An Israeli-American historian and former soldier in the Israeli army expressed surprise as he was abruptly disrupted by students ahead of a lecture he was scheduled to give in June this year at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, Anadolu reports.

Bartov is an Israeli-American historian of the Holocaust and is considered one of the world’s leading authorities on genocide.

“When I arrived at the entrance to the lecture hall, I saw a group of students congregating. It soon transpired that they were not there to attend the event but to protest against it,” he said.

The protesters, mobilized via WhatsApp, accused Bartov of endorsing a petition labeling Israel as an “apartheid regime” and criticised an article published in The New York Times in which he said that “although the statements of Israeli leaders suggested genocidal intent, there was still time to stop Israel from perpetrating genocide.”