The campus of Tel Aviv University. Photo: Ido Perelmutter via Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – Tel Aviv University canceled a lecture by Muhammad Kanaana, an Israeli Arab convicted of having contact with the terrorist organization Hezbollah, after some 350 students protested the talk.

“Given concerns for public order, and since the request to approve his participation was only received recently, leaving no time for preparations, the university does not approve his participation in the event,” the university said in a statement, according to Israel Hayom.

Kanaana spent four and a half years in prison for contact with hostile elements in Hezbollah, and for receiving funds and weapons-preparation training. His lecture had been scheduled for Monday.

Matan Peleg, CEO of the Zionist group Im Tirzu, said, “Zionist movements represent the sane majority of students at Tel Aviv University. I am glad that [their] moderate voice reached the office of the university’s president, and that he understood that a terrorist who knowingly harmed the citizens of Israel must not be glorified.”