Sometimes you just have to marvel at how politics can lead to absurd outcomes. A perfect example involves library officials in Northbrook, Ill. To avoid controversy, they violated the First Amendment rights of one group and created a more problematic situation.
The facts are pretty simple. Controversial, some might say fringe, groups Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow and the Chicago Jewish Labor Bund arranged to screen the documentary “Israelism” at Northbrook Public Library near Chicago. The film charges that the Jewish “establishment,” including many Jewish educational institutions, are indoctrinating Jewish youth to be uncritically supportive of Israel and to silence Palestinians. It has been praised by Qatar’s Al-Jazeera, a propaganda outlet run by a hereditary monarch, still its supporters have been successful in getting it screened on many college campuses.
The film has been harshly criticized by many Jewish organizations who claim it is untrue, lacking in context and nuance, and essentially just propaganda. Many people have objected to the screenings of the film and pushed back, which is what the Chicago Jewish Alliance did in advance of a planned showing at Northbrook library.
CJA, however, never pushed for a “ban” on the film. It can be viewed online and is even offered for free in places. Nor did CJA call for the event to be canceled. Instead, in an email to library officials, CJA decried the library’s lack of due diligence, as it seems library officials were unaware of the content of the film or its backing by Jewish Voice for Peace, which the Anti-Defamation League says is “radical” and “does not represent the mainstream Jewish community.”
CJA pointed out that the application for the event did not disclose fundamental facts about the nature and content of the film, violating library policies. The group also pointed out that showing the film would directly violate the library’s code of conduct because it features “behavior or language that is threatening or insulting” to a person’s ethnicity or religion.
Despite all this, the only remedy CJA requested was to voice their concerns directly to library officials and a review of the procedures by which films are granted public screenings. When the library planned to go ahead with the screening without the requested consultation, CJA said they would be attending and would ask pointed questions during the question-and-answer session.
This is where things became problematic.
According to The Chicago Sun-Times, the library requested a $3,000 dollar security and insurance deposit from the organizers of the film screening to have the event go forward. A quick Google search would have told library officials that this idea was problematic. In Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement, the U.S. Supreme Court held that “[s]peech cannot be financially burdened, any more than it can be punished or banned, simply because it might offend a hostile mob,” and that any fees must be consistently applied to all groups, not solely levied when speech becomes unpopular.
Nonetheless, that’s just what the library did, raising the ire of the American Civil Liberties Union. According to the ACLU of Illinois, “Due to angry reaction to the film’s ideas, the library imposed a fee that ultimately prevented the film from being shown.”
The ACLU was correct, and that’s the problem. If JVP and their partners had broken neutrally applied library policies, the library could have taken legal action. If no policies were broken, the library could have gone ahead with the screening and allowed representatives from CJA to ask their questions. What the library ultimately chose to do was worse than either of those options.
In the middle of this controversy, the library’s trustees adopted a new policy giving the library “unbridled discretion” to require fees or proof of insurance. In essence, they were backing up the library’s decision supposedly to address safety concerns.
That raises the question, what safety concerns? Presumably, Jewish Voice for Peace wasn’t going to cause a safety crisis at their own event, although their affiliates have repeatedly justified violence, and they have partnered with Students for Justice in Palestine, a group that the Anti-Defamation League says has been linked to violence toward those with whom it disagrees.
The Chicago Jewish Alliance was founded in large part to object to violence, vandalism and intimidation aimed at Jews. There is no history of CJA perpetrating violence nor disrupting any events. Despite this, it seems that the library and the ACLU think that CJA is a safety threat. JVP explicitly said that their event was canceled due to “threats of harassment and violence by CJA,” which they said uses “right-wing tactics.” Neither the library nor the ACLU nor JVP have provided any evidence to support this theory.
The library, the ACLU and JVP have slandered CJA with no justification. They owe it an apology and a promise to do better next time.