It would seem bizarre that a group calling itself the “Western New York Peace Center” would actually be inciting hatred. But for those of us who have seen the rise of virulent anti-Israeli campaigning on campuses, it’s no longer hard to believe. What has most troubled our SPME members in Buffalo is that the local organization that goes by the “Peace Center” name uses the guise of peace to teach intolerance to students, on campus. A highlight was the Peace Center’s co-sponsorship of a speech at the University at Buffalo by Norman Finkelstein, who used the stage to share his view that Israelis want to turn themselves into an Aryan race and that the Jewish name “Ari” stands for “Aryan,” along with other similarly informed observations.
After careful study of the Peace Center’s record of sponsoring events in the Buffalo area, we issued a four page statement on January 31, 2007, and distributed it widely. Twenty of our members signed, representing Erie Community College, SUNY College at Buffalo, SUNY College at Brockport, and my own institution, the University at Buffalo, which is also part of SUNY. After documenting the Center’s grossly distorted statement about events in Jenin and its record of sponsoring virulent speakers, our statement concluded that the organization’s actions have belied its ostensive commitment to peace. Nonetheless, since peace has to be pursued in dialog with adversaries, we offered to be open to conversation with the Peace Center, though we conditioned our offer on the Peace Center’s willingness to publicly apologize for at least one event, its co-sponsorship for Finkelstein.
The Buffalo Jewish Review printed our statement in its entirety over two issues. According to the editor, Mrs. Rita Weiss, it is the longest article ever to appear in the paper, which has been published since the early 20th century. The statement was also distributed around the world by the NGO Monitor, recognizing the Western New York Peace Center as another politicized nongovernmental organization that capitalizes on public good will-traditionally extended to nonprofit organizations claiming a humanitarian cause like peace-to pursue a partisan and inflammatory agenda against Israel. Locally, our case was briefly covered on WBFO, the local National Public Radio affiliate. The director of the Peace Center defended its sponsorships simply as cases of upholding free speech and providing an additional perspective.
Let me conclude by reflecting on this fallback to the free-speech defense. It’s a poor retort, for several reasons. Local anti-Israel activists are not civil libertarians-they do not go out of their way to defend speech coming from those they disagree with. Nor, for that matter, are the Israel-haters’ speech rights threatened; on campuses and political rallies around the country, virulent anti-Zionism has center stage. What is more, support for free speech is no reason to invite hateful speech. Free speech is a political right, not a campus or institutional obligation. The claim that Israelis want to become Aryans is not a “perspective” that illuminate understanding, but rather a slander, lie, or stupidity that obtrudes on perspective. It is for this very reason that no faculty member is obligated to invite pederasts to speak about childhood safety or the KKK to speak about racism: non-invitation in such cases upholds the very meaning of civilized discourse, which must progress by successively examining moral claims and excluding demonstrable lies. It’s revealing that a supposed peace organization, when confronted with evidence that pierces its humanitarian pretense, would resort to the free-speech defense. That it is unable to confront criticism against its claims, and instead merely defends its right to make them, reveals the vacuity of its position.
Ernest Sternberg chairs the Buffalo Chapter of SPME. He is professor of urban and regional planning at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York
