At Harvard Talk, Former Israeli PM Joked He Would Give Exploding Pagers to Protesters

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett joked to hundreds of people about sending explosive devices to dissenting event attendees at a talk at the Harvard Business School on Thursday, according to six people present at the discussion.

HBS professor Paul A. Gompers ’86, the moderator, began the off-the-record event by explaining Harvard’s guidelines on disruption, noting that dissenting audience members who interrupt the speaker would be removed. Bennett then interrupted to add: “I think we’ll just give them a pager.”

The comment, which received some laughter from the audience, was an apparent allusion to the Sept. 17-18 Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Syria, where Israel detonated thousands of handheld pagers and walkie talkies originally intended for members of the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah. The attack killed dozens of people and injured nearly 3,000, according to the Lebanese government.

Israel did not initially take ownership for the attacks, but a spokesperson for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted responsibility in November. Netanyahu later gifted U.S. President Donald Trump a golden pager in a February meeting at the White House with a plaque praising Trump as Israel’s “greatest friend and greatest ally.”

Bennett served as prime minister of Israel from 2021 to 2022 after he led a political coalition to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He has described himself as “more right-wing” than Netanyahu.

Harvard Kennedy School student Noa Margalit, who attended the event, said the comment about pagers was “just a very poor taste joke.”

“Bennett obviously wasn’t in that government, and nor he’s in the current government or any political figure at the moment,” Margalit said. Bennett has not served in the Israeli government since 2022, but has expressed interest in making a return.

Bennett did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Sunday.

Bennett’s talk, titled “From the Boardroom to the World Stage,” was hosted by the Israel Business Club. The conversation was largely centered on his business background, according to multiple event attendees.

Attendees said that Bennett only briefly addressed the ongoing war in Gaza, instead focusing on his business background and social issues, like the Israeli education system. Bennett co-founded two Israeli technology companies and sold them for more than $100 million each in 2005 and 2013.

“It was a very vanilla conversation — he didn’t say anything that wild, that groundbreaking,” Margalit said.

Still, the event drew backlash from more than 100 demonstrators, who protested Harvard’s decision to host Bennett because of his prior comments on Israeli politics and position in the government.

During a 2012 speech, Bennett said “I will do everything in my ability, forever, to prevent a Palestinian state from being founded within the land of Israel,” according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Protesters marched from John F. Kennedy Park to Klarman Hall at HBS where the event was held. The rally saw the largest turnout to a pro-Palestine protest at Harvard since hundreds of people walked out of the school’s Commencement ceremony last May.

Before speaking at Harvard, Bennett made several stops at other U.S. universities this year.

The Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and two Jewish student centers hosted Bennett for an invite-only event just two days before his HBS talk. Unlike at the HBS talk, Bennett’s remarks at Columbia focused mostly on politics and Bennett’s political future.

According to Haaretz, Bennett told the audience at Columbia that if he were to be elected prime minister in the future, the Israeli government would not include an Arab party, and instead would focus on putting “Zionists” in the government. Bennett was the first Israeli prime minister to include an Arab party in the governing coalition in 2021.

As of 2024, 21.4 percent of Israel’s population was Arab.

“My assumption, perhaps he was trying to tone it down after he made some pretty controversial comments in his talk at Columbia University a few days earlier,” Margalit said.

HBS Israel Business Club representatives wrote in an emailed statement that Bennett made it clear that his remark about pagers “was intended as a joke.”

“It was delivered within the context of his first words — explicitly thanking every single person in the room for being present,” they wrote.

The group added that they made efforts to ensure a diverse audience at the talk, extending invitations to the Middle East and North Africa Club’s leadership, as well as the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard.

During the event, Gompers posed pre-vetted questions that audience members submitted in advance. To HKS student Nitsan Machlis, the questions seemed to avoid “controversial” topics.

“I, personally, as an Israeli student, have serious disagreements with many of Bennett’s policies. So I was expecting to be able to ask these kind of tough questions,” Machlis said.

“Too many of the questions that were asked were a little bit of softball questions,” she added. “They were more complimenting Bennett than challenging Bennett.”

—Staff writer Elyse C. Goncalves can be reached at elyse.goncalves@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @e1ysegoncalves.

—Staff writer Laurel M. Shugart can be reached at laurel.shugart@thecrimson.com. Follow them on X @laurelmshugart.

—Staff writer Saketh Sundar can be reached at saketh.sundar@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @saketh_sundar.