Temple U. Speaker Calls For Israel To Be Replaced

Ajlouny began with a long, rambling tirade in which she accused Israel of pretty much every crime imaginable. Taking aim at Israel’s very existence, she said, “Israel was created on a false premise of a land without people, through ethnic cleansing, massacres, and forcing over 700,000 Palestinian to flee.” She said Israel governs through “an apartheid system.” She declared, unequivocally: “I am an anti-Zionist.”

Prof. Stern responded by calling her litany of anti-Israel smears “incredibly moving,” then emphasized that Arabs and Israelis “need coexistence.” Ajlouny replied, “I would like to have coexistence in one secular democratic state, but that is a subject for another discussion.”

Ajlouny, who has lived most of her life in Ramallah and has been a public advocate for the Palestinian Arab cause for decades, knows full well that the term “one secular democratic state” is the longstanding PLO motto for eliminating Israel and replacing it with “Palestine.”

In her remarks, Ajlouny also staunchly defended the BDS movement (which all major Jewish organizations consider to be antisemitic). “I don’t see sanctions [against Israel] as hatred,” she insisted. “I see them as a way to get my rights. It’s effective. If you’re living under an apartheid system and military rule and you are looking for ways to liberate yourself, you have to look for strategies that are effective.”

She then heaped praise on various extremist pro-BDS groups—singling out the notorious US Campaign for Palestinian Rights—and went into a conspiratorial rant against anti-BDS efforts. She railed against the “pro-Israel lobby” and its “well-oiled machine” which she said opposes BDS as part of a plot to “silence Palestinians” and “suppress Palestinian rights.”