American Librarians Revoke Condemnation of Israeli Censorship

By Andrea W. Lorenz

Israel's censorship policies are well known, but this year the largest librarian's association in the world decided to ignore the evidence in its own files. A year earlier, in July 1992, the 56,000-member American Library Association had passed a resolution calling upon "the government of Israel to end all censorship and human rights violations in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and in Israel itself."

The resolution stated that Israel's annual $4.5 billion in American aid helps offset costs of the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories and makes the U.S a party to Israel's human rights violations and censorship practices. This June, however, when confronted by organized opposition from pro-Israel members, the association revoked its own resolution.

In the past, the American Library Association also has criticized the Soviet Union, South Africa, the People's Republic of China, and Iran for their human rights and censorship policies. The revoking of such a resolution is unprecedented.

Israeli censorship practices are well documented. The 1993 U.S. State Department Human Rights Report, the Paris based Reporters sans Frontieres and the London-based Article 19 Center on Censorship describe routine government expurgation of articles and editorials from the press in Israel; the harassment, torture, and deportation of Palestinian journalists; and the exclusion of journalists from arbitrarily defined and constantly shifting "military areas" in the occupied territories.

Another form of Israeli censorship, book banning, is documented by Palestinian American writer Muhammad Hallaj in an article entitled "Palestine: The Suppression of An Idea." Dr. Hallaj reports that even after books approved by United Nations officials for use in UNESCO/UNRWA schools for Palestinian refugees are purged of offensive references to Israel, Israeli censors will not allow UNESCO teachers to use them. UNESCO reported that in the 1978-79 academic year, Israeli censors confiscated eight textbooks intended for use in West Bank primary schools and an additional four texts intended for secondary schools. Nine books out of 27 approved by the United Nations for use in Gaza primary schools were banned by Israeli censors.

Reporting on the situation in the 1980s, a UNESCO team member wrote, "The censors manage to reject works of fundamental importance to Arab cultural heritage. One sentence is sometimes enough to condemn out of hand a book of obvious importance. " In addition to banning the works of Arab poets of the early 20th century, Israeli censors banned Alan Moorehead's The White Nile and The Blue Nile, biographies of Abraham Lincoln and Alexander the Great, and the plays of Sophocles.

"Israeli occupation authorities object to the very concept of Palestine."

Palestinian-American Noha Ismail, a librarian in Hennepin County, Minnesota, wrote in a 1991 article entitled "Israeli Censorship in the Occupied Territories" that Palestinian children "have literally been subjected to a mental and intellectual siege for over 23 years." The Israeli policy, however, is not just to deny Palestinians access to great works of literature, according to Professor Hallaj. "What the Israeli occupation authorities object to, in fact, is the very concept of Palestine and, therefore, any form of expression of such a concept is forbidden. " Hallaj reports an Israeli military governor told a Palestinian painter, "If you paint a flower with colors of white, green, black or red [Palestinian flag colors] on the petals, we'll confiscate it."

The ALA was alerted to Israeli censorship practices 10 years ago when David Williams of the Chicago Public Library wrote to the association in December 1983 enclosing documentation. Correctly predicting a protracted debate over the issue, he wrote, "I fear that ALA will not be willing to confront this issue, given the hysteria that arises in the United States whenever anyone sharply criticizes our ally and 'only democracy in the Middle East' I . A have brought [Israeli censorship] to your attention in at least the faint hope that ALA could be prevailed upon to study the matter and make some pronouncement (e.g. a resolution?)."

Williams had become interested in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in college when he began reading books that contradicted many of the prevailing myths that painted a rosy picture of Zionism while ignoring the darker side of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

ADL Objects

In 1989, Williams compiled a bibliography on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict for the Social Sciences and History Division of the Chicago Public Library. Although his bibliography listed books by Israeli Prime Ministers Golda Meir and Menachem Begin, the fact that it also included writers critical of Israel put Williams on a collision course with B'nai B'rith's Anti Defamation League (ADL).

A struggle ensued between the ADL and Chief Librarian Samuel Morrison of the Chicago Public Library, who had approved Williams' bibliography. Morrison tried to appease the ADL by asking Williams to add pro-Zionist authors to the bibliography, which he did. The ADL persisted, however, in calling the bibliography biased and asking for its removal.

In January 1990, Chicago Sun Times columnist Dennis Byrne wrote about the ADL's pressure tactics. Byrne's exposé brought a flood of letters to the library in support of Williams' bibliography. Caught in the public spotlight, the ADL retreated, temporarily.

ADL members had been given the chance to present their views to the librarians at previous ALA conferences, but each time they had declined. During 1991 and 1992 ALA conferences, Williams and other members of the ALA's Task Force on Israeli Censorship organized several roundtable discussions on the subject. At two different sessions Israeli librarian Josepha Pick and Israeli journalist Michal Schwartz described the censorship practices of their government.

This year, however, it became clear that the ADL and other pro-Israel organizations were mobilizing Jewish ALA members across the country to lobby colleagues to revoke the resolution. In January, President Andrea Levin of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), an organization that buys advertising space to place pro-Israel editorial copy in U.S. publications, wrote that the American Library Association had a "hostile fixation with Israel."

Her comment appeared in Jewish weekly newspapers as did an anonymous letter alerting "Jewish taxpayers" that a debate on Israeli censorship would take place at the upcoming librarians' conference. "No other foreign government is singled out on the conference program for criticism," the author wrote. It was signed variously, in different weeklies, by "a Jewish taxpayer" or "a librarian whose job would be jeopardized by identification."

Emotions on the pro-Israel side had reached a fever pitch by the time the ALA's Jewish Librarians' Guild (JLG) met in New Orleans on June 27, the day before ALA members were to assemble for their annual convention in the same city. Representatives of Hadassah (a major U.S. Zionist women's group), CAMERA, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Jewish Federation had flown in to lend their support.

During the JLG meeting, a librarian who had worked in Israel for six months admitted that Israel practiced censorship. However, her statement was ignored by the majority of members. Said one of them of the ALA's 1992 action, "This resolution is discriminatory. What the hell kind of a rotten organization is this?"

The next day, reacting to months of pro-Israel letters and telephone calls, the ALA's 175-member leadership council decided to pre-empt discussion of the subject within the larger forum of the membership meeting by revoking the resolution.

Council member Robert Doyle said that when council members arrived for their June 28 meeting, it appeared that most had decided that the Israel resolution was causing the ALA more trouble than it was worth. Toward the beginning of the meeting, a member asked the association's parliamentarian whether a resolution could be rescinded. The parliamentarian responded that it was not possible to rescind a resolution that had already been passed, but that a resolution could be revoked.

The same member then moved that the council revoke the resolution. "No reasons were stated for the revocation, " Doyle said, and little or no discussion ensued before a majority of council members voted in favor of revoking the resolution.

The issue was not yet dead, however. It would take a vote by three-fourths of the librarians attending the membership meeting that evening to ratify the revocation.

By 8 p.m. the Hilton Hotel's Grand Ballroom was packed. Members were handed information by partisans of both sides as they entered. Much of the debate that followed revolved around the question of whether or not the ALA was the appropriate forum to debate other countries' censorship policies. This was clearly a diversionary tactic by the pro-Israel members since the ALA has been censuring other countries for censorship since 1974.

One by one, pro-Israel members approached the microphone. "A good many of us are tired of hearing about Israel," said one. "I don't think the countries of the Middle East are waiting with bated breath to hear what the ALA has to say," said another. "Who are we, librarians, to pass judgment on the policies of any foreign government if we have not lived there? " asked a third.

Other speakers extolled Israel's virtues in areas other than censorship. "Health care is more widespread in Israel than in other countries," said Jewish Librarians' Guild co-chair Martin Goldberg. "There is a high rate of literacy." At times the debate stooped to the vitriolic. ALA member Kay Everett called for "disbandment" of the Task Force on Israeli Censorship which she accused of embarassing the ALA "nationally and internationally."

There also were Jewish librarians who opposed revoking the condemnation of Israel. Among them were two of the resolution's original authors, Minnesota librarian Sanford Berman and New York librarian Mark Rosenzweig. In addition, Middle East Labor Bulletin editor Jeffrey Blankfort, who also is Jewish, further documented Israeli censorship practices at the panel discussion entitled "Israeli Censorship: There and Here."

Berman, a co-founder of the Jewish Librarians Caucus and a member of the ALA's Human Rights Task Force, is a member of New Jewish Agenda and Veterans for Peace. "Becoming involved in the issue has been inescapable because of my involvement in human rights and social justice issues," he told the Washington Report. "Once you have been exposed to the information about Israel's actions you are led to certain inexorable conclusions."

An article Berman distributed to participants in the New Orleans meeting elaborated on those conclusions. "As an American Jew, I'd like to express solidarity with everyone working for peace and justice in the Middle East," he wrote, "which to me means a free and independent Palestine thriving alongside a free and independent Israel."

During the membership meeting, Berman spoke eloquently in favor of reaffirming the 1992 resolution. He condemned the "travesty " of democratic procedures that had taken place when the leadership council voted to revoke a resolution that had been passed by the association's membership. "These tactics have turned democracy upside down," he charged.

Several librarians supported revoking the resolution on grounds that it unfairly singled out Israel. In doing so, they ignored a new resolution already proposed by Berman during the same meeting condemning censorship policies in Egypt.

Also apparently ignored by the approximately 1,500 librarians attending the session was council member Stephen Stillwell's argument that, "No one has challenged the truthfulness of the charges. No one has challenged the accuracy of the Article 19 documentation. "

In the end, it appeared that the majority of the librarians did not much care one way or the other about the resolution. When they heard the chorus of angry voices denouncing it as "unfair ... .. seditious ... .. inflammatory, " and "embarrassing," however, they decided to vote with their pro-Israel colleagues.

"A tremendous amount of pressure was put on individual council members by the ADL, " Berman said afterward. He added that never in the 20 years he has been associated with the ALA had anyone questioned whether it was appropriate for librarians to discuss the issue of censorship. Nor, he said, had he ever seen anything "to equal the ferocity of this debate."

In an interview after the conference, ALA Executive Director Peggy Sullivan, a member of ALA for 40 years and the author of a history of the association, defended the ALA while disassociating herself personally from its action. "Last year and this year there were people who felt maybe we have been too soft on Israel, " she said. "No one who has spoken on behalf of Israel has said there is no censorship in Israel ... The majority of ALA members wanted to arrive at a reasonable, dignified settlement of the issue-not to exonerate Israel, but to move on."

Pressed for her own opinion, however, she said, "Personally, yes, I do feel ALA should take a position on censorship in another country."

An Underlying Value

Council member Stephen Stillwell expressed his disappointment at the ALA's action. "Opposition to censorship is an underlying value of the ALA," he said. "I think it's a good idea for our association to go on record whenever it can, and as often as it can, about these issues. The more times the ALA says we are against censorship and the more ways we say it, the more credibility the ALA has."

The motivation for the expensive battle by national Jewish organizations against the 1992 ALA resolution was laid out clearly by ADL national director Abraham Foxman. In a 1993 letter to ALA Director Sullivan he wrote, "The longer these resolutions remain on the books as ALA policy, the more legitimacy they gain among librarians and educators.'"

The ALA's debate over Israeli censorship received so much media attention that it is doubtful that any librarian who followed it would maintain that Israel does not practice censorship. It is even more doubtful that any librarian, if asked by friends, family or colleagues, would boast that "in New Orleans in 1993, I cast my vote in opposition to human rights and in support of censorship." But, when the votes were counted, that's what a majority of those who took the time to attend the debate had done.

Andrea W. Lorenz is the features editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

Notes:

¹On two different visits to the U.S., prize-winning Palestinian journalist Taber Shriteh and Israeli peace activist and magazine editor Roni Ben-Efrat in meetings with U.S. peace groups and with the Washington Report, both provided numerous examples of Israeli harassment and torture they and others had experienced.

²The Link, Vol. 15, No. 1.

³ AItemative Library Literature, 1990/1991.

⁴Robert 1. Friedman's exposé of the ADL's three decade policy of spying on U.S. citizens and attempts at censorship entitled "The Jewish Thought Police" in the Village Voice, July 27, 1993.

⁵Amy J. Kramer, "Jewish Librarians Upset With Chicagoan's anti-Israel Efforts," Chicago Jewish Star, June 11, 1993.