A workshop on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement scheduled for Dec. 19 has been relocated to Cumberland's Weird Church.
In a press release, organizers for Comox Valley for Palestine said, "This decision follows a harassment campaign originating outside the community calling for the workshop to be cancelled. The library is temporarily pausing third-party room bookings to review their policies, however, the BDS workshop was singled out as the only event to be cancelled."
The workshop educates the public on the BDS movement, a non-violent campaign launched by Palestinian civil society to advocate for justice and human rights under international law. In Canada, BDS organizers have had success in pressuring banks to divest shares in Israeli weapons manufacturers. They are supported by organizations including The United Church of Canada, Independent Jewish Voices, and CUPE BC.
鈥淟ibraries are spaces for education and dialogue,鈥� said Dianna Hillan, Comox Valley for Palestine spokesperson. 鈥淐ancelling this workshop under external pressure not only silences Palestinian voices but also undermines the library鈥檚 commitment to equity and inclusion.鈥�
Ben Hyman, Vancouver Island Regional Library's executive director said that the cancellation was part of VIRL's process of updating how booking rooms work. Currently, booking rooms are primarily to support library programming, but can be rented out to other groups following a hierarchy of non-profits, for profits, and tutoring and finally by library staff. All bookings must follow the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as well as the BC Human Rights Code. The library website lists a few unacceptable uses of meeting rooms, including for political organizations. Hyman said an example of this could be a campaign event.
"So there are some pretty specific conditions for use," Hyman said. "This is the intent of the review. We put a moratorium on all bookings effective November 20. We're going to go back and look at the bookings before and after the 20th and just see what we can learn, what we could tighten up, what we can loosen up and hope to complete that by spring, 2025. Then at that point if we need to revise the guidelines, we will. And then folks will be totally, welcome to put in a new proposal to use this space."
"There have been issues in previous years about unevenness across the organization within facilities with meeting rooms in terms of adherence to our internal procedures," he added. "This group made the booking, which we probably shouldn't have accepted without all of the information, but then it cancelled it, and then requested to re-book, which we probably shouldn't have accepted either. That was sort of the check point to see that these locations are in high demand and we need to make sure we're consistent in each one of our locations."
Hyman said that Vancouver Island Regional Library, board and staff do not have any issue with the point of view of this event, and that VIRL's "north star is intellectual freedom. That's the highest star in the constellation ... of course there are other stars in that constellation, so the Human Rights code ... hate speech. But generally speaking we go for intellectual freedom and that means we need to support a diversity of perspective and dialogue. That's, in fact, our mandate."
Hyman added that this event is not the only one being cancelled, and that the system-wide moratorium would affect over 300 events by the time it is complete.
Recently, the International Court of Justice officially acknowledged that the bombardment and campaign in Gaza is a genocide, and ordered Israel to cease and desist. Additionally, the International Criminal Court recently announced arrest warrants for both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who was dismissed by Netanyahu in November. In their , the ICC judges said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant were criminally responsible for acts including murder, persecution and starvation as a weapon of war as part of a "widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Gaza," Reuters reported at the time.
The ICC also issued a warrant for Mohammed Deif for mass killings during the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, as well as charges of rape and the taking of hostages. Israel has said that Deif (also known as Mohammed Diab 台湾MM裸聊室 al-Masri) was killed in July, but Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied this.
"This (cancellation) highlights a growing trend of using false accusations of antisemitism to stifle Palestinian advocacy, ultimately minimizing real instances of antisemitism and exacerbating institutional anti-Palestinian racism," said the release from Comox Valley for Palestine. The release continues, saying the group "calls on Vancouver Island Regional Library (VIRL) to provide a clear timeline for the completion of the policy review and resumption of community education events, including those addressing Palestine."
Hyman acknowledged there was a campaign to stop the event, but that was part of a trend that had begun during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"In the last year we've seen a lot of folks taking interest in a lot of other folks' bookings in our spaces right across the system," he said. "We have been targeted by a great number of campaigns from folks. That may or may not actually reside anywhere in our service area taking issue on a certain perspective. It's an awful lot of volume."
He added that they'd received "well over 400 pieces of correspondence so far," about this particular booking.
More information about the workshop is available on .
