.

The event, titled “Triggered: The Ceaseless Tour,” featured a talk by a soldier who shared his experience serving in the Israeli military. The demonstration against his appearance began outside of the College Avenue Gym and travelled across campus, amassing around 200 people over the course of the protest.

Demonstrators chanted, gave speeches, and marched around the College Avenue campus to oppose the Students Supporting Israel (SSI) event, as well as show support for the people of Palestine.

A representative from the Muslim Public Relations Council (MPRC), which helped lead the demonstration, called it “disgusting” for a student organization to invite a member of a foreign military that she said is responsible for genocide. MPRC had organized the protest following backlash to the soldier’s invitation.

“This club that is hosting this soldier is funded by Rutgers University, so our tuition money is going towards allowing this event and allowing this soldier to speak and spread propaganda on our campus,” the demonstration leader said. “We absolutely are not okay with it, so that’s why we’re here today.”

According to documents from the RUSA Allocations Board, SSI received nearly $6000 in funding from student fees for the spring 2026 semester.

In another speech to demonstrators, an engineering student asked attendees to imagine the struggles of students in Palestine watching the Israeli military destroy their homes and kill their peers.

“In Palestine, we see people who have everything to lose, like you and me, put everything on the line for their land,” the student told attendees. “I am afraid of what I might have to lose, but do I even know true loss? Do we know true loss the way the students, professionals, the people of Palestine do?”

One speaker from Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) spoke about Rutgers’ collaboration with defense contractors Lockheed Martin, L3 Harris, and Northrop Grumman — an issue SJP protested earlier this month. Prior to announcing the protest, SJP created a petition against the SSI event, which has received nearly 7,000 signatures.

“Every single aspect of the genocide is reliant on technology,” the student said. “Every single weapon is a series of choices and oftentimes that first step is taken here on college campuses. [Rutgers] maintains sponsorship programs and regularly holds networking events for students to connect with them as potential employers. Rutgers feels comfortable doing this because it values financial profit over humanity and it will continue to do so as long as its profit is not threatened.”

In an interview with WRSU, the SJP leader had harsh words for the members of SSI who organized the speaking event.

“These people [in SSI] know who they are, they know what they’re doing is evil, but still it’s allowed,” the SJP leader told WRSU. “I honestly don’t expect anything better of them given their political views and given their support for Zionism and support for killers. I’m just really disappointed with the University for letting this happen.”

The event featured a talk with American IDF soldier Yossi Hertz as part of the organization’s “Israel Week” centered on Israeli identity and politics. Hertz discussed his experience in the Chashmonaim brigade, a unit of the Israeli military created to accommodate the religious beliefs of Haredi Jews, who were previously exempt from mandatory enlistment due to their religious beliefs.

Attendees were required to show ID and pass through metal detectors to enter. The location of the event was also not announced until shortly before the event began. Chants from the protest outside could be heard throughout the event.

One student attendee spoke to WRSU about the event after it ended.

“It was a good event. It kind of explored the dynamics between the religious group within Israel, Haredim, as you might know them, and they’re being drafted into units in the IDF,” the student said. “So really, he was exploring mostly that, but also some of it’s just his time inside the IDF and his experiences there. It was nice.”

One student, Felipe Rendall, was removed by event security. A video posted to Instagram shows the student shouting at speakers and organizers about the people killed by the Israeli military in Palestine. Rendall, who has Jewish heritage, told WRSU that he felt it was necessary to vocally object to the presence of Israeli soldiers on campus, and that he attended the event with the intent to disrupt.

“I think it is egregious that Rutgers is having IDF soldiers that have killed some of the students-of-Rutgers’s family,” he said. “At the end of the day, there was an IDF soldier standing in front of me, and when I have an IDF soldier standing in front of me, there can be no good atmosphere.”

According to SSI’s website, the name of the tour, “Triggered”, refers to the pushback their events receive on college campuses. The SSI website features a compilation of news stories on students protesting their events, as well as mentions by groups critical of the Israeli military.

At the demonstration, Deeba Majid, Project Management Associate with the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR-NJ), told WRSU that the organization condemns the speaking event, and promised to support any student demonstrators held liable for using their first amendment rights.

“Rutgers University has a responsibility to its students’ safety,” Majid said. “That includes all students, including the people of MSA, SJP, MPRC, all the Palestinians, all the Iranians and all the Jordanians.”

One demonstrator who spoke with WRSU said that over one hundred of his relatives had been killed by the Israeli military forces in Gaza. He further said that Rutgers had not done enough to support students such as himself who with familial ties to Gaza.

“Rutgers prides itself in its diversity and in its inclusion and being a campus that welcomes many students while also endorsing and supporting companies and being complicit in the genocide of its own students’ families,” the student said. “Rutgers has not done anything to support its Palestinian, its Syrian, its Lebanese, its Middle Eastern students, people who are victims or whose families victims are victims of genocide, displacement and oppression and apartheid, all caused by the genocidal state of Israel.”

Another demonstrator, known as Leor, discussed her family in Israel. She said her father was jailed for resisting enlistment and that she has seen firsthand the kind of propaganda Israeli citizens are told about the war. Leor said that it is necessary for Israelis to dismantle the propaganda of living under a constant state of war, and that it is all the more unjustifiable for American Jews to propagate the same ideas.

“The thing is, I have some care and compassion for Israelis that live in the state of this propaganda… they have such ingrained beliefs about the fact that they physically could not exist if there was a state of Palestine,” she told WRSU. “I have much less compassion for American Jews that are not under the state of propaganda in Israel.”

Troy Shinbrot, professor of biomedical engineering and adjunct faculty union member, held a sign that read “another Jew against bombing children”. He told WRSU that he applauds students for standing up for Palestine in spite of the threat of penalties by administration.

“With students, they’re much more vulnerable.” Shinbrot said. “They can be brought up on academic charges. They can lose a semester. They can, in principle, get kicked out. And faculty need to lead.”

The demonstration saw minimal counter-protests even as demonstrators marched across campus. One passing car waved an Israeli flag in front of demonstrators multiple times as the crowd dispersed.

In a statement to WRSU, Rutgers university spokesperson Neal Buccino said that while they monitored for safety, the event was not organized by the University, rather SSI, and that SSI had “followed the protocol for holding an event on campus.” He continued that the University is committed to free speech, and “does not cancel events or speakers based on disagreements with their messages, however heartfelt such disagreements may be.”

Story by: Keya Raval, Andrew Hawthorne, Nina Davis, Avani Trivedi, and Rahil Chatterjee.