American Library Association partners with UAE book fair that doesn't like Jews

From the American Library Association:

What fun!

Only a couple of problems.

One is this:

The Shar­jah Inter­na­tional Book Fair (SIBF) in the United Arab Emi­rates, which report­edly attracted 1 mil­lion vis­i­tors from across the region, fea­tured sev­eral infa­mous anti-Semitic books...

The mis­sion of the fair, accord­ing to orga­niz­ers, is “to cul­ti­vate the love for lit­er­a­ture among peo­ple by enrich­ing their expe­ri­ence of the writ­ten word.”

The anti-Semitic books for sale at the fair were listed along­side main­stream books in var­i­ous cat­e­gories. For exam­ple, The Pro­to­cols of the Learned Elders of Zion was listed in the “Polit­i­cal Sci­ence” cat­e­gory. Among the other anti-Semitic books fea­tured at the fair were:

• Blood for The Pie of Zion (The Jew­ish Dis­trict) by Najib Al Gailany. This novel tells a story of a Chris­t­ian priest from Dam­as­cus who was abducted by the Jews in order to use his blood for Jew­ish rit­u­als. The story details how Jews danced and celebrated while Rab­bis drain the blood of the elderly catholic priest. The book was listed in the “Nov­els” cat­e­gory and sold for 15 AED, or approx­i­mately $4.
• The Jews and the Secret Move­ments in the Cru­sades by Baha Al-Amir. The book, which sug­gests that the Jews played a role in the Cru­sades, includes an intro­duc­tion in which the author claims that “God the almighty declares in his state­ment to the peo­ple that all wars were started by Jews.” The book was listed in the “Inter­na­tional Affairs” cat­e­gory and sold for 50 AED (approx­i­mately $14).
• Human Sac­ri­fices and Tal­mu­dic Slaugh­ter­ing by Jews and Pagans by Fathi Muham­mad Zughbi. The book was listed in the “Faith” cat­e­gory and sold for 83 AED (approx­i­mately $23).
• Mein Kampf by Adolf Hilter. This book was listed in the “Gen­eral knowl­edge” cat­e­gory and sold for 20 AED (approx­i­mately $5).

The fair pro­vided sev­eral grants and awards in var­i­ous fields of lit­er­a­ture. In the past, it report­edly gave a grant to Gilad Atz­mon to trans­late his anti-Semitic book “The Wan­der­ing Who,” into Ara­bic.

The other problem is that if you try to register for the fair, in the list of countries you can be from there is one that is missing. Take a wild guess.

So the ALA is now explicitly partnering with an event that activley promotes anti-semitism and discriminates against Israelis,

In the past, when principled organizations and prominent personalities told the UAE that they would not participate in activities that excluded Israelis or Jews, the UAE was anxious to drop the ban and do whatever they needed to do in order to not be embarrassed.

Clearly the American Library Association has no such principles.

(h/t Shawarma News)