{"id":126799,"date":"2025-10-16T22:51:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T22:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/126799\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T22:51:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T22:51:09","slug":"pro-palestine-activists-disrupt-brian-odriscoll-speech-over-company-links-to-israeli-army-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/126799\/","title":{"rendered":"Pro-Palestine activists disrupt Brian O\u2019Driscoll speech over company links to Israeli army \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A group of pro-Palestine protesters disrupted a speech by former rugby player Brian O\u2019Driscoll<\/a> at a tech conference in Dublin because the event was arranged by a company with links to the Israeli<\/a> army. <\/p>\n

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 Israeli military<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Driscoll, the keynote speaker, was there to \u201cdraw powerful parallels between the world of elite rugby and cyber defence – 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

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

In footage of the incident, one protester shouts: \u201cShame on you, what are you doing here? … Shame on you, Brian.\u201d<\/p>\n

Protesters were removed from the venue before the event continued. Several garda\u00ed were seen outside the hotel after the incident. <\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Check Point said the event \u201cwent ahead as planned\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have nothing further to add.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Irish Times has contacted Mr O\u2019Driscoll and The Westbury for comment. <\/p>\n

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

\u201cThose involved dispersed peacefully. No arrests have been reported.\u201d<\/p>\n

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, the company\u2019s website notes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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

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…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,19259,52,18,13,14,6,19,17,6220,3857,11,12,15,16,5,72,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-126799","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-brian-o-driscoll","11":"tag-dublin","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-featured-news","14":"tag-featurednews","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-israel-defence-forces","19":"tag-israel-hamas-conflict","20":"tag-latest-news","21":"tag-latestnews","22":"tag-main-news","23":"tag-mainnews","24":"tag-news","25":"tag-palestine","26":"tag-top-stories","27":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}