This will be an increasingly common occurrence for Israeli officials at public events: booed. Fmr. Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who resigned to fight corruption charges, presided over the deliberate killing of 1,200 Lebanese in 2006 and thousands of Palestinians from 2005-2009. His occupying IDF recently killed over 900 civilians, of whom 400 were children, in Gaza in an attack the United Nations has reported constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity (deliberate killing of civilians, destruction of food sources, infrastructure, ect...). Since Israel was accused of war crimes, the man who launched such a massacre is by definition a war criminal.

But that did not stop Olmert the war criminal from coming to the United States to deliver a lecture at the University of Chicago (he would never visit Europe or anywhere for fear of arrest), and a lecture paid for by none other than. . . Jordanian King Abduallah. This King is, of course, most submissive to the United States and Israel (which makes he recent warning to Israel not to cross a “red line” in Jerusalem laughable).

But Olmert wasn’t going to have it easy:

A demonstration was mobilized last week after organizers learned of the lecture . . . urging those concerned with Palestinian rights to call the university and demand that the lecture be canceled. The call was put out by major community organizations such as the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC)-Chicago, American Muslims for Palestine and the United States Palestine Community Network, as well as solidarity organizations al-Awda, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, the International Solidarity Movement, the Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago and area campus groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine chapters at DePaul University and the University of Illinois at Chicago, as well as the Arab Student Union at Moraine Valley.

. . . Approximately 30 activists — mainly students from area universities — disrupted a lecture given in Chicago by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday which was hosted by the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. While Olmert’s speech was disrupted inside the lecture hall, approximately 150 activists protested outside the hall in the freezing rain.

Protesters inside the hall read off the names of Palestinian children killed during Israel’s assault on Gaza last winter. They shouted that it was unacceptable that the war crimes suspect be invited to speak at a Chicago university when his army destroyed a university in Gaza in January. They reminded the audience of the more than 1,400 Palestinians killed during the Gaza attacks and the more than 1,200 killed during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006. Both invasions happened during Olmert’s premiership.

With interventions coming every few minutes throughout his appearance, Olmert had difficulty giving his speech and often appeared frustrated. At one point he appealed for “just five minutes” to speak without being interrupted.

Shoes and boos, Israeli officials should get used to it as long as the Palestinians continue to be killed and illegally occupied by the Zionist state.

Here’s Olmert’s indignation: