The Feinstein Center for American Jewish History at Temple University is co-sponsoring a virtual event on April 20 that promotes false narratives about Israel.
The Jewish center founded by the late Murray Friedman—a historian and longtime leader of the American Jewish Committee in Philadelphia—will host a public program called “The Weaponization of Discourse: Israel/Palestine, Antisemitism and Free Speech on Campus.” The event will feature professor Kenneth Stern of Bard College and Joyce Ajlouny, general secretary of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).
Participants will also explore the “potentials and limitations of a state-sponsored definition of anti-Semitism,” and whether certain such definitions “hinder free speech in the United States and elsewhere.”
Moshe Phillips, national director of the U.S. division of the Zionist educational movement Herut, wrote in an op-ed on Wednesday that the AFSC has promoted articles that compare Israel to Nazi Germany, while Ajlouny has publicly accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing.”
“I expect Arab propagandists to spread such lies. I don’t expect the falsehoods to come from an academic center founded by a pro-Israel scholar and is funded in part by donations from pro-Israel members of the Philadelphia-area Jewish community,” he said. “Donors and supporters of the Feinstein Center need to ask themselves if this is the kind of programming they want their money used for—and then act accordingly.”