H eadlines
Panel Continued from Page 1
critics of the event charged its
panelists and organizers with
disrespecting the memory of
Murray Friedman, a local Jewish
scholar of national repute. The
panelists and organizers deny
that charge, too.

The event, “The Weaponization
of Discourse: Israel/Palestine,
Antisemitism, and Free Speech
on Campus,” was co-hosted with
Temple University’s Feinstein
Center for American Jewish
History and the Holocaust and
Genocide Studies Program at
Stockton University.

Panelists Joyce Ajlouny,
general secretary of the
American Friends Service
Committee, and Kenneth
S. Stern, director of the Bard
Center for the Study of Hate
at Bard College, discussed the
IHRA definition of anti-Semi-
tism for about an hour.

Stern was one of the original
drafters of the IHRA definition
of anti-Semitism. In 2004, the
European Monitoring Centre
on Racism and Xenophobia, the
European Union’s racism and
xenophobia monitor, sought
guidance from Jewish academics
and NGOs in providing an
update to the definition of
anti-Semitism. Stern and his
12 APRIL 29, 2021
Lila Corwin Berman, Kenneth S. Stern and Joyce Ajlouny discuss the IHRA
definition of anti-Semitism.
Screenshot by Jesse Bernstein
co-drafters produced this
38-word statement:
“Antisemitism is a certain
perception of Jews, which may
be expressed as hatred toward
Jews. Rhetorical and physical
manifestations of antisemitism
are directed toward Jewish or
non-Jewish individuals and/or
their property, toward Jewish
community institutions and
religious facilities.”
Alongside that statement,
Stern and the co-drafters
provided 11 illustrative examples
of anti-Semitic statements. Seven
of the 11 mention bias relating to
Israel as potentially anti-Semitic
in nature.

The IHRA definition, as Stern
said again during the April 20
event, was not meant to be given
the force of law, but simply to
serve as a guide for monitoring
purposes. But since its publication in
2004, governments worldwide
have formally adopted the IHRA
definition, concerning a wide
range of academics and activists,
from pro-Palestinian activists to
libertarians. In the U.S. and abroad, Stern
said, the worry is that providing
the IHRA definition with legal
force could, in effect, create a
new category of legally prohib-
ited speech, thereby stifling
freedom of speech and academic
freedom. Stern contends that
groups who would find it in
their interest to silence speech
that criticized Israel could use
the newly empowered definition,
adopted by the U.S. govern-
ment via a 2019 executive order,
to threaten pro-Palestinian
speakers with legal action.

Even as a Zionist who still
finds the original definition
JEWISH EXPONENT
useful for understanding
anti-Semitism, Stern wrote in a
2019 op-ed for The Guardian, he
finds the prospect that it would
be used to suppress the speech
of anti-Zionists to be fundamen-
tally wrong.

“To establish that as a principle
of law is, to me, abhorrent,” Stern
said during the panel.

Stern was joined by Ajlouny,
born in Ramallah, who has led
the AFSC since 2017. The Quaker
organization has long champi-
oned the cause of the Palestinians,
and Ajlouny was director of
Ramallah Friends School.

While director, Ajlouny
started “Go Palestine,” a
summer camp for Palestinian
students. The camp, partially
funded by USAID, became a
target for criticism from U.S.

government officials when the
programming content was
revealed in a 2017 JNS article.

Speakers had advocated for the
boycott, divestment, sanctions
movement, and one speaker,
Nassar Ibrahim, was affiliated
with the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine, a
Department of State-designated
terrorist group.

During the panel, Ajlouny
said that she, like Stern,
believed that legally codifying
the IHRA definition had
unfairly privileged a single
point of view. But unlike Stern,
Ajlouny is a declared anti-Zi-
onist, and said that “constant
accusations” of anti-Semitism
against Palestinians and their
supporters brought to mind
“the boy who cried wolf.”
Throughout the panel, Ajlouny
shared her personal experience
of life in Ramallah living “in
an apartheid system,” she said.

“If I talk about my personal
story, I am accused of being an
anti-Semite,” Ajlouny said.

Criticism of the event rolled
in well in advance.

Moshe Phillips, national
director of Herut North
America’s U.S. division, wrote
in the Jewish Journal that he’d
“expect Arab propagandists to
spread such lies,” referring to
a line in the event description
that mentioned “state violence
against Palestinians.”
In another op-ed after the
event, Phillips accused Ajlouny
of displaying “Phony Martyr
Syndrome,” and characterized
the event as “90 minutes of
Israel-bashing disguised as an
academic discussion.”
In addition,
Zionist Organization of America
National President Morton
A. Klein and Center for Law
and Justice Director Susan B.

Tuchman wrote in an open letter
that “there is no doubt that the
program will be one-sided and
hostile to Israel — and potentially
harmful to American Jews.”
ZOA Philadelphia Executive
Director Steve Feldman said
the only room for discussion on
the IHRA definition should be
“in order to strengthen it, and
expand local government, state
governments and universities
embracing it and adopting it.”
The American Jewish
Committee described the event
as “strongly biased against Israel
and Jews” and took particular
issue with the involvement
of the Feinstein Center. The
center was founded by Murray
Friedman, a scholar who led AJC
Philadelphia for 43 years.

“Hosting a program that
is a blatant attack on Israel
and questions the most widely
accepted definition of antisem-
itism is an assault on Murray
Friedman’s legacy, and all in
our community who have been
involved with the Feinstein
Center for years,” AJC
Philadelphia Director Marcia
Bronstein said in a statement.

She said that she had requested
that another speaker be added
to the program, but was
rebuffed. Congregation
Rodeph Shalom Senior Rabbi Jill
Maderer said that the synagogue
received many emails using
the same language, describing
the Stern and the organizers as
self-hating Jews, among other
charges. Stern, Ajlouny, Maderer and
Feinstein Center Director Lila
Corwin Berman each reported
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM