We're just here to say hi: terror squad

Arjun Ramachandran, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 13, 2008
With its ceramics classes and preschool storytime sessions, Leichhardt library - like most suburban libraries - is usually a pretty calm place.

But the "fear of god'' was reportedly put into its librarian when counter terrorism officers paid a visit to speak about an upcoming exhibition called "Al-Nakba", which means "catastrophe".

"Al-Nakba", a pictorial exhibition about Palestine and Israel, should have opened at Leichhardt municipal library last Friday.

But after the police visit on Thursday night, it was suddenly cancelled the next morning.

Friends of Hebron, a local activitist group, had been working on the exhibition of photos, poems and articles for eight months after the library agreed to host it last year.

"We set up the exhibition at the library on Thursday night and the librarian ... approved the exhibition, and said that it could be seen by children and other people,'' said Carole Lawson, a Friends of Hebron member.

Felt threatened

"But then that night, the [police] anti-terrorism squad visited the library and told her she had to vet the exhibition.

"They wanted to put the fear of god into the library staff and want the staff to feel threatened.''

On Friday morning, Ms Lawson said she received a call to tell her the exhibition had been pulled down.

"It's the censorship of Palestine - apparently the anti-terrorism squad decides what we can see on the public walls of a library.''

The librarian, Marilyn Taylor, would not speak to smh.com.au.

Leichhardt mayor Carolyn Allen confirmed police had visited the library on Thursday night, but said council, not police, had decided to pull down the exhibition because it hadn't met the council's criteria for such projects, which include not being divisive.

Counter Terrorism police just saying 'Hi!'

A police media spokesman said the officers were from the community contact unit, which falls within its Counter Terrorism operations. They had not visited the the library to to tell it to cancel the exhibition, but only to "say hi'' to Friends of Hebron members, he said.

"They went to introduce themselves to members of the community setting up the display and just to let them know who they are and what they are about. [Speaking with community groups] is part of their charter.

"When they got there the librarian was the only one there ... they just had a quick chat to the librarian.''

There had only been "a couple'' of officers involved, the spokesman said. He could not say what they said to her.

Cr Allen said the council pulled the exhibition down the morning after police visited because it had not had a chance to properly vet it.

Vetting exhibitions

Last year, council decided all projects - like the Al-Nakba exhibition - would first need to be assessed by a panel of councillors to ensure they were not divisive, she said.

This had not been done with Al-Nakba, and she blamed the late realisation of this on "a breakdown of managerial process''.

"I think it's regrettable that [the library] didn't talk about it earlier.

"I accept people might view it as [censorship] but ... I'm just implementing our policy that any exhibition that has our councils name on it needed to go through this process of making sure its not being divisive.

She said the visit by police had not influenced the decision.

"I suppose the librarian may have been a bit alarmed and concerned they had the anti-terrorism squad. I thought it was quite funny that the anti-terrorism squad would come [to a local library] - I found that a bit alarmist at the time.

Nothing disturbing

Ms Lawson said there was nothing alarming or disturbing about the exhibition, and that it merely raised the plight of "Palestinian refugees'' living in Hebron, about 30 kilometres south of Jerusalem.

"The exhibition was taken down because it was about Palestine, the dispossession of Palestinians and what's going on in Hebron," she said.

But Cr Allen said: "The people doing this exhibition clearly knew it wasn't in the general understanding of our agreement."

She objected to some captions, including one that said Palestinian children going to school needed protection from children from Israel who where throwing stones.

"Being in a public library is different to being in an exhibition space. If you're in an exhibition space and someone knows they are going into the exhibition, they expect to be educated and confronted. But most people going into a library just want to return books."