Two panellists at the Albany Book Festival’s authors’ panel in New York have refused to share the stage with the Jewish “Zionist” moderator.
Jewish moderator Elisa Albert is an outspoken Israel supporter. She was set to moderate a panel at the Albany Book Festival called “Girls, Coming of Age,” but received an email from a festival organiser two days before the event informing her that the event had been cancelled, reports The Times of Israel.
Two of the three panellists — authors Lisa Ko and Aisha Abdel Gawad — refused to sit on the panel with Albert because they did not want to appear with a “Zionist.”
Albert explained that she is ‘not surprised’ by such reactions since October 7. She has been vocal since the outbreak of war, posting aggressively and frequently on Instagram in support of Israel and against Hamas and those she perceives as supporting it, which, according to her, have significantly altered her professional life.
While both the assistant director and the director of the New York State Writers Institute, the festival’s organiser, expressed dismay and regret over the panel participants’ decision, the festival did not make a public statement about the panel’s cancellation and has not addressed the issue on social media, which has drawn more than a dozen replies condemning the decision.
Nevertheless, Mark Koplik, assistant director of the Writers Institute, criticised the panellists in a statement to JTA.
“We unequivocally condemn antisemitism,” he said. “We never would consider removing Elisa, and we stood up to those who wanted to remove her. We no longer had a panel to be moderated. We fully support Elisa’s expression of outrage and disappointment. We believe in civil dialogue, and we condemn intolerance of any kind. I can’t tell you how sad and upsetting this is for me personally.”
The cancellation of the panel is the latest in a long series of literary events to be cancelled or modified because of disputes over the Israel-Hamas war and Zionism. Many Jewish authors have faced criticism even if they have not expressed public support for Israel.
Photo credit: By courtesy of Elisa Albert via The Times of Israel
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