{"id":479439,"date":"2026-09-29T15:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T15:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/479439\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T15:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T15:20:09","slug":"dangerous-precedent-authors-sue-la-library-over-cancelled-palestine-event-los-angeles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/479439\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Dangerous precedent\u2019: authors sue LA library over cancelled Palestine event | Los Angeles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two authors have sued the city of Los Angeles<\/a> over the Los Angeles public library\u2019s (LAPL) cancellation of a Read Palestine Week event where the writers were scheduled to discuss their books featuring Palestinian stories.<\/p>\n

Jenan Matari, a Palestinian-American author, and Nora Lester Murad, a Jewish-American writer, were invited to speak virtually at a 6 December 2025 event organized as part of the LAPL\u2019s Teen\u2019Scape program, which works with youth.<\/p>\n

Matari and Murad\u2019s talk was promoted as the library\u2019s programming for Read Palestine Week, an international event promoting Palestinian writers. Members of the library\u2019s \u201cteen council\u201d, a youth volunteer group, had advocated for the event. Matari was promoting her debut children\u2019s book, Everything Grows in Jiddo\u2019s Garden<\/a>, about a young Palestinian girl and her grandfather, and Murad was set to discuss Ida in the Middle<\/a>, her young adult novel about a 13-year-old Palestinian-American girl.<\/p>\n

Three days before the discussion, the writers were told that LAPL administrators had cancelled the event without explanation, according to their complaint filed on Monday. The authors said their requests for a follow-up meeting were ignored.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit, filed in state court in LA, alleges free speech violations, discrimination and breach of contract.<\/p>\n

\u201cPalestinian writers and creatives are so exhausted by having to fight every day to have our voices heard,\u201d Matari said in her first interview about the lawsuit. \u201cTo be censored by an institution like the library is really scary because this is where free speech should be cultivated and nurtured. It sets a very dangerous precedent \u2026 Nora and I agreed we had to show these institutions they cannot continue to get away with this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jenan Matari. Photograph: Courtesy of Jenan Matari<\/p>\n

The cancellation came after a staff librarian wrote an email to library leadership on 17 November, accusing both writers of having \u201cstrong terrorist ties and virulently antisemitic views\u201d, according to documents disclosed through public records requests<\/a> and cited in the lawsuit. The email said it was sent on behalf of a group of Jewish library staffers, and said: \u201calthough the event is planned as an online program, the safety of library staff and participants must still be taken into consideration.\u201d<\/p>\n

The email included links to rightwing news articles and pro-Israel activist websites that had accused Matari and Murad of antisemitism. One website cited social media posts by Matari after the 7 October 2023 attacks in which she wrote \u201cresist\u201d, \u201cMay this Palestinian uprising be the push needed for the dominos of colonialism to fall from every corner of this world.\u201d In another post, she said the US was \u201cunder Zionist occupation\u201d.<\/p>\n

A pro-Israel webpage about Murad cited her participation in Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia University in 2024 and included video of her chanting along with protesters: \u201cResistance is justified when people are occupied!\u201d<\/p>\n

In a 16 December staff email discussing the cancellation, John Szabo, the longtime city librarian, said all library programs must \u201calign with our core values, including welcoming everyone\u201d. He said Matari\u2019s posts related to 7 October \u201cdid not meet these requirements\u201d, and said cancellation was \u201cnecessary to uphold the library\u2019s commitment to an inclusive environment\u201d.<\/p>\n

An LAPL spokesperson did not respond to detailed questions about the event and the claims raised in the complaint, saying in an email on Monday that it had not yet seen the lawsuit. Szabo and the librarian who sent the email criticizing the authors did not immediately respond to inquiries, nor did a spokesperson for the city attorney\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

Matari said she was used to being criticized, but that the terrorism allegations were particularly disturbing.<\/p>\n

She stood by her social media posts, saying her detractors had conflated anti-Zionism with antisemitism: \u201cI\u2019m vehemently anti-Zionist and all my posts reflect that \u2026 I have been watching people back home living every single day with a violent oppressive boot on their neck that I pay for with my tax money.\u201d She added: \u201cEvery day for the last 100 years has been 7 October for Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murad, who has written for the Guardian and previously taught at Fordham University, condemned the claims made about her and Matari: \u201cTo say someone has strong terrorist ties is an accusation of a crime, the consequences of which can be lifetime in jail.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nora Lester Murad. Photograph: Courtesy of Nora Lester Murad<\/p>\n

The claims of antisemitism, she said, were \u201claughable\u201d. But these kinds of baseless claims, she added, can have big consequences: \u201cIn this historic moment, a completely bogus accusation can have a lot of power. It got me canceled from a library, but it\u2019s getting people abducted and deported<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matari also objected to claims that the event raised \u201csafety\u201d concerns: \u201cNora and I weren\u2019t even supposed to be there physically, but they framed it as if our event was going to put the library in a position of danger. This fear is all manufactured. Bringing Palestinians into your spaces does not make it dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

The authors\u2019 lawsuit said the cancellation was \u201chypocritical\u201d and \u201cinconsistent\u201d with past practices, saying the library had recently hosted several panellists who had expressed political beliefs, including an actor who campaigned for a presidential candidate.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit claims violations of a California anti-discrimination law, writing: \u201cThe portrayal of Palestinians \u2026 as hateful or violent simply because they speak out in opposition to the Israeli genocide and in defense of the fundamental and legal rights of Palestinians is an anti-Palestinian trope that has long been employed to silence and dehumanize Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emails show there was internal backlash to the cancellation, including from two librarians involved in organizing the event, who wrote a joint email to leadership saying the message accusing the authors of terrorist ties was \u201cdisrespectful, disgusting, and racist\u201d. More than 100 staffers signed a letter<\/a> to administrators condemning<\/a> the cancellation and requesting an apology to the authors.<\/p>\n

One LA librarian, who was not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity, said the library was normally dedicated to promoting diversity, inclusion and platforming marginalized voices, and that the cancellation took staff by surprise: \u201cPeople were questioning whether this was an organization for them, whether they could do the work we\u2019re tasked with under these conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mark Kleiman, a lawyer for the writers, argued that as a taxpayer-funded institution, the library cannot ban people from giving a talk based on their identities or viewpoints: \u201cWhen you are dependent on public money, you don\u2019t get to be bigoted and shut people up because they are Palestinian-American \u2026 and are speaking up about a genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before the LA library, two private bookstores had already cancelled<\/a> planned readings with Matari. After the LA news broke, a library in New York also cancelled her scheduled event, she said.<\/p>\n

The writers are coming forward at a time of widespread outrage about the suppression of pro-Palestine advocacy in the US after the rapper Macklemore was dropped from Ed Sheeran\u2019s tour<\/a> after his \u201cfree Palestine\u201d comments.<\/p>\n

In past youth events about her book, Matari said she had talked about her grandfather\u2019s displacement and connected with a diverse range of families about their own histories and relationships to gardening: \u201cI get to plant that seed in kids\u2019 heads about the importance of being land stewards versus seeing land as this thing so many people abuse and take for granted.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would have been such a pivotal moment to see a Palestinian author and Jewish author sitting with each other,\u201d Matari added. \u201cThese events are geared toward kids, but it really does wonders for parents who may have been hesitant to talk about Palestine<\/a> to see the solidarity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murad said she wanted to file the lawsuit on behalf of youth, who may no longer think the library is a safe space: \u201cThe violation of our rights has this much bigger ripple effect \u2026 not just for the children that day who couldn\u2019t hear about our stories, but to all children who received a message that these books, these people, these ideas are too dangerous to be in the library.\u201d<\/p>\n

She noted that Read Palestine Week was aimed to amplify works and authors already facing censorship, arguing the library should be publicly censured: \u201cThe mission of the libraries is to protect accessibility to all information for the public \u2026 if they can get away with censoring Palestinians, then censorship is allowed and normalized.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two authors have sued the city of Los Angeles over the Los Angeles public library\u2019s (LAPL) cancellation of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-479439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}