This is a guest post by Hannah Mermelstein, a librarian at Saint Ann’s School in
Brooklyn. In the summer of 2013, she led the Librarians and Archivists to
Palestine delegation.
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Last summer I traveled to Palestine with a group of sixteen
librarians and archivists in order to connect with Palestinian colleagues in
libraries, archives, and related projects and institutions and to gain mutual
benefit through information exchange and skill-sharing. For the past ten years,
I have been working in Palestine in various capacities, including with many
delegations, but this was the first time I was fortunate enough to be able to
merge my two worlds – Palestine and librarianship. What I’d like to share with
you is some of what I learned from Palestinian school librarians and youth
services librarians in particular, both in the West Bank and inside Israel.
Near Ramallah, in the central West Bank, we spoke with staff
from Al Bireh Public Library and from the Tamer Institute about the obstacles
to obtaining quality children’s literature in Arabic. Much of the best Arabic
kids’ literature these days is published in Beirut, and the Israeli government
(which controls all borders of the West Bank) does not let books in from Lebanon.
Even when libraries try to obtain Arabic-language books through third parties, the
books are often held up in Customs for months. Whether they’re ultimately
allowed in or not seems somewhat arbitrary, and the libraries are required to
pay for the costs of holding them in Customs. A Swedish librarian who was on
our delegation commented that at the Madaa Silwan Creative Center in Jerusalem,
she saw more books translated from Swedish into Arabic than originally written
in Arabic, and she has more books originally written in Arabic in her library
in Stockholm than they do at the center! The Tamer Institute for Community
Education has tried to mitigate the negative effects of these Israeli
restrictions by co-publishing a few titles with publishers in Beirut, and by
publishing a few of their own as well, but their efforts are not adequate to
meet the needs of the children they’re serving.
In Haifa, the situation is even more difficult. Although
supposedly a “mixed city” of Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel, Haifa
has 22 public library branches that primarily serve the Jewish community, and
only one that serves the Palestinian community. Even this one branch is
privately funded by an NGO, rather than by the Israeli government. We spoke to
a number of Palestinian school and public librarians in Haifa who, because of
difficulty traveling between Israel and the West Bank, are largely unable to
supplement their collections with books put out by the Tamer Institute.
Instead, most of their Arabic language books are low-quality translations of
Hebrew books, effectively denying Palestinian citizens of Israel their literary
heritage. This must be seen in its larger context, librarians told us, in which
the Israeli government has for decades tried to erase Palestinian identity by
calling Palestinians inside Israel “Israeli Arabs” or “Arab Israelis.” So
whereas the availability of quality Arabic children’s literature could be a
powerful way to preserve Palestinian identity and culture, the lack of
availability further demoralizes the community.
I’ve shared these stories with a few people upon return from
Palestine, and they’ve been moved to try to organize book deliveries to
Palestine. Our delegation has had similar thoughts, but we must be careful how
we approach this. Librarians in Palestine made it clear to us that they are not
looking for a charity model. Not only can charity easily be accompanied by a
colonialist attitude, but it simply won’t work. Large shipments of books would
be held up at Customs for months, and smaller deliveries would do more to make
us feel good about ourselves than make any significant dent in a system
designed to prevent such a project. Palestinian libraries in the West Bank and
inside Israel face a political problem that is at the core of any economic or
humanitarian problems we might more easily address. But this should not stall
our work. We are beginning conversations about effective follow-up, and we hope
others will join us in these efforts. In the meantime, we can support some of
the amazing organizations that are doing such important work on the ground.
Here are a few:
The Tamer Institute for
Community Education – based in Ramallah with partners throughout the West
Bank and Gaza Strip
Lajee Center in Aida
refugee camp, Bethlehem – youth center that has, among other things, conducted
workshops with children in which they have written and illustrated their own
children’s books
Madaa Silwan Creative
Center in Jerusalem – many amazing programs, including a library. They even
published their own Palestinian cookbook!
To keep in touch with the delegation:
Our
website – Here you can read more and see the statement we put out shortly
after we returned.
Email lapannounce-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
to join our (very!) low-volume email list.
AND, we’re having a delegation reportback at
Bluestockings bookstore at 7 pm on Thursday, October 24. Come on by!
Looking forward to any questions or comments you have. All
questions welcome!
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At Al Bireh Public Library, a youth services librarian from
Providence, RI exchanges ideas with Tamer Institute staff.
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| Winner of a book contest by Tamer Institute |
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| Wall of the children's section of Nablus Public Library |
A few librarians from another New York school have objected to parts of this post. I will address here a few of the points they made (and they can feel free to publicly post their original response here, but I didn't want to do so without their permission).
ReplyDeleteA couple of their points had to do with language, so let me clarify. They pointed out that Palestine is not a "country." That is, of course, debatable -- it's been recognized as a country in some international venues and not others -- but that's not the point. I am not at heart a nationalist and our delegation was not to a country but to a place. When I say "Palestine," I mean historic Palestine, which includes modern-day Israel, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), and the Gaza Strip. We did not visit the Gaza Strip (it's closed off completely from the Israeli side and difficult to access from the Egyptian side as well), but we went to both the West Bank and Israel, meeting with Palestinians (and a few Israelis) in both areas.
Another point about language: The librarians who objected to my post stated that "Arab Israeli" and "Israeli Arab" are not pejorative terms. I was not trying to suggest that they were. What I said above is that they are terms used to strip Palestinian citizens of Israel of their Palestinian identity. Israel has engaged in many practices to divide the Palestinian people, from physical walls and barriers to different color ID cards with different privileges to language like "Arab Israeli" instead of "Palestinian."
There was also a question about the public libraries of Haifa, and a claim that they are all accessible to all residents of the city. It's not about whether there's a "No Arabs" sign on the door (which there is not), but what we heard over and over again was that people did not feel like their community was being served by the publicly funded libraries.
The criticism of my piece also called the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement "discriminatory." I am not exactly sure what they mean by this and welcome further questions about BDS. The movement has very clear guidelines about boycotting Israeli goods and certain cultural institutions and projects, similar to (though not exactly the same as) the boycott against South African apartheid. It only "discriminates" against injustice. For more on BDS: http://www.bdsmovement.net/
This is getting long, so I'll stop there. I just want to reiterate that my original post was a brief report on some of what we heard from school and public librarians in Palestine. This represents their reality, and I think it is important for more people to hear these perspectives and experiences.
Dear Members of HVLA
ReplyDeleteWe would like to add our names in wholehearted support of Noreen Wachs and her colleagues, as well as others, in response to the posting by Hannah Mermelstein. Mermelstein's stance against the State of Israel is well documented. Among other things, we strongly object to the characterization of the State of Israel as seeking to deny young Arab children their literary heritage. While we encourage HVLA to publish a wide variety of viewpoints, we agree completely that our members should be careful to donate only to organizations whose missions they have researched and whose agendas they support. We encourage further discussion.
Stephanie Entin-Wald
EC/LS Librarian
Robin Skolnik
MS Librarian
Abraham Joshua Heschel School