The West Dumbartonshire Question

On the 1st of the month I posted about the storm concerning West Dumbartonshire Libraries not banning Israeli books. It is a manufactured storm. The situation has got more laughable with the front page of the Jewish Chronicle running a front cover saying "Israeli books banned... but look what I found" with one Scottish Friend of Israel member posing with copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf. The implication being that those nasty anti-Semites at the library won't let their readers near the latest Amos Oz, but there's plenty ugly stuff out on their shelves. Apart from no Israeli writers have been banned, and most significant Israeli writers are still on their shelves, these books were not "found", they were specifically ordered by that Scottish Friend of Israel and the library had to buy the books in. His pose reminds me of the Daily Mail - "Ban this disgusting filth - see pages 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9". Staff at West Dumbartonshire Libraries might be well advised to sit down with a cup of coffee and a Kafka novel to try to understand this. And Mr Vallance, if you want to read Israeli novelists, why not just borrow them from your library and stop wasting public money by ordering Nazi books?
Of course, before Mr Vallance "found" the offending books, West Dumbartonshire Libraries did not stock them. They do now. Well done that man.

Banks of the Clyde

On 11th May, on this blog, I discussed boycotts, based round a university boycotting Tony Kushner because of his views on Israel. Now there is a more serious issue. According to an article in the Jewish Chronicle on May 21st "books by Israeli writers could be removed from Scottish libraries" as a result of West Dumbartonshire Council (hands up all those who can list any town covered by WDC!) passing a "boycott" resolution. The paper was not exactly first with the news here since the Council passed the boycott resolution in 2009, but never mind. Following that article the Scottish Daily Express, owned by the pornographer Richard Desmond, quotes someone from the Israeli Embassy comparing the Council to Joseph Goebbels burning books by Jewish authors. Well, if true it would certainly make a change from the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Championship at the Council's Loch Lomond Festival. It gets worse; the Pipe Band lovers' plans became (Jerusalem Post) a wave of censorship that had spread all over Scotland while the Israel YNet News Service said bookshops too were subject to such censorship. The outgoing Israeli Ambassador, Ron Prosser, thought that a wave of book burning could erupt. Well, it could, though perhaps not immediately as the next activity on the WDC website is the Vale of Leven Fun Run so they will be a wee bit busy for a while. Prosser said that "A place that boycotts books isn't far from a place that burns them". Oddly enough he did not take issue with Jonathan Hoffman of the (British) Zionist Federation who called for a boycott of this year's entire Jewish Book Week because one of the many events featured one Israeli writer whose views he did not share.

Anyway, two and a half years after passing a policy saying the Council would not buy goods "made or grown in Israel", which presumably means you can't buy an Israeli date with your bottle of Irn Bru in the Council canteen, we're talking about book burning. Only, in that time no books have been withdrawn from stock; the Council continues to buy books written by Israeli or Jewish writers and bookshops are awash with The Hare with Amber Eyes. Libraries and bookshops will continue to stock books by Israeli and Jewish writers. Easy to check on that - that Council, for example, has its entire library catalogue on line. Perhaps the critics could have spent a minute on that interweb thing before getting overexcited. They could have found that WDC stocks 276 books of Jewish interest, including many by Israeli writers. Rather a healthy number I would have thought, given the tiny number of Jews and less Israelis likely to be living in the area. I should point out, because I have checked the catalogue, that my fellow deep-fried Mars Bar eaters from WDC do appear, however, to be boycotting (or, rather, not have many) Five Leaves' books by Jewish and non-Jewish writers. Now that is the serious issue.