“The issue of divestment is not anti-Jewish. It’s not anti-Israel. And it’s not anti-Semitic. It’s anti-occupation,” he said.

Later in the evening, an exchange between one panelist, the Rev. Patricia Budd Kepler, and audience member Joachim C. S. Martillo ’78, elicited outrage from some student attendees.

Martillo said in the question-and-answer period that “suicide attacks against Israel are completely justifiable.”

Budd Kepler responded, “I don’t believe that violence is justifiable on any side. I also don’t think it’s long-term effective.”

In an interview after the event, Yudkoff said that Budd Kepler “spoke more to the efficacy of such actions than to the right or wrong of suicide bombings.”

“The event was disturbing as it took such a laissez-faire approach to Palestinian terrorism,” Yudkoff said.

But Budd Kepler vehemently denied any suggestion that she had taken an equivocal stance on the issue of terrorism. “For the record, let me clarify, the Presbyterian Church has condemned suicide bombers,” she said, adding that she fully backs the church’s position.

PROTESTERS DISPERSE

Five members of the Somerville Divestment Group handed out fliers and organized a petition drive in front of Emerson Hall before the event, but SAS leaders emphasized that they had no ties to the activists.

Sarafa’s Adams House roommate, J. Douglas Jamieson ’07, who is not an SAS officer, said he asked a security guard posted at Emerson Hall to order the Somerville activists to leave the site. The guard informed the activists that they did not have the required permit to distribute literature in the yard.

Somerville Divestment Group member John Spritzler, a Harvard School of Public Health research scientist, said that “if anyone had said...in 1968, ‘do you have a permit to leaflet on campus?’ everyone would have laughed.” But Spritzler and his fellow activists complied with the guard’s order.

—Staff writer Daniel J. Hemel can be reached at hemel@fas.harvard.edu.