After 2 ½ years of regular, at-times violent, anti-Israel demonstrations around the world, the confrontation between a small bearded man waving a Palestinian flag and Israeli tech entrepreneur Eyal Waldman on the streets of Venice yesterday was, on its face, an insignificant incident.

In a video of the event, which took place on the sidelines of the Venice Biennale, Waldman is seen approaching the anti-Israel activist, shaking his hand and asking with a smile, “Do you want to do peace [with Israel]?” The protester, who said he was from Gaza, responds, “No,” because Israelis “are animals.” Upon discovering Waldman’s nationality, the man yanks his hand away, repeatedly calls Waldman a “murderer” and yells expletives at him. 

As the bearded man leads a chant of “Free, free Palestine,” Waldman walks away. No one was physically harmed, and Waldman appears more bemused by the situation than hurt by it. 

But despite this kind of exchange becoming increasingly commonplace, this encounter nevertheless stands out. And the reason why is this: Few Israelis can claim to have done more to support peace with Palestinians and support Palestinians than Eyal Waldman. And Waldman, who sold his chip-making company Mellanox Technologies to Nvidia for $6.8 billion in 2019, has continued to do so even after his daughter, Danielle, was killed along with her boyfriend, Noam Shai, in the Oct. 7 terror attacks. 

Waldman, who employs Palestinian tech workers, donated $360,000 to a Gazan hospital and funded an initiative to develop a framework for a two-state solution, has grown somewhat more hawkish in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks — stressing the need to remove Hamas and other terror groups from power by force — but remains committed to peace. 

“Once we achieve this and we replace the leadership, we should strive to make [the Palestinians] strive for peace. Once they understand it’s better for them to have peace with us — and we also do this — I think it’s the right ground to have negotiations to build… the Palestinian state [alongside] an Israeli state,” Waldman said last year on the Aleph VC firm’s podcast.

There is tragic irony in a person like Waldman, whose daughter was murdered by terrorists, being called a “murderer” on the sidelines of the Venice Biennale, and there is something wryly humorous about someone with so demonstrable a commitment to peace and the well-being of Palestinians being shouted out and hounded away by supposed pro-Palestinian protesters. 

But beyond the surface-level absurdity, the encounter demonstrates that reality and nuance are of no interest to the mobs. To the protester, Waldman was not a devoted activist who has invested much of his own resources to advance the cause of peace; he was instead just an Israeli, an “animal.”

To some, this exchange is an indicator of the pointlessness of peace activism. To wit: If even someone like Eyal Waldman can be called a “murderer” by the anti-Israel protesters, what’s the point? 

And yet in his interviews of the years, Waldman, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has indicated that his efforts to advance the two-state solution are not meant to appease the mobs but are driven, in large part, out of self-interest. 

“I don’t think any people can rule or be responsible for other people. It’s never worked,” Waldman said last year. “So we should do what’s best for the Israeli people. And what’s best for the Israeli people is to have a two-state solution.”