The writer and activist Sarah Schulman blasted the rejection by New York's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center of her plans for a reading of a book on Israel and Palestine, saying it was the center, not Schulman, who is playing on Jewish stereotypes.

In an email interview with BuzzFeed, Schulman — who was also at the center of a battle last week over a Brooklyn College Panel on the campaign for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel (known as BDS) — called the Center's decision "bizarre."

"It seems that they hold cliched and stereotyped beliefs about punitive rich Jews who will pull out their Jew-money if anyone criticizes Israel, and it was this misguided prejudice that lead them to defensively ban any criticism of Israel," Schulman, a professor of English at the City University of New York, said. "I know it sounds insane, but I honestly think that that is what happened. A weird kind of anti-semitism combined with a profound lack of intelligence and integrity."

The Center has said that it sought to keep the divisive issue out as part of an effort to maintain a "safe space" for Jews and Arabs alike, and LGBT people on all sides of the conflict. But Schulman argued that queer people ought, in particular, to be incensed by Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. Israel, she said, "pinkwashes" its record by using events like gay pride parades "as signs of modernity."

"Queer people have not fought for so long to be used by a racist government to justify human rights violations," she said, adding that "there is a growing Palestinian LGBT movement [whose]] goals are: sexual and gender liberation, feminism and an end to the occupation."

While calls for pressure on Israel come from a variety of sources across the political spectrum and take a variety of forms, the BDS movement has provoked particular alarm from supporters of Israel because its principles include a "right of return" for Palestinians and their families displaced from what's now the state of Israel proper. In theory, the return of millions of Palestinian families could create a majority Arab state with a Jewish minority, something some backers of a "one-state solution" consider an optimal outcome, but which would effectively mean the end of the Zionist dream of a Jewish State. Others argue that it's a matter of principal but that most Palestnian families would not return, or might agree not to as part of a negotiated peace.

"I believe in equal rights for all human beings," Schulman said. "If there is a Jewish Right of Return, there can also be a Palestinian Right of Return. I do not support different levels of rights based on religion."