March 16, 2006

On books, censorship and political pressure

by Haroon Siddiqui, Toronto Star


Just as the din of the Danish cartoon controversy - with its arguments over
freedom of speech, censorship and political or consumer pressures - was
dying down, several others with similar echoes have hit the headlines.

The Toronto school board has joined those in York, Essex and Ottawa in
restricting access to a book about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Ontario Library Association had included Deborah Ellis's Three Wishes:
Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak in its list of 20 Canadian books for
a province-wide program that encourages reading. Students in Grades 4 to 6
will vote their choice in May for the Silver Birch Award (others being the
Blue Spruce, Red Maple and White Pine awards for other age groups).

But the Canadian Jewish Congress argued that the book is not suitable for
young children, and called for its removal from the popular program.

The librarians stood by their choice, backed by the Association of Canadian
Publishers, the Writers' Union, the Playwrights Guild, PEN Canada and the
Freedom to Read Committee of the Book and Periodical Council.

PEN director Alan Cumyn asked the Toronto board if it would "restrict access
to, for example, The Diary of Anne Frank or the more recent Hannah's
Suitcase, which also deal with very dark subject matter," i.e. the
Holocaust. Both books "have helped inspire and educate countless children
about the nature of our often difficult world."

The age-appropriate argument, said Sheila Koffman, owner of Another Story, a
Toronto bookstore, is often a way of suppressing certain viewpoints.

A similar conclusion was reached by Bernard Katz, a retired University of
Guelph librarian, who had been asked by the library association to respond
to the Jewish congress's analysis of the Ellis book. He wrote that the
congress was reacting to "what they perceive as criticism of Israel's
behaviour toward Palestinian civilians."

Criticism of Israel is what prompted the New York Theatre Workshop to
cancel My Name is Rachel Corrie. That's a British play about the young
American student activist who in 2003 went to the Gaza Strip where she stood
in front of an Israeli bulldozer to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian
home and was crushed to death.

James Nicola, the theatre's artistic director, said that in "talking around
and listening in our communities in New York, what we heard was that (with)
Ariel Sharon's illness and the election of Hamas ... we had a very edgy
situation."

Katharine Viner, co-creator of the play, accused the theatre of censorship
and criticized its management for having "caved in to political pressure."

The Los Angeles affiliate of PBS has cancelled a documentary on the
Armenian genocide, and also a follow-up panel discussion, scheduled for
airing on the network April 17.

Two of the four panelists argue that while World War I-era massacre did take
place, it was not a planned genocide by Turkey.

The Armenian National Committee of America objected. The PBS affiliate in
Los Angeles (home to more than 400,000 Armenian Americans) pulled the plug.
An affiliate in Plattsburg (which beams into Montreal) said it would show
the documentary but not the panel discussion.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone has been suspended from his elected office
for four weeks for comparing a Jewish reporter to a Nazi concentration camp
guard. He has appealed the ruling by the Adjudication Panel, which deals
with disciplinary cases at the municipal level. It had acted on a complaint
by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which offered this sensible
summation on the verdict:

"Had the mayor simply recognized the upset his comments had caused, this
sorry episode could have been avoided."

The House of Commons in Britain has passed a law banning groups that
"glorify terrorism." Yet it rejected a bill prohibiting anything "abusive
and insulting" to a religious group.

The latter, characterized as a sop to British Muslims, was opposed by
writers and artists concerned about their creative freedoms being curbed.
The former, aimed at another group of Muslims, sailed right through, even
though it, perhaps, threatens freedom of speech even more, given the
vagueness of the language of the act.

These examples have elicited vastly different official and public responses
to a familiar challenge.

Exposing this inconsistency may turn out to have been the more lasting
legacy of the Danish cartoon caper.


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Haroon Siddiqui, the Star's editorial page editor emeritus, appears Thursday
and Sunday. hsiddiq@thestar.ca .

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