TUESDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2002 -- Here’s the news out of Brattle Street. A group critical of Israel’s policies, Jewish Women for Justice in Israel/Palestine, has organized a week-long leafleting campaign in front of Wordsworth Bookstore, one of the last prominent independent bookstores in Cambridge. Their cause: the demonstrators have targeted the owner of Wordsworth, Hillel Stavis, whom they criticize for withdrawing his financial support from National Public Radio -- and one of it’s local affiliates, WBUR -- due to what he maintains is its mostly critical coverage of Israel. Boston Globe media writer Mark Jurkowitz described the effort Tuesday as "a rare sign of an organized backlash in a year when supporters of Israel have pressured several media outlets that they view as tilted against the Jewish state."

This bit of agitprop seems aimed at hurting Stavis, who is a prominent supporter of Israel, and the local nonprofit group CAMERA, whose mission, according to its Web site, is to "promot[e] accurate and balanced coverage of Israel." Says Eleanor Roffman, one of the organizers of the effort: "The purpose of this is to alert people to the fact that Hillel Stavis, who is the owner of Wordsworth, and a member of CAMERA, which definitely has a particular political bent, has organized between eight and 10 organizations which have supported NPR and have withdrawn it."

I’ll be honest. I support Israel and have worked with CAMERA on stories in the past. Even if Stavis has helped to encourage other local businesses to withdraw their support from National Public Radio and WBUR -- an allegation Stavis denies -- my take is, "So what?" I agree with Stavis when he says: "They believe we have to be punished because we don’t contribute to their favored organizations." As Stavis and his supporters, point out, donations to NPR are voluntary. The demonstrators, they point out, have not targeted other businesses that don’t give money to NPR. Roffman, for her part, could not provide any evidence that Stavis was the ringleader behind the effort.

Some might argue that Stavis and his critics are essentially doing the same thing: that is, using economic pressure to get their point across. While there are superficial similarities between the two efforts, they are fundamentally different. Stavis withdrew his financial support for WBUR in response to coverage he takes issue with -- the viewpoint offered by the media purveyor. Roffman and company are leafleting in front of a bookstore -- careful, they say, not to block the entrance -- because of the political activity of the owner. They make no allegation that Stavis fails to carry books critical of Israel. Wordsworth, in fact, offers for sale the works of many authors who can be considered critical of Israel, including Edward Said and Noam Chomsky. In Stavis’s business capacity, then, he allows a diversity of viewpoints. In his individual capacity, his charitable giving, he wants NPR to include more voices that are supportive of Israel -- a form of free speech. In my book, the protesters -- while they certainly have the legal right to leaflet in front of his store -- are the greater offenders regarding free speech.

Concludes Robert Leikind, the executive director of the Anti-Defamation League’s New England office, regarding the protesters. They "are trying to attack a person’s livelihood because they disagree with a political position that that person has."

Listen, I won’t get too histrionic about this. My position is the answer to free speech battles is not less speech, but more speech. Let the critics march. I will say this, however. Stavis, who believes that the NPR Israel coverage is too one-sided, manages to put books by authors with which he disagrees on his shelves. Maybe the way to solve this dispute is for NPR to provide more wide-ranging voices on the Middle East question.