Demonstrators Picket Widener To Protest Exhibition on Israel

About 15 demonstrators picketed Widener Library yesterday to protest the current library exhibit commemorating the 25th anniversary of Israel.

The demonstrators, carrying signs that charged Widener with political bias, also delivered a letter, signed by 51 members of the Harvard community, to Louis E. Martin and Douglas W. Bryant, University librarians. The letter described the month-long exhibit from the Judaica Collection as "political" and "offensive" and called for a ban on such displays.

Although SDS had obtained a permit and approved leaflets for the demonstration, Mahmoud Ayoub, a Lebanese graduate student who helped organize the protest, said yesterday that the picketers were not members of SDS but "just friends." "We are just a group of individuals," Ayoub said. "We are grateful that SDS got the permit and did not try to control our demonstration."

Ayoub said that the exhibit was "obvious propaganda" and that the demonstrators only wanted to point out that "there is another side to the story."

Ayoub said that the demonstrators were not protesting an exhibit of culture. "There are a lot of Jewish exhibitions that are nice," he said. "We are not anti-Jewish. We are anti-Zionists. We are against the State of Israel." Ayoub suggested that Widener plan a display on Arab culture.

Martin said that a response to the demonstrators' letter would not be forth-coming for several days and that approval for the Hebrew exhibit had been given last summer, before he had come to Harvard.

Martin added that no one had perceived the exhibit as political prior to the demonstration.

David H. Partington, assistant librarian for the Middle Eastern Collection, said yesterday that financial support from the Friends of the Hebrew Collection had made possible the frequency of library exhibits on Hebrew literature.