Dear Safranim,
I belong to a library organization called the Hudson Valley Library Association (HVLA). Most of the Independent schools in the New York City area belong to this organization. They recently send out this blog post on their website about libraries in Palestine by Hannah Mermelstein, a librarian in the St. Anne's school in Brooklyn. I was upset about this post which I felt was very biased against Israel. I would be very interested in hearing from other safranim about the accuracy of the facts and the political bias expressed in the article. Thank you. Noreen Wachs Librarian Ramaz Middle School 114 East 85 Street New York, NY 10028 Librarians and Archivists to Palestine Below this note 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 <http://librarians2palestine.wordpress.com/> delegation. 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 <http://www.tamerinst.org/> - based in Ramallah with partners throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip Lajee Center <http://www.lajee.org/> 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 <http://www.madaasilwan.org/> in Jerusalem - many amazing programs, including a library. They even published their own Palestinian cookbook! To keep in touch with the delegation: Our website <http://librarians2palestine.wordpress.com/> - Here you can read more and see the statement we put out shortly after we returned. Like us on Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/Librarians2Palestine> . Follow us on Twitter <https://twitter.com/Librarians2Pal> . Email [email protected] to join our (very!) low-volume email list.
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