According to Lisa Gozashti-Riddle, Brookline’s longtime co-owner and manager, the shift began in January 2024, after the store had hosted a virtual poetry fundraiser for Mosab Abu Toha, a celebrated Palestinian poet whose English-language library in Gaza had just been destroyed by Israel. “We had 20 poets from around the world, including Mosab, who joined us from Egypt,” she told me. They raised more than $30,000 to purchase and ship books to a new library in Gaza upon reconstruction.
After that, the threats started. “I was trying to protect my staff while fielding all the calls myself,” she said. One caller asked to speak to “Hitler.” Someone else, in a message, said that Gazans “don’t read books. They only want guns.” To avoid another flare-up, the store moved pro-Palestinian programming online.
But the scrutiny didn’t stop. “People started coming in daily to count the number of Palestinian books we had. I’ve seen the spreadsheets, the circle graphs, the reports they’ve sent out accusing us of bias.” Some called the store a “hotbed for Islamic fundamentalism” and accused it of “inculcating the youth.”
Then came Becoming Baba. “This wasn’t a book we flagged,” Gozashti-Riddle said. But the emails came anyway. Some asserted that hosting me was “an act of incitement.” One message said, “We can overlook the author, but if that woman attends, you’re sending a message that pro-Israel Jews aren’t safe at Booksmith.” The message linked to Canary Mission. “That was a watershed moment,” Gozashti-Riddle said. “We realized the people organizing this weren’t rational. And when you’re dealing with that level of irrationality, it’s scary.”
So the staff took precautions: installing peace marshals from Jewish Voice for Peace and alerting local police. “After your event, I finally started using the word harassment,” she said.
I would note that Aymann Ismail (the author) is not himself Palestinian. He is an Arab-American who wrote a book about being a father where he briefly mentions watching videos of fathers mourning their children in Gaza and thinking of himself and his family and that, apparently, is enough.