There have been some maliciously unfair boycotts -- the boycott of a Korean grocery store by black militants in the Dinkins years come to mind -- but the picketing of WordsWorth, one of the last independent bookstores in Cambridge, Massachusetts by a gaggle of radical activists breaks new ground. The store owner's "crime" is failing to donate money to National Public Radio. Scandalously, WBUR, the NPR station in Boston, shares the view that it has an inalienable right in perpetuity to presumably voluntary donations. It has actually issued a letter praising the outrageous effort to intimidate the book store's owner.
Hillel Stavis, WordsWorth's owner, is a board member of CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) which describes NPR as "the most anti-Israel news source in the mainstream U.S. media." CAMERA has meticulously documented NPR's flawed coverage in a report, "A Record of Bias: National Public Radio's Coverage of the Arab-Israeli Conflict," published in March 2001. Efforts to make NPR correct the situation have been unavailing: while NPR has met with CAMERA it simply stonewalls when confronted even with the most blatant errors of fact. As a result, CAMERA urged donors to the station to withdraw support and Stavis made the eminently reasonable decision to cease providing his generous annual donation to NPR. As he told the Harvard Crimson (Dec. 10), "To whom we give money and how much we give is a personal right."
In short, Hillel Stavis has been targeted by a collection of the worst perverters of truth, justice, law, and human rights in this country.
This seemingly obvious proposition is under challenge by radical leftists in the politically correct environment of Cambridge. In a week-long protest, a group of demonstrators, spearheaded by Jewish Women for Justice in Israel/Palestine, marched outside Stavis's bookstore. Other groups participating were the National Lawyers Guild, United for Justice with Peace, and Visions of Peace with Justice in Israel/Palestine. They dis-tributed neon yellow fliers declaring, in the bold headline: "The Owner of WordsWorth Sells Words but Suppresses Words." Eleanor Roffman, spokeswoman for Jewish Women for Justice, told the Harvard Crimson that by cutting financial backing to the station, "Stavis is threatening the media's ability to provide a forum for debate on Israeli government policy." To his credit, Stavis fought back. He went to the sidewalk himself, distributing his own fliers with a headline: "These Anti-Israel Demonstrators Are Preparing the Next Holocaust." He accused Jewish Women for Justice of being "phony 'peace activists'" who "knowingly support terror."
Stavis is right on target. In a crowded field, Jewish Women for Justice, tiny but venomous, is probably the most contemptible anti-Israel groupuscule in the United States. AFSI first came upon the group by accident. In November 2000, Board member Ruth King wrote a small item in her monthly column in Outpost after hearing an interview on CNN by a young Israeli "human rights" lawyer who defended the brutal lynching of two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah (one of whom was tossed from the second story of a police station to a crowd which hacked him to death). The lawyer's name was given as Allegra Pacheco and King pointed out in Outpost that Ms. Pacheco, as "human rights champion," would receive short shrift under the Arab despots and terror chieftains she admired. AFSI then received a letter in defense of Ms. Pacheco signed by seven women -- one of them Eleanor Roffman, leader of the demonstration against Stavis. It declared that King should be ashamed to attack another woman!
We at AFSI did not recognize the names of any of the signatories and thinking that they were perhaps simply personal friends of Pacheco, Ruth King called one of them -- as it happened, it was Eleanor Roffman -- to ask the nature of the connection to Pacheco. Roffman explained that all were members of a local group called Jewish Women for Justice in Israel/Palestine. It turned out they were groupies around Pacheco, and the grouplet had been formed in September 2000, in the immediate aftermath of Arafat's renewed intifada, with whose goals it was clearly in sympathy.
Although we had missed Pacheco's anti-Israel op-eds and interviews on TV and radio (including NPR), thanks to the internet we were swiftly able to come up to speed. We read her op-eds in the New York Times (what collection of attributes could be more attractive to that institution? Woman, human rights lawyer, Jew, hates Israel). In the Times, Pacheco made no bones about her idea of "peace." It was to abolish the Jewish state.
As Ruth King wrote in a follow-up piece addressed to Roffman and the other Jewish Women for Justice, "Arafat could not have put his goal better than Pacheco does. 'Without justice and full equality, including the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland, the Oslo process cannot bring about any semblance of viable peace.'" King pointed out that in her articles, full of compassion for the plight of Palestinians, Pacheco showed not a hint of sympathy for Jewish victims of Arab terror. Wrote King: "She -- and you, in your nasty little support organization -- represent a hideous parody of human rights."
[(Continued on p.9)]
Outpost - 8 - January 2003