Let us pray — or try to [visiting prof Pnina Peri]

Pnina Peri,  visting prof  at Univ. of Maryland &  wife of  well known  Yoram Peri  [ New Israel Fund]   berates two men performing Jewish prayers at airport in Israel.

You-Tube has removed the video which shows Pnina Peri berating the two men. The above photo is all we can locate.

Pnina Peri’s husband,   Yoram Peri,  is director  of the   Gildenfhorn Institute which  hired his wife Pnina Peri to come to Maryland as a visiting assistant professor.

Pnina Peri’s specialty is diversity training.  Sounds like Pnina Peri could try to show some  human kindness.

The May 30 cellphone video depicting a woman berating two Jewish men for performing a Jewish prayer at an airport would probably never have made news, let alone “gone viral,” were it not for a confluence of details that make the entire episode so bizarre.

It is peculiar that the location was Ben Gurion Airport in Israel, where Jews might believe they have a right to pray wherever they please. But the revelation that the perpetrator of the attack, Pnina Peri, is a professor of Israel studies made the scene incomprehensible for average viewers. For others it clarified everything. In the many articles about Periâ€s bizarre outburst in Ben Gurion airport, she is referred to in virtually every one as “an expert in Multicultural studies.” If so, her behavior casts a pall over her expertise and calls into question the value of her chosen field. The video shows Peri shouting and berating a Chabad rabbi as he helps a fellow traveler put on tefillin (the leather straps and boxes containing scripture used in Jewish morning prayer). As the men perform their unobtrusive prayer ritual, Peri screams at them, “Move because you are bothering me” and bellows “Why are you doing this here? There are people here.”

If the video had ended there, or if she had walked away, Peri might still be unknown. What she did made her infamous: she laughed for a very long time at the men, up-close and in their faces. It was a chilling performance that has to be seen to be believed. Most accounts say that she “laughs mockingly,” but this is too mild. She derides the men in Hebrew, but her laugh transcends language. It is a taunting and cruel laugh, deliberate and prolonged.