Arab Protest Disrupts Israeli Team’s Visit

An Israeli basketball team walked off the court Monday in response to a noisy pro-Arab demonstration at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, university officials said.

About 50 Arab students and community residents waved Palestinian flags and shouted anti-Israel slogans during the protest, which started about a half-hour before the game and continued into its opening minutes.

The Israeli team, Hapoel Hagalil Haelcon, was eight points ahead when it left the court after university officials would not eject the protesters, who were in the stands and had been following the Israelis from one end of the court to the other.

“We came to play basketball, not argue politics,” Israeli Coach Muli Katzurin told the Detroit News.

University of Michigan-Dearborn basketball Coach Joe Zabrenski apologized to the team--ranked among the top four Israeli college teams--after the incident.

A university spokesman defended the protesters.

“They were very well-behaved, they did not physically obstruct the game, nor break any school codes,” spokesman Steve Wasko said of the students.

A student leader, Mike Awad, who is Palestinian, told reporters that the protest was in support of 1.5 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The suburban Detroit community has one of the largest Arab populations outside the Middle East.

The game was the seventh on the Israeli’s team’s Midwest tour and the first marked by protest.