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Friday, July 11, 2008

The local Jewish Advocate newspaper has done a front page story on the Boston Globe email scandal that Hillel Stavis broke here a couple of weeks ago. See: Emails Reveal: Boston Globe Reporter Sucks Up to the Cambridge Peace Commission. The CPC has belated closed their YahooGroup off to public viewing. Oops. I guess they did have something to hide. [Update: It's been pointed out to me that the archives have been deleted entirely. Emails still available in the Google cache.]

The article, which mentions this blog, is here: Cambridge Peace Commission refutes anti-Israel allegations. Refutes? More like "responds," but be that as it may, the article is alright, though perhaps gives the CPC, and Jewish Voice for Peace's Marty Federman, a bit too much credit.

Cambridge is well known as a bastion of liberal politics and activism. And since 1982, the Cambridge Peace Commission has symbolized the city’s progressive, leftist values. But the commission recently came under fire after a series of e-mails revealed what some critics are calling an anti-Israel agenda.

“As a Cambridge resident, I am well aware of the Cambridge Peace Commission’s intense anti-Israel activities,” said Hillel Stavis, a local freelance writer and pro-Israel activist. “For 25 years, they have hosted nothing but anti-Israel speakers. This is their pattern.”

Stavis posted an e-mail exchange on the pro-Israel blog, Solomonia, on June 27, in which the commission’s former director, Cathy Hoffman, expressed her disappointment with Boston Globe correspondent Victoria Cheng. The e-mails were written in January and referenced an article Cheng wrote about the Cambridge-Bethlehem People to People project, a local organization that supports Palestinians affected by Israel’s security wall. The project is not officially affiliated with the CPC, although the commission provided the group with meeting space and the two organizations share several members, including Hoffman...

I'm quite sure we've noted before the artificial nature of the separation between the CPC and Cambridge to Bethlehem group -- their trip included a special assistant to the Mayor feeling his roots, and shared members, meeting space and staff resources.

...CPC Executive Director Brian Corr, who took over when Hoffman resigned in March, said he has never heard allegations of anti-Israel activity from anyone except Stavis. He would not comment on his predecessor’s decisions to take up one cause or another, but said any charges that the commission is targeting Israel were “unfair and unreasonable.”

“I can’t speak to the details of what happened before I started here, but at our last meeting we had representatives of the Save Darfur Coalition and discussed possibly working together in the future,” Corr said. “As a city department we are devoted to peace and social justice and supporting fully the rights of all people. And we don’t advocate violence in any way, shape or form.”

The commission also counts many Jews among its members, including Martin Federman, co-chair of the Boston Chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace.

“The way that this is being framed by certain people is terribly inaccurate,” said Federman. “I don’t know anyone on the Cambridge Peace Commission that is anti-Israel. And I would contend that I advocate for Israel and that much of what I do is based on what I think is best for Israel, [though] not necessarily for the government of Israel.”...

Now that is a laugh. Marty Federman wrote about having to, in effect, sneak in to Israel and the group gallivanted with the International Solidarity Movement while they were there. Federman (a kippah-wearing observant Jew) spent a Sabbath afternoon last October denouncing Israel as an Apartheid State from the stage with a representative of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

Jewish Voice for Peace's record is well-known. They say they're not anti-Israel, but how would one know? Is there anyone they won't stand with? The answer would appear to be no. They've literally put themselves outside the mainstream (even the outside the mainstream) Jewish Community -- literally...you can see their members protesting outside many support-Israel events. In fact, sometimes you can see them being obnoxious inside the events.

Anyway, the entire article is here. Overall, it could be better, could be worse.

The editorial is also related: Blinded by ideology. Poor Editor Gary Band. He's trying hard to please his whole audience and hew a moderate line. I sense Gary doesn't quite grasp just how radical and outrageous the CPC and JVP really are, nor just how absurd the CPC's protest that they're not anti-Israel really is. Such tight-rope walking gets you not only repeating credulously the claims of the representatives of such groups -- in a Jewish newspaper that should be far less reticent to take a position no less -- but also writing jaw-droppers like this:

...Indeed the protection of a single settlement of 800 people in Hebron has paralyzed a once bustling multi-ethnic city of 160,000, and the wall/fence has altered the landscape and caused a severe decline in the quality of life for thousands of everyday citizens. But while the settlement and the wall cause great financial and human hardship, it is a barrier against what was once an unprotected region from which numerous terror attacks were planned and carried out...

Ouch. Hebron was multi-ethnic...yeah, all except...you know... for the JEWS, who were ethnically-cleansed through massacre and now inconvenience their neighbors through the security measures necessitated by the fact that those multi-ethnic neighbors would like to kill them. Simple solution: Stop trying to murder Jews. Then, no fences, no armed guards. Maybe if groups like JVP and the CPC would stop emboldening them (see Dennis Hale's piece for an explanation of how this works) some solutions would be a step or two closer.

Here is a search on all posts here that have mentioned the Cambridge Peace Commission. Oldest are at bottom.

1 Comment

Terrific treatment, Solomonia. One of my chief complaints about the piece in The Jewish Advocate was the headline. Considering the revelations contained in the coverup emails sent by Globe reporter Victoria Cheng to the Cambridge political pilgrims, the headline should have read:

"Secret Emails Reveal Deep Bias in Israel Coverage by The Boston Globe"


Marty Baron, the Globe's editor, has been stonewalling for weeks on the embarrassing information contained in these emails. I suspect he wants this scandal to go away and ignoring it will do the trick. Good luck.

Marty Federman is probably the most disingenuous "supporter" of Israel this town has ever seen. He reminds me of the abusive parent who daily lambastes his kid in order to "improve his character." Considering that his group has supported divestment, a bi-national state, The International Solidarity Movement and exchanges hugs and kisses with representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the fact that Marty, by dint of his perpetual performances in every local Unitarian and Quaker church, hectoring against Israel, I suppose that would make David Duke one of the nation's foremost supporters of African Americans (you see, by sending them back to Africa, he is actually helping them rediscover their roots!)

Anyone who is taken in by the word "Peace" in the Cambridge Peace Commission's title deserves to snuggle up to Marty and his comrades in his favorite pew at the UU Church (can he find a minyan there?). With "friends" like Federman and Eva Moseley (the "Holocaust schtick" lady), Israel doesn't need enemies.

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