{"id":85282,"date":"2025-10-16T22:30:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T22:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/85282\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T22:30:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T22:30:07","slug":"pro-palestine-activists-disrupt-brian-odriscoll-speech-over-company-links-to-israeli-army-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/85282\/","title":{"rendered":"Pro-Palestine activists disrupt Brian O\u2019Driscoll speech over company links to Israeli army \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">A group of pro-Palestine protesters disrupted a speech by former rugby player <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/brian-odriscoll\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/brian-odriscoll\/\">Brian O\u2019Driscoll<\/a> at a tech conference in Dublin because the event was arranged by a company with links to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/israel\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/israel\/\">Israeli<\/a> army. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">The Cyber Leader Summit Dublin 2025 was organised by Check Point, a cybersecurity company with offices in Tel Aviv and California. Some members of the company\u2019s executive team previously served with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/israel-defence-forces\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/israel-defence-forces\/\">Israeli military<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Mr O\u2019Driscoll, the keynote speaker, was there to \u201cdraw powerful parallels between the world of elite rugby and cyber defence &#8211; showing how teamwork, resilience and strategy are just as critical on the digital frontlines as they are on the pitch\u201d, according to Check Point\u2019s description of the conference. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The former Irish rugby international was delivering his speech on Thursday afternoon when protesters disrupted the event at The Westbury hotel in Dublin city centre.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In footage of the incident, one protester shouts: \u201cShame on you, what are you doing here? &#8230; Shame on you, Brian.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Protesters were removed from the venue before the event continued. Several garda\u00ed were seen outside the hotel after the incident. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A spokesperson for Check Point said the event \u201cwent ahead as planned\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cWe have nothing further to add.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The Irish Times has contacted Mr O\u2019Driscoll and The Westbury for comment. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A spokesman said Garda\u00ed responded \u201cto a public order incident outside a premises near Grafton Street, Dublin 2 at approximately 3:30pm\u201d on Thursday afternoon. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThose involved dispersed peacefully. No arrests have been reported.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Check Point chief executive Nadav Zafrir \u201cestablished the Israel Defense Forces\u2019 Cyber Command and served as Commander of the elite Unit 8200, retiring as a Brigadier General\u201d, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.checkpoint.com\/about-us\/leadership\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the company\u2019s website notes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Chief strategy officer Roi Karo served for more than 25 years in the IDF; chief technology officer Jonathan Zanger previously led research and development operations for Unit 8200, the Israeli military intelligence unit; and chief information officer Alex Spokoiny held engineering leadership positions in the Israeli Air Force, according to Check Point\u2019s website. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Check Point\u2019s partners include Google, Microsoft and Amazon. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of pro-Palestine protesters disrupted a speech by former rugby player Brian O\u2019Driscoll at a tech conference&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[53106,72,615,61,60,4267,3411,4268],"class_list":["post-85282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-brian-o-driscoll","tag-business","tag-dublin","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-israel-defence-forces","tag-israel-hamas-conflict","tag-palestine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}