Vancouver Library Under Fire for Hosting Controversial Author Called Anti-Semitic

Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 02/15/2008

• Writer compares Israelis to Nazis
• Book owned by virtually no libraries
• Would library give a platform to “Mohammed cartoons”?

Depending on whom you ask, the Vancouver Public Library (VPL), BC, either is taking freedom expression seriously by welcoming a harsh critic of Israel or giving an undeserved platform to an author who calls Israel's actions "a war crime on a par with the Nazi persecution of Jews." On February 25, VPL’s Central Library will hold an event in conjunction with Freedom to Read week, hosting local journalist and commentator Greg Felton, author of The Host and the Parasite: How Israel's Fifth Column Consumed America (Dandelion, 2007). The book was not reviewed by any mainstream media and is held, according to WorldCat, by only five libraries in the United States and none in Canada, though VPL has five on order.

The controversy was fueled by a February 12 op-ed in the Vancouver Sun by local author Terry Glavin , headlined "Does our library know there's another word for anti-Semitism?" Calling Felton "an apologist for the book-banning, journalist-jailing Iranian theocracy," Glavin asked, "What is the right word for Felton's thesis, which is that a Zionist 'junta' was at work on Sept. 11, 2001, and that al-Qaida is a mere concoction in a secret plan to subvert the American Constitution, demonize Muslims and commit mass murder?"

The library’s Janice Douglas had told Glavin that Felton approached the library, which deemed his work "a book that people might not feel free to read." City Librarian Paul Whitney responded to the op-ed in a letter to the Sun, noting that the library did not endorse Felton’s position: "In reviewing Felton's request to read at the library, it appeared to us that his book was provocative but not hateful and we have found no information indicating the book is subject to any legal action… The role of the public library, however, is to provide a forum for an open and public exchange of contradictory views and to make materials available that represent a wide range of views, including those that may be considered unconventional, unpopular or unacceptable."

Glavin, in response on his blog, suggested that Whitney would now have to support a library event concerning the "[Prophet] Mohammed cartoons" controversy (subject of a recent Alberta Human Rights Commission complaint, just withdrawn, against a magazine that published them) or "another about the bloodcurdling tally of racism and genocide in Islamic states." Glavin also said that library staffers told him that they had only read an excerpt of Felton’s book.

Library spokeswoman Jean Kavanagh explained to LJ that Douglas spoke with Glavin "more than a week before the op-ed ran." In the interim, however, she said "several staff members had read the book." Felton's book was acquired because he is a local author, she said; VPL has an earlier book by him in its collection.

Kavanagh said the event will be introduced by a member of the British Columbia Library Association Intellectual Freedom Committee. "We have met and spoken with people and organizations requesting the opportunity to present a different perspective and have told them we are happy to schedule additional programming," she said.

Still, some locals criticized the library. In a letter to the Sun February 14, local resident Donald Davis called Whitney "disingenuous," suggesting that "he would never sanction the use of the library as a forum for an author advocating an end to Chinese, Sikh, and Jamaican immigration, a total ban on abortion or on women parliamentarians, or the elimination of aboriginal reserves and entitlements," not to mention posters with the Mohammed cartoons.