In a 1993 Jewish Press article, Andrea Levin, director of the aforementioned CAMERA, described the Williams compilation as follows: ”An appallingly one-sided inventory of pro-Arab, pro-Palestinian books and periodicals, the bibliography mocks the responsibility of librarians to offer wide-ranging and complete information.”
Moreover, the ALA gave Williams plenty of space to rant against the Jewish state in the Fall 1990, Winter 1991, Spring 1991, and Summer 1991 issues of International Leads, one of its official publications. To add to the diatribes against Israel, the Israel-bashing venom of yet another librarian, Zoia Horn, were published in a prominently headlined and indexed article written for the January 1992 issue of American Libraries, the main ALA journal.
And I have just confirmed that several Jewish attendees at the June 2002 ALA Convention, held in Atlanta, were forcibly ejected by security guards under the pretext that they were ”outsiders” — despite the fact that past ALA conventions had welcomed interested non-members as guests, including, as I reported in my first article, a PFLP terrorist.
The actual ”crime” of the expelled Jewish observers was that they were peacefully distributing literature with the objective of heading off yet another ALA Council condemnation of the Jewish State.
A plethora of anti-Israel propaganda is considered fine for ALA publications and for distribution at American Library Association conventions. Pro-Israel material, on the other hand, is apparently verboten.
As if all this were not troubling enough, there is every indication that the ALA has even more anti-Israel mischief in mind.
On June 25, just days after both the ALA-SRRT and ALA Council passed their most recent vitriolic, anti-Israel resolutions, SRRT member Al Kagan, a longtime supporter of the ALA’s anti-Israel campaigns, wrote about the Council’s condemnation in Library Juice. Concerned that the condemnation was ”weak,” he asserted that ”…we may need to come back with a further resolution for the next meeting.”
Kagan, a professor of library administration at the Urbana campus of the University of Illinois, has been active in the movement to get that institution to divest from investing funds in the Israel, as well as with firms that do business with the Jewish state. He has also promoted the anti-Israel propaganda campaign of University of Illinois graduate Ahmed Bensouda, who had been studying there on a student visa. Last spring, Federal authorities arrested Bensouda as a possible threat to the security of the United States. Bensouda was released on bail several weeks later, pending further government investigation.
Like a spreading virus, SRRTs are being organized in local library groups. Library associations in Oregon, New York, and the State of Washington now have them, for example. Anyone concerned about the survival of Israel has real cause for concern.
Finally, it may be helpful to review some of what I have recently written, plus several new revelations:
* Did both the SRRT and the ALA Council pass resolutions in support of Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) terrorist-murderer Omar al-Safi in 1992 and refer to him as ”our colleague”? The answer is yes.
* Did both the SRRT and the ALA Council condemn Israel in 1992 for the ”deportation of Omar al-Safi,” despite the fact that he was never deported? The answer is yes.
* Were the above resolutions ever rescinded? The answer is no.
* Does the DFLP target children for murder? The answer is yes. The DFLP committed the infamous Ma’alot massacre of Israeli schoolchildren and just recently took ”credit” for the murder of a Jewish child.
* Was Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist Khader Hamide an invited guest speaker at an ALA Israel-bashing session in 1992? (The PFLP has a long history of hijacking commercial jetliners and committing massacres in airports, among its many other atrocities.) The answer is yes.
