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June 13, 2003/Sivan 13 5763, Vol. 55, No. 42
Anti-Israel seminar blocked
State Bar cancels 'politicized' lecture
BARRY COHEN
Editor
The executive committee of the State Bar of Arizona canceled a continuing legal education seminar on international law and violence in the Middle East less than a week before its scheduled June 12 date.
Critics of the seminar leveled charges that the content was anti-Zionist and lacked ideological balance. Advocates called the cancellation an act of censorship and claimed their academic freedoms had been curtailed.
And despite the cancellation, the organizers said they would hold the seminar as scheduled, but without official State Bar sanction.
The controversy involved plans by the World Peace Through Law Section to hold a continuing legal education seminar titled "Conflicts in the Middle East and the Relevance of Law" as one of many continuing legal education sessions during the State Bar of Arizona Annual Convention, June 11-14, at the Phoenician in Scottsdale.
Arizona lawyers must complete 15 hours of continuing legal education a year, said Paul Eckstein, lawyer at Brown & Bain and co-owner of Jewish News of Greater Phoenix. While educational opportunities exist year-round, the annual bar convention offers classes covering a variety of themes, he added.
This year's State Bar convention program year listed 40 such sessions, including classes on tax, trial practice, mental health and elder law and other practice areas.
The program listed scheduled speakers for the "Conflicts in the Middle East" session as Joe Abodeely, local lawyer; Professor Leslie Melissa Rose of Golden Gate University School of Law, San Francisco; and Professor Steven Zunes, associate professor of the department of politics, University of San Francisco.
Eckstein said he grew suspicious when he read the accompanying materials for the now-cancelled WPTL seminar.
"A great bulk of the materials are devoted to an attack on Israel and its supporters," he said.
Valley lawyer Jim Freedman agreed. Approximately 90 percent of the materials address human rights issues in Israel; none dealt with human rights violations in Iran, Iraq or Syria, Freedman said.
"It's simply an attack," he added.
Abodeely told Jewish News he contributed about 200 of the 253 pages of background materials, most of which address alleged human rights violations by the State of Israel.
The session likely was originally intended to be a global examination of the situation in the Middle East and how international law relates to Iran, Iraq and the Palestinians, said Eleanor Eisenberg, executive director of the Arizona Civil Liberties Union.
"It morphed into an emphasis on Israel and the Palestinians ... and was highly critical of Israel," she noted.
The background material "was in my view very anti-Israel," she said, and it claimed that "Israel was created through terrorism by European Jews."
Ernest Calderon, State Bar president, said a month ago he began hearing complaints that the seminar would not be balanced.
Then on May 27, one of the three seminar co-chairpeople, Emma Lehner, resigned.
"I no longer believe this seminar is taking a productive direction and I do not wish to be associated with it," she wrote in an e-mail addressed to Steven Doncaster, WPTL chairman, and obtained by Jewish News.
Eckstein suggested three weeks ago that the seminar be canceled, said Calderon. In response, Calderon proposed adding speakers to present a pro-Israel perspective.
Lawyers Farley Weiss and Tom Liddy agreed to do so, said Eckstein.
Calderon said he contacted Doncaster on June 6 and asked him to accommodate the pro-Jewish, pro-Israel side.
"His intent was not to discuss, but to offer an ultimatum," said Doncaster. Because the committee did not want the session to become a political debate, they turned down the request to add the additional speakers, he said.
Calderon said he then called a meeting of the seven-member Arizona State Bar Association Executive Committee on June 6. The committee voted unanimously to cancel the program.
"If you have the Bar Association name on (a session), you have to have a balanced presentation and let the audience decide," said Calderon. "I felt we were reasonable."
The State Bar board of governors voted 21-1 on June 11 to support Calderon and the executive committee's decision to cancel.
Abodeely said that in agreeing to participate in the session, he intended to present a pro-Palestinian perspective, a point of view often overlooked by mainstream media.
The Palestinians "are portrayed as terrorists with no sense of right or wrong," he said. "Basically, they are living in concentration camps, with sewage running down the streets with no freedom of movement. ... Likud and (Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon are heavy-handed and engaged in genocide against the Palestinian people."
Weiss said he considers Abodeely's views and the seminar's background ma-terials to be "anti-Israel" and that the session should have been cancelled at the very beginning.
"I have strong feelings about Joe Abodeely," said Bill Straus, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League. Straus said he listens to his talk radio show on KFNX, 1100 AM.
Any of his portrayals of Israel are "distorted and lopsided," Straus said.
Straus characterized Abodeely's views as "anti-Israel and anti-Zionist. ... The idea of Joe attempting to hijack a committee at the Bar Association is appalling."
Abodeely called the cancellation an act of censorship. He said a misconception exists that any criticism of Likud or Sharon is an attack on Israel and on the Jewish people. "This is no more true than criticism of George Bush makes you un-American," he noted.
Eckstein said the subject matter of continuing legal education seminars sponsored by the State Bar is not allowed to be political or ideological.
"It is not right ... to launch into an attack on Israel at a State Bar convention," he said, citing the legal precedent established in 1990 by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Keller vs. the State Bar of California (1990).
The court ruled that mandatory dues paid to a state bar association cannot be used to pay for educational sessions addressing politicized themes, said Eisenberg.
In order to practice in Arizona, lawyers are required to pay dues to the state bar association, she added.
The State Bar abides by the Keller decision, said Matt Silverman, director of communications of the Arizona State Bar. Mandatory dues are not used to "fund activities of a political or ideological nature," he said.
"The original program was not intended to be politicized," Zunes told Jewish News. He said he planned to lecture on aspects of international law, from Western Africa to Israel, to Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Calderon made it political with his decision to add two speakers who would be supporting the pro-occupation policies of the Sharon government," he said. "It was he who was politicizing the issue."
Calderon's insistence to add additional speakers is an infringement upon academic freedom, Zunes added.
Both Calderon and Sil-verman dismissed charges they were restricting academic freedom.
"We're not censoring any-body. All we're saying was to include more than one opinion," Calderon said.
"The point is not to limit speech, but to broaden speech" by including viewpoints that provide a sense of balance, said Silverman.
Abodeely said that the controversial session would be held as scheduled on June 12 and that section leaders planned to use their own money to rent a room at the Phoenician. Speakers were expected to include Abodeely and Rose. Zunes canceled to attend his mother's funeral.
Contact the writer at barry_cohen@jewishaz.com.
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