Israeli expert forced to cancel his lecture in Jordan

An Israeli expert’s lecture at a Jordanian university has been cancelled after hundreds of outraged Jordanian students protested his participation in a conference. Hundreds of Jordanian students demonstrated outside the University of Jordan in Amman on Thursday to protest a scheduled lecture by an Israeli expert at a mental health conference. The protesters demanded that Dr. Gideon Anholt's lecture be canceled and called on authorities to expel the Israeli ambassador to Jordan from the country. Anholt's lecture at Ben-Gurion University in Israel on the same day was also cancelled, Jordanian university officials said. "The protesters handed out fliers expressing outrage over the participation of Israeli occupiers in a Jordan conference. As things heated up security officers eventually had to take us out of the back door," said Anholt in an interview after returning to Israel. "It was stressful. Leaving out the back is unpleasant," he added. University of Jordan officials tried to distance themselves from the issue by claiming that they did not know an Israeli expert had been invited to the conference.