Sydney library withdraws book on Gaza genocide critical of US media coverage

A Sydney library has withdrawn a book critical of US media coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza from its shelves for “review” following multiple complaints, including one from a survivor of the 2025 Bondi Beach attack, local media reported Tuesday.

How to Sell a Genocide: The Media's Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza, by American writer Adam Johnson, was removed from Waverley Library, The Sydney Morning Herald reported, citing Waverley Council.

The library serves Bondi and surrounding suburbs in Sydney’s east, home to one of Australia’s largest Jewish communities and close to the site of the December 2025 terrorist attack.

“The book has been removed from library shelves for review, and council will further consider processes to ensure closer oversight of book selection,” a council spokesperson said on Tuesday.

Waverley Council said it had received multiple complaints about the book, which remains listed in the library’s catalogue and is still available to reserve.

The council, however, declined to answer questions about how many complaints it had received, the criteria used to remove books from its collection, when the review would be completed or whether its findings would be made public.

Published in April by long-established British publisher Pluto Press, the book argues that Israel’s war on Gaza could not have continued without the “active, sustained complicity” of the US media.

It also says major news outlets “systematically sanitised Israel’s war crimes, hid the US’s central role, and dehumanized the Palestinian people”.

Johnson said the complaints appeared to be largely focused on the use of the word “genocide” in the title.

“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," Johnson was quoted in The Guardian Australia.

"That it makes some people upset is unfortunate, but reality is often upsetting. This particular reality is especially upsetting … to the parents of the over 20,000 children killed by Israel in Gaza since October 2023. Do Sydney officials plan on removing pro-Israel books from their libraries because it potentially upsets these community members?” he further said.