Safranim shalom: The following letter was sent to me by a Senior Policy Advisor of IFLA in reply to my letter to IFLA officials. I also will have a meeting with one of IFLA's officials at the U of Ill in Champaign.
All the best, David Elazar Rishon LeZion Israel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thank you for your message of the 7th March. The attack at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva library was reported on IFLA's FAIFE-L mailing list just hours after it happened (http://infoserv.inist.fr/wwsympa.fcgi/arc/faife-l/2008-03/msg00052.html), bringing the incident to the attention of list subscribers. Subscribers were also informed of the destruction of the YMCA library in Gaza in February (http://infoserv.inist.fr/wwsympa.fcgi/arc/faife-l/2008-02/msg00061.html) as soon as information was made available. FAIFE members do their best to post information to this list on developments in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories so that the international library community is kept up to date. Regarding your remarks about the disruption of library services in Sderot as a result of rockets launched from Gaza, this situation was not communicated to us by the Israeli library community during our visits in 2007. We would of course welcome any information on the disruption of libraries in Sderot. The forthcoming conference in Ramallah is an opportunity for our colleagues in the Palestinian library community to come to together to discuss the role libraries can play in defending human rights. It is an international conference that will let local librarians hear opinions and positions from outside of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and as such is a great opportunity for Palestinian librarians to see how colleagues elsewhere incorporate a respect for human rights into their work. As I mentioned to you during our email exchange prior to our visit in April 2007, IFLAs involvement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is not for the purpose of propaganda or of bashing Israel. Our 2007 report (http://www.ifla.org/faife/faife/FAIFE-Mission-report-Aug2007.pdf), received positively by both Israeli and Palestinian librarians, makes this clear. Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: Hasafran @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html History: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/history.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
