A Library's Middle East

Joe: We set aside our usual dialog format and give the floor to Fern.

I “identify” as a woman, a liberal and also as a Jew. Writing this now, there is such a deep sadness about the events of the last week. But I believe there is also a deep sickness in the leftist, ”progressive” movement where Israel’s very existence is a provocation.

For over twenty years I wrote a column for Newsday, Long Island New York’s Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper. I used to fax my columns from the English department where I was teaching at Iowa State.

The columns are in folders in my basement now, yellowing with age.  I found one that I wrote about an event that happened in Ames, Iowa twenty years ago.  It could have been written today.

A Library’s Middle East

December 2, 2003

Librarians are some of my favorite people.  Smart, resourceful and brave.  Most people don’t think of librarians as brave, but they are.  They stand up to small minds that want to ban books.  They stand up to a government that would use the Patriot Act to trample civil rights. Some of my best friends are librarians.  All of which is why what I’m about to write saddens me so.

The public library in Ames, Iowa is one of the sponsors of a film festival which opened ironically on September 11.  The three-month series, “Palestine Unabridged” includes more than a dozen films, to show “the other side” of the Middle East conflict.  The side that is pro-Palestinian.

This is also the side – the politically correct view of many campus liberals – that views Israel not as the only democracy in the Middle East, but as the oppressor, the colonizer, responsible for the suffering of millions. 

Understandably, the small Jewish community here in Ames, Iowa was upset that our public library was a sponsor of what they considered anti-Israeli propaganda.

“Was it propaganda?” I asked my husband last week after we saw a film about the life of ordinary Palestinians – a young family with an adorable baby the age of our new granddaughter.  The film showed how the family had to live every day with the endless humiliation of checkpoints thwarting their every move.

My husband is not Jewish.  He is an Arab, born in Lebanon. He went to Catholic school for most of his life.  “Yes, the films were propaganda,” he said.  “But perhaps not for what was shown, but more for what was not shown.”

What was not shown was the necessity for the checkpoints.  Not shown, in any of the six films we saw, was even the mention of suicide bombers.  Not shown was any interview with Hamas or a description of it as a terrorist group.

For myself, a secular Jew who passionately believes in free speech, I am trying to think clearly about this.  And while I can’t presume to have answers for the tragically complicated problems of the Middle East, I do have an answer for my public library here in the Midwest.

I believe the library (which defended its decision to sponsor this film festival) made a mistake that has divided our town.  Instead of education and enlightenment, there has been dissension and pain.

The disquieting result of the library’s decision has to do with anti-Semitism.  In much of the Arab world, even children’s schoolbooks are rife with hatred of Jews.  In much of the world over, synagogues and Jewish centers are bombed. Journalist Daniel Pearl is killed, beheaded, because he is a Jew.  The prime minister of Malaysia gets a standing ovation when he says that Jews rule the world.  At Iowa State University, where my husband and I teach, poet Amiri Baraka, gets a standing ovation after he reads a poem implicating Israel in the 2001 terrorist attacks. 

And at my public library in Ames, Iowa, a festival of film after film depicts Palestinian suffering only as a result of Israeli policies.

I understand that one can criticize Israel and not be anti-Semitic.  American Jews do it all the time. But Israel is also a very tiny country, surrounded by millions of people, some of whom would like nothing more than to see the Jewish presence there obliterated.  Jews have seen this before. So it makes sense that we’re a little sensitive about this sort of thing.

One of the reviewers of “Palestine Unabridged” talked about the “delusional paranoia” of the Jewish people.  But being paranoid doesn’t mean that some people aren’t really after you. In too many places, it is uncomfortable – scary even – to define yourself as a Jew.  One of those places should not be the public library in a Midwestern college town.

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Iowa Writers’ Collaborative Columnists 

Laura Belin: Iowa Politics with Laura Belin, Windsor Heights

Doug Burns: The Iowa Mercury, Carroll

Dave Busiek: Dave Busiek on Media, Des Moines

Art Cullen: Art Cullen’s Notebook, Storm Lake

Suzanna de Baca Dispatches from the Heartland, Huxley

Debra Engle: A Whole New World, Madison County

Julie Gammack: Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck, Des Moines and Okoboji

Joe Geha: Fern and Joe, Ames

Jody Gifford: Benign Inspiration, West Des Moines

Nik Heftman, The Seven Times, Iowa and California

Beth Hoffman: In the Dirt, Lovilla

Dana James: New Black Iowa, Des Moines

Pat Kinney: View from Cedar Valley, Waterloo

Fern Kupfer: Fern and Joe, Ames

Robert Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture, Bussey

Tar Macias: Hola Iowa, Iowa

Kurt Meyer, Showing Up, St. Ansgar

Kyle Munson, Kyle Munson’s Main Street, Des Moines

Jane Nguyen, The Asian Iowan, West Des Moines

John Naughton: My Life, in Color, Des Moines

Chuck Offenburger: Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger, Jefferson and Des Moines

Barry Piatt: Piatt on Political Behind the Curtain, Washington, D.C.

Macy Spensley, The Creative Midwesterner, Davenport/Des Moines

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices, Kalona

Cheryl Tevis: Unfinished Business, Boone County

Ed Tibbetts: Along the Mississippi, Davenport

Teresa Zilk: Talking Good, Des Moines

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