Canadian Jewish News
By LAUREN KRAMER, Pacific Correspondent
Thursday, 06 March 2008
VANCOUVER — When the Vancouver Public Library agreed to host controversial author Greg Felton as a speaker during national Freedom to Read week last month, city librarian Paul Whitney says he had no idea the decision would generate such opposition and outrage.
Felton, a Vancouver-based journalist and teacher whose writings on Israel have been criticized as anti-Semitic, is the author of The Host and the Parasite: How Israel’s Fifth Column Consumed America, published last May by Dandelion Books in Phoenix, Ariz.
His Feb. 25 talk drew some 90 people, many of whom were very engaged and vocal during his presentation.
“There’s been a fair amount of correspondence, mostly but not exclusively from the Jewish community,” Whitney told The CJN. “I have found this whole issue very distressing, because I found myself in arguments with people for whom I have great respect.”
Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific region (CJC), had urged community members to call the library and contact Whitney to express their disappointment at Felton’s appearance.
The thesis of Felton’s book is that a Zionist “junta” operated on Sept. 11, 2001, and that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis to exterminate the Jews.
The 50-year-old writer said he became interested in Israeli-Palestinian politics after the assassination of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
“I made the observation then that Israel can choose to be a Jewish state or a democracy, but it can’t be both,” he told The CJN in a phone interview on the day of his talk. “I feel that much of what we know about Israel and Palestine is blatantly false.
“For example, I researched Israel’s creation and found out that it was not created legally. A number of things brought me to realize that a massive war crime was perpetrated against the Palestinians by the Jewish immigrants after World War II, and I became quite upset by this. I got a lot of hate mail for stating what I thought was simply an obvious truth. But I felt it was my job to write about it.”
Felton twice approached the Vancouver Public Library (VPL) about an opportunity to speak about his book.
“The first time, last June, the librarian [he spoke to] said she was not interested.
When he returned in the fall, she looked at his book again and thought she could fit it under the auspices of Freedom to Read week,” said Jean Kavanagh, marketing and communications manager for the VPL.
The library’s decision to give Felton a platform outraged many members of Vancouver’s Jewish community and the community at large.
“What do you call it when the Vancouver Public Library decides to present Felton, an apologist for the book-banning, journalist-jailing Iranian theocracy, as the featured author on the evening of Feb. 25, and as the library’s contribution to national Freedom to Read Week?” Terry Glavin wrote Feb. 12 in the Vancouver Sun.
“In Felton’s words, Hamas is not an Islamist death cult animated by that classic anti-Semitic forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It’s the equivalent of the French resistance during the Second World War, the ‘passionate defender of Palestinians,’” Glavin wrote.
“There are no suicide bombings in Felton’s lexicon. There are only ‘sacrifice bombings. Israel itself is a creation of the Nazis. It’s the Zionist Reich.’”
CJC worked with the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver and the Canada-Israel Committee to develop a response to Felton that it characterized in a letter to the Jewish community as “quiet but effective advocacy.”
In a meeting with the VPL, Congress requested that the library condemn Felton’s book and admit that it made an error in inviting him to speak. The library declined to cancel the event.
“We felt it would be a lose-lose situation to cancel the talk,” Whitney said. “We believe very strongly in the principle of freedom of expression, and because Freedom to Read is so fundamental to the library, we felt we needed to adhere to this principle, distasteful as we do find some of Felton’s arguments.”
“I feel the best anecdote to hate literature is exposure, getting stuff out,” Whitney continued, adding that the library ordered two copies of Felton’s book.
Though some members of the community called for a public protest at his talk, Congress opted against this strategy.
“Public protest will only provide him with more legitimacy and a larger platform from which to spread his message,” CJC wrote in its letter to the community.
“There is no advantage to engaging Mr. Felton in a debate, as there is no debating what he has to say. To do so would only legitimize his views and opinions.”
