Moreover, several of the pro-Palestinian films viewed that month were added to the Boulder Public Library’s permanent collection, and are currently available for loan. Acquisitions at the library have, for some time now, been heavily skewed against Israel. An examination of its online catalog will confirm that. Yet another pro-Palestinian program has already been scheduled there for November 1, 2004. And to promote that event, the library’s website, already quite hostile to Israel, gushes over with praise for the likes of Hanan Ashrawi. Nothing is said of Ashrawi’s justification for the torture and lynching of the two Israeli reservists who wandered into Ramallah in October of 2000. Not a word is mentioned of her steadfast refusal to make an unambiguous denunciation of Palestinian terrorism.
Clearly, we are witnessing a disturbing trend — one that raises distinct questions about professional ethics and accountability — at work in our public libraries. Please understand that one is not advocating censorship when one asks whether communities are entitled to fairness, balance, discretion and sensitivity from their public libraries. Are those not the very values that are supposed to underlie the library profession? And are they not especially important when ethnic and international political disputes of long duration are involved?
But balance and sensitivity have long gone missing in the precincts of the Israel-hating Left. In the meantime, all too many of your friendly neighborhood librarians are busily spreading their anti-Israel animus. Some more examples:
A pro-Palestinian film series was held at the Flint [Michigan] Public Library this past November. The ”good” news is that it was a trifle more restrained than the filmfest in Boulder — ”only” three pro-Palestinian films were shown (naturally, though, there was not a single pro-Israeli presentation).
There was something of a multi-media aspect to two Israel-bashing programs at the New Brunswick [New Jersey] Public Library in 2002. On June 29 of that year an anti-Israel film was shown. Four months later, the public was treated to an anti-Israel lecture, complete with accompanying slide show. The notorious International Solidarity Movement’s New Jersey offshoot, led by outspoken terrorism apologist Charlotte Kates, was heavily involved in those affairs. I know of no recent pro-Israel programs at that library.
Neither has there been any public rebuttal to the anti-Israel films shown in the auditorium of the Berkeley Public Library on October 30 and November 6 of last year. Not that those incidents are unique to Berkeley or its library system, which has a history of engaging in grandstanding for the Palestinian side. One memorable example: back in 1998, a display window at its main entrance was graced with an exhibition of drawings by Palestinian children. The works of art carried such inflammatory titles as: ”Three Israelis Deport a Palestinian Woman From the Homeland” and ”Tear Gas in My Eyes.”
On January 30, 1998, the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California quoted Jack Kessler of the Israel Action Network in Berkeley as follows: ”It’s an attempt to smear the Israelis…It’s doubly intolerable by being on public property and being sponsored by the library.
