A library in Sydney has removed a book about media coverage of the war in Gaza from its shelves for review, after a survivor of the Bondi Beach attack said she was distressed to see it on display.
How to Sell a Genocide: The Media's Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza, by American writer Adam Johnson, was withdrawn from Waverley Library, which serves Bondi and the surrounding suburbs in eastern Sydney, home to one of Australia's largest Jewish communities.
It is also close to the site of the attack in December in which 15 people were killed.
"The book has been removed from library shelves for review, and council will further consider processes to ensure closer oversight of book selection," a Waverley council spokesperson said.
The council said it outsources the selection, ordering, and purchasing of books, as most public libraries do, so the choice was not made by its own officers.
The removal followed a report last week by the Jewish news service JWire, which said a survivor of the attack had written on Facebook that she was distressed to find the book on the library's new-release shelf.
The council has received multiple complaints about it. The book remains in the library catalogue and can still be reserved.
Mr Johnson responded to the removal in comments to the Guardian: "They seem to be objecting largely based on the title using the word 'genocide'," he said.
"But 'genocide' is not my word, or my finding. The fact of genocide in Gaza is the overwhelming consensus of the human rights world, and it is a wholly mainstream opinion among those tasked with studying and determining such matters.
"That it makes some people upset is unfortunate, but reality is often upsetting. Do Sydney officials plan on removing pro-Israel books from their libraries because it potentially upsets these community members?"
The decision has received mixed responses from people.
Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, welcomed the decision. "A book of this sort has no place on the shelves of a library, especially one within minutes of where Australians were slaughtered in large part due to the dehumanisation of Jews precisely through this sort of libel," he told the Sydney Morning Herald. "I commend the individual who spotted the book, herself a survivor of the massacre, and acted to have it removed."
Bart Shteinman, an executive member of the progressive Jewish Council of Australia, called the removal deeply alarming.
"Public libraries belong to all of us, and should host a range of views and topics, be they books about queer families or Israel's widely-condemned war crimes," he said.
The book was published in April by Pluto Press, a British publisher based in London which describes itself as a radical political publishing house.
It argues that Israel's war in Gaza could not have continued without what it calls the sustained complicity of the American media.
Israel has repeatedly denied committing genocide in Gaza. The removal comes two months after the New South Wales parliament amended the state's Library Act to protect libraries' freedom to choose what they stock, with the arts minister, John Graham, saying the change would guard against a wave of book bans of the kind seen in the US.
More than 300 attempts have been made to have over 180 titles removed from Australian library shelves since 2023, according to reports to the Australian Library and Information Association.
Two gunmen attacked a Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach, killing 15 people, in Australia's worst mass shooting in nearly 30 years.
One of the alleged gunmen, identified as Sajid Akram, 50, was shot by police. The man's 24-year-old son and alleged accomplice, identified by local media as Naveed Akram, was in critical condition in hospital after also being shot.
