By Dmitriy Shapiro
(AUGUST 30, 2021 / JNS) A public library system in Philadelphia is promising to make operational changes after drawing criticism for what some community members are considering an effort to indoctrinate children and parents against Israel through books, videos and resource links that show a biased pro-Palestinian agenda.
The issues were first discovered by members of the Jewish community, who contacted the Philadelphia Chapter of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) to express their concerns. ZOA Philadelphia’s executive director, Steve Feldman, a former reporter for The Jewish Exponent, looked into the concerns and said that he was disturbed by what he found on the website of the Free Library of Philadelphia—the country’s 13th-largest system of public libraries.
He found out that the 55 branches of the library system had individual Facebook pages where librarians would often post book suggestions and readings for children and their caretakers.
“I started looking, and I kept finding more and more disturbing content that was first of all directed at young people—children, middle-school age or maybe even younger frankly—and that it was all of an anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist nature,” said Feldman. “There seemed to be a campaign going on to indoctrinate young Philadelphians, or whoever else uses the websites in the library or the branches of the library, to indoctrinate young people and their parents to be anti-Zionist, anti-Jewish, anti-Israel.”
The concerning posts first began during the 11-day conflict between Israel and the Hamas terror group that runs the Gaza Strip in May, when a children’s librarian at the FLP’s Lillian Marrero branch posted a video on its official Facebook page of her reading the illustrated children’s book, Baba, What Does My Name Mean? A Journey to Palestine by Rifk Ebeid, as an act of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
The librarian, Kayla Hoskinson, in a series of videos she calls “Storytime with Kayla,” introduces the books she is about to read. Hoskinson tells viewers of a video posted on May 18 that that week’s program is going to be more of a discussion and review, as well as a sharing of additional resources on the subject.
Hoskinson says that it is important to bring attention to the book because “we all see that the children in our lives do see and hear what is happening in the world, including the violence committed by Israel.”
