We, the undersigned, write to bring your attention to the relationship between Ex Libris, the company behind the library system used by Western Washington University Libraries, and all libraries in the Orbis Cascade Alliance (aka the Summit system), and Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine, ongoing system of apartheid, and genocide of the Palestinian people. 

Ex Libris (Clarivate) is an Israeli-founded company, with headquarters based in Malha Technology Park in southwestern Jerusalem, a location situated on the former Palestinian village al-Maliha, where on July 15 during the Nakba of 1948, Israeli Occupation Forces forcibly displaced the 2250 inhabitants. 

We ask the Orbis Cascade Alliance and all Alliance member libraries to abandon and refuse to renew any future contract with Ex Libris. We ask that the Alliance and its member libraries publicly commit to identifying other vendors and companies which are not based in Israel, and which are not tied to the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, and to Israel's destruction of the libraries in Gaza.

Today, Ex Libris is used by thousands of libraries, and the libraries who pay them for use of their system are giving material support to Israel’s apartheid, occupation, and ongoing genocide.

This genocide has resulted in the destruction of universities, libraries, cultural heritage sites, archival centers, museums, and the killing of staff and professionals in each of these locations and fields. Library professionals who have professed a commitment to human rights, including the right to education, must stand up for the people and principles of the profession, while also demonstrating solidarity with their Palestinian colleagues.

According to a UN Report published in April 2024, more than 80% of the schools in Gaza have been severely damaged or destroyed, amounting to what appears to be a deliberate effort to destroy the Palestinian education system. This ‘scholasticide’* also refers to the targeting of teachers, students and staff, and the destruction of educational infrastructure.

That same report explains:
 “After six months of military assault, more than 5,479 students, 261 teachers and 95 university professors have been killed in Gaza, and over 7,819 students and 756 teachers have been injured – with numbers growing each day. At least 60 percent of educational facilities, including 13 public libraries, have been damaged or destroyed and at least 625,000 students have no access to education. Another 195 heritage sites, 227 mosques and three churches have also been damaged or destroyed, including the Central Archives of Gaza, containing 150 years of history. Israa University, the last remaining university in Gaza was demolished by the Israeli military on 17 January 2024.”

Palestine has been renowned for years as having one of the highest literacy rates in the world, as being a place where education and reading are valued, supported, and highly esteemed. Education is integrated into Palestinian culture, heritage, and identity. There are currently many Palestinian students and educators in Gaza who are still trying to teach and to learn despite their schools, libraries, and universities having been bombed and destroyed, and despite the ongoing bombings, the human-made famine, forced starvation, violent forced displacement, and relentless massacres of families sheltering in schools, buildings, and tents. We owe them our support, and we owe them our actions and efforts to bring an end to the genocide and the illegal occupation.

Libraries have the power to decide where and how to allocate their resources. Given the targeting of cultural heritage sites, universities, libraries, and archives in Gaza, we are calling on the Orbis Cascade Alliance to make the decision and the commitment to no longer use Ex Libris in our libraries.

This is one of the most significant actions we can take in support of our obligation and professional duty as members of an educational community to heed the call for freedom, justice, and equality. To ignore this call is to abandon our responsibility as community members, as educators, as students, as alumni, and as library professionals to our communities, our colleagues, and to our own humanity. 

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*Scholasticide: Quoting from the a statement published by the Scholars Against the War on Gaza, ‘Scholasticide’ is a term that was first coined by Professor Karma Nabulsi, who conceptualized it in the context of the Israeli assault on Gaza, Palestine in 2009, but also with reference to a pattern of Israeli colonial attacks on Palestinian scholars, students, and educational institutions going back to the Nakba of 1948, and expanding after the 1967 war on Palestine and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. 

“The term combines the Latin prefix schola, meaning school, and the Latin suffix cide, meaning killing. Nabulsi used it to describe the ‘systematic destruction of Palestinian education by Israel’ to counter a tradition of Palestinian learning. That tradition, Nabulsi observed, reflected the enormous ‘role and power of education in an occupied society’ in which freedom of thought ‘posits possibilities, open horizons,’ contrasting sharply with ‘the apartheid wall, the shackling checkpoints, [and] the choking prisons.’ …During the latest Israeli genocidal war on Gaza, Palestine in 2023/2024, scholasticide has intensified on an unprecedented scale.”

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Additional Related Information:
“War on Gaza: Losing Palestine’s Libraries (video)
“Exposing Ex Libris,” published by Librarians and Archivists with Palestine (zine)
Israeli Damage to Archives, Libraries, and Museums in Gaza, October 2023–January 2024, (report) 
Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel