David Elazar poses some questions in his posting about book selection
and censorship. However, he tries to draw a parallel between anti-semitic or
Holocaust denial books, or "children['s] books glorifying the acts [of]
Al Qaida", and books about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I
believe his remarks are related to our discussion about Ellis' book
"Three Wishes", so I'd like to say that this book is about the effect
of the conflict and the terror on the lives of Palestinian and Jewish
Israeli children. It is not about the conflict per se. It is not an
anti-Israel book, in my opinion. It does not deny the Holocaust, nor
does it glorify the actions of Al Quaida. These are tangemtial red
herrings in discussing this book.
I very much agree with David that we have a profound responsibility
to our Jewish children to teach them about our history and our people
and our relationship to Eretz Yisroayl. This includes not skipping
over certain uncomfortable facts and not denying that there were
significant reasons for what the Palestinian leadership did, though
we certainly will not agree with most of them, from the time of the
Khibat Zion and the Bilu movements in the 1880's through to the end
of the mandate period, including the UN's partition plan.
How many of us are prepared to say to our students and children that
at the time of the UN vote Jews represented just under 1/3 of the
population of Palestine from the Jordan to the Mediterranean? How
many of us are prepared to point out that the Balfour Declaration
talks about a "national home for the Jewish people" and not a
political state, and that it says
"nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious
rights" of the non-Jewish people in Palestine? When I was a child and
went to kheder, none of that was mentioned, nor was it said that Jews
made up only 17% of the population in the census taken by the British
late in 1922.
Yes, we Jews have a very special deep and spiritual connection to
eretz. Ellis says this, by the way near the beginning of her
introduction. Having this book in one's school or shule library's
collection is not merely a
matter of even handedness. It is an important book, one that speaks
to children from the hearts of other children who exist in a
war-and-terror torn environment we all love. It raises uncomfortable
questions with our children that we adults must try to answer, and
the contextual material Ellis provides is a good starting place for
that. B'shalom,
Bernard.
Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author
and are not necessarily endorsed by the AJL
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