AP

President Barack Obama was briefly interrupted by a heckler during a speech to students in Jerusalem on Thursday.

The heckler was booed loudly by the surrounding audience. As the protester continued to shout, Obama said, "This is part of the lively debate that we talked about, this is good!"

At that, the audience burst into applause and gave him a standing ovation.

"I have to say we actually arranged for that because it actually made me feel at home," Obama joked. "I wouldn't feel comfortable if I didn't have at least one heckler."

According to the White House pool report, the heckler was shouting about imprisoned spy Jonathan Pollard, convicted of passing classified information to Israel in the 1980s.