The Northbrook Public Library’s director told Board members at their meeting Thursday that the library received 8,000 emails and hundreds of phone calls asking it to cancel a scheduled screening of a documentary that tells the story of two young American Jews who visit Israel for the first time.
The organizers, including the nonprofit Jewish Voice for Peace and two other Jewish organizations, said the screening’s purpose was to “open the door to the difficult and necessary conversations that American Jews need to have,” but another group called Chicago Jewish Alliance accused the film of being antisemitic and organized social media campaigns with the aim of preventing the film from being shown.
As the rhetoric became heated, the library set conditions last week to require the screening’s organizers to pay in advance for security and insurance on the night it was to be screened, Sept. 18. The organizers declined, and the screening was cancelled.
The film was released in February 2023, months before the events of Oct. 7 and their continuing aftermath.
The controversy prompted questions about free speech and whether one group can shut down the views of another group.
As the number of emails asking the library to cancel the screening grew during early to mid-September, Library Executive Director Kate Hall issued a statement acknowledging the diversity of community members’ deep feelings on the matter and saying the library “is committed to fulfilling its responsibility to support intellectual freedom and the free exchange of information and discourse.” The statement also noted that while the library allows groups to reserve space, it does not imply that the library endorses their views.
At Thursday’s meeting, public commenter Lee Goodman raised the question of whether the library’s decision to require the film screening’s organizers to pay high costs for security and insurance had the de facto effect of canceling the screening, and thus violating the First Amendment.
Richard Rash, Northbrook Police Department’s Community Relations Supervisor, told Pioneer Press that the library reached out to police before the screening was canceled for advice on how to handle potential safety risks for the screening and asked the police department to supply an off-duty police officer, but the library cancelled the event before the department could give a response.
Having an off-duty officer present for a possibly contentious meeting at the library, such as a homeowners’ association meeting, has been done in the past, Rash said.
Rash said he was unsure whether the department advised the library to get additional insurance for the evening, “but ultimately, that’s the library’s decision. We have no official capacity over that,” he said.
Hall said the police department “advised that it was necessary to hire outside licensed, bonded and insured security for inside the library and provided a specific recommendation for a qualified firm, which we shared with the room booker.”
The Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) describes the “Israelism” film as: “When two young American Jews raised to unconditionally love Israel witness the way Israel treats Palestinians, their lives take sharp left turns. Their stories reveal a deepening generational divide over modern Jewish identity.”
Anna Tarkov of Jewish Voice for Peace said screening the film is important because it shows how mainstream Jewish organizations prompt Jewish youth to support Israel by telling them, “a sanitized, historically inaccurate narrative of its founding and subsequent history.”
Daniel Schwartz, a co-organizer of the Chicago Jewish Alliance, said his group communicated with its members and supporters primarily through social media. On Sept. 4, the group wrote on X that the screening was “bad news” and asked its members to email the Northbrook Library to prevent it. The group called the screening of the film a “troubling attempt to gaslight our community,” and said a “small fringe of Jews and non-Jews is misrepresenting our voices and values, and it’s disrespectful to all of us.”
On the same day, the group posted on its Facebook account “It’s time for us to stand up against this intolerance.”
On the day the library announced the cancellation of the event, the Chicago Jewish Alliance posted on its Facebook account, “We are proud to announce that our efforts to advocate against the screening of a divisive film at the Northbrook Library have been successful.”
In a press release from the organizing groups on the day the screening was cancelled, Tarkov said, “I understand that this is not something easy to talk about, but calling this screening antisemitic is complete nonsense. Threatening to come protest at my home, harassing library employees, all of this is completely unacceptable.
“When groups like the Chicago Jewish Alliance silence us, they may think they’ve won, but in reality everyone loses when anyone is frightened into keeping quiet by these types of right-wing bullying tactics.”
Tarkov also said she had been doxxed.
Nina Tannenwald, a senior lecturer in political science at Brown University, said, “There has been a growing divide within the American Jewish community over Israel for several decades now, and the attack of October 7 and Israel’s even more violent response to that horrendous event have exacerbated it.”
The “Israelism” filmmakers attended Brown University, and Tannenwald said one contacted her a few years ago to inquire about networking contacts in the Rhode Island Jewish community. She viewed an early screening three or four years ago, she said, but has had no contact with the filmmakers since.
As the Israeli government and society have gradually shifted to the far right, Tannenwald said American Jews, who are overwhelmingly liberal, have split on how to respond.
“Mainstream Jewish organizations tend to feel that Jews have an obligation to support Israel, warts and all, while many other Jews increasingly worry that Israel’s long-term occupation of the Palestinians is not only immoral but is undermining Israel’s democracy and that they have an obligation to speak out against it,” she said.
Younger Jewish Americans also don’t remember Israel as an underdog state, she explained, but think of it as a powerful, nuclear-armed nation.
“There is fear on both sides,” she said, noting that some may feel the film is unbalanced or unfair because it is critical of the way Jewish institutions glorify Israel to children when they are small.
“But the film is certainly not antisemitic,” she said.
Schwartz told Pioneer Press “We’re all for the First Amendment, but apparently, they (the organizers of the screening) did not want to have that discourse. They cancelled their film when they heard we were gonna come,” he said. Schwartz said he was also against people who were harassing library staff who “are just doing their job.”
Tom Ginsburg, a political science and international law professor at the University of Chicago, said the controversy touches on two trends that have been going on throughout the country. “One is the increasing politicization of libraries as public spaces. They’re very much in the center of of the culture wars all over the country, with parents’ groups trying to get books out or books into the library and such and such.
“The second trend is the increasing split in the Jewish community over Israel,” Ginsburg said. “I think the film is capturing a major generational split that’s going on in the Jewish community between older people who are traditionally a little more supportive of Israel (and are) more religious… and younger people who are increasingly aware with the Palestinians and the occupation and more sympathetic with that side.
“I think (the controversy) reflects an ill-advised attempt to repress views that a particular group doesn’t like. Because this is a public library, the First Amendment governs, and so they should be allowed to show the film there,” Ginsburg said. “From the point of view of the First Amendment all views, even ones that people find to be reprehensible, get to be expressed. So I consider this a great tragedy that the event had to be canceled.”
Northbrook resident Edward Samson gave public comment at Thursday’s board meeting. “I watched the movie. I disagree with its viewpoint and the organizations that sponsor it. But my comments have nothing to do with the movie. I’m talking about a precedent equivalent to banning books or controversial speakers. In this case, it was done by setting up standards so high they could not be met. In other words, while officially welcoming the controversy, it was, in actuality, or de facto, disallowed.”
After the board meeting, Jewish Voice for Peace spokesperson Mollie Hartenstein said in a statement that the organization will continue to work with the Northbrook Public Library “in the hope that this important film can be screened in as many locations as possible.”
A Dec. 15, 2023 article by Mira Fox in The Forward, an American newspaper covering the Jewish community, said that since the Oct. 7 attacks, several universities have canceled or tried to cancel screenings of “Israelism” after getting pushback.
“Groups of people often with little or no connection to the universities have organized coordinated campaigns against the film, flooding campus administrators and presidents with tens of thousands of emails accusing the film of antisemitism, charges that the filmmakers, who are both Jewish, adamantly deny,” the newspaper wrote.
