I thank David for continuing this discussion on a good level and now in a general line for all children's books. It is very important to have an exchange like this, only I would hope that it could become a 'round-table' discussion involving more of us. With that hope, I'll respond to David's points in order.
1. Just to be clear, I have no interest in promoting "guilt feelings" but I don't believe that "it is the Palestinians who have to take total blame for their situation". That statement implies Israel's actions are always taken without any choice as to how to respond. This is completely false. There are many instances of individual actions both at the command level in the IDF and regarding individuals' decisions on how to act that deny the humanity of Palestinians and in particular, Palestinian women and children. ANYONE who reads Ha'aretz, the Jerusalem Report, Jerusalem Post and other news services will be familiar to a greater or lesser degree with the many many examples. They are also reported on B'Tselem's (The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights In the Occupied Territories) Web site <http://www.btselem.org/index.asp>. All human beings were created in G-d's image and we are bound by Jewish values to recognize this as a moral value even in times of war. There also are international conventions regarding the conduct of war which set down standards of behaviour, or red lines, which Israel has agreed not to cross. If someone says in defence of certain IDF actions (collectively or by individual soldiers) that the other side behaves as badly or even worse, that is no defence at all. Why should Jewish soldiers emulate the worst actions of our enemies? That leads to corruption of our Jewish values and ultimately to the corruption of those who undertake those actions. If a book omits the negative side of war and terror, and only tells about the glory of being a shahid (suicide bomber martyr), or of the 'purity of arms' of the IDF, it is lying to children about the conflict. I think it was Golda Meir who once said that the thing she resented the most about the Palestinians was that they forced Israel to train her youth to become killers of human beings. I concur with David's sentiment, if not all of his actual words, that the Palestinian leadership has been very very destructive rather than giving positive direction to their people. This is not true of all of them, but generally speaking it is true and a terrible burden to them, in my view. But that doesn't acquit Israel in terms of its choices and actions. 2. Here, David opens his heart to the suffering of Palestinian children yet he clearly does not assign ANY responsibility to israel's actions - which takes us back to his point 1. It's as if it were the Palestinians, for example, who decreed the demolition penalty for a family's home if a member of the family became a terrorist. That is an Israeli policy of choice. David would like to see no books written by "Ellises" but only by "us", by which I take it he means Jews, or at least Jews who are prepared to "explain it within a framework which gives the complete picture from our point of view", by which I take it he means lay all the blame on the Palestinians and reject any responsibility falling on Israel. So that's back to point 1. again. Nevertheless, I do agree that it is important, essential to note that the progressive leadership within Palestinian society was minimal, and that their leaders' calls to action were followed by the bulk of Palestinians, such as what happened in 1947-49. At the same time, we must not omit the actions carried out by israel and Israelis during that period: both the good stuff and the shocking stuff - and I don't mean only Deir Yassin. I was fed a pap of whitewashed so-called history in kheder that I still see reflected in so many children's and adult books today. Anyone on this list who has not read Benny Morris' Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004) - a shocking 640 pages - ought to do so, in order to learn what happened on the Israeli side of that war. 3. David asks good questions here. How indeed are we Jews, both inside and outside eretz going to live "normal lives" during a time of conflict, of terror and war? If the direction now is, as David says, rather one of "conflict management" instead of "Conflict solution", then I would have expected much more management smarts and far less violence, provocation and other dismal actions on the part of Israel. The more extreme elements in the "settlers' movement" for example (not a quote from David) continue to be allowed to provoke Palestinian civilians, harm Palestinian children and generally to run rampant over Israel's own rules that supposedly govern their behaviour in the West Bank. Israel has not removed even a majority of the outposts and instant settlements that it has declared illegal. Israel has not implimented a rule of law among the extermists, but has allowed Palestinian children to be terrorised on their way to school, has allowed settlers to fire on Palestinian workers who are trying to pick their olives during the harvest season, been unable to halt the poisoning of Palestinian sheep and goats, etc. Even the Yesha Council has said that they were concerned with this extensive behaviour which the police and IDF authorities haven't been able to curb. Yes, "normal life for the Palestinians is the responsibility of the Palestinian leadership", as David said, but this ignores the fact that their lives are NOT normal to begin with because certain actions and policies of Israelis and Israel go far beyond what is necessary in terms of oppression, humiliation and imposition of inhumane conditions on the Palestinians. Land is blocked from its owners, then declared after the legal time limit to be "state land" and then sold/leased to developers for new settlements or expansion of settlements. Or Israeli lawyers are allowed to file 'declarations' (as in the case of Modein) that now dead Palestinian land owners have agreed to sell the land to their clients, when the signatures are known to have been forged. This is state sanc- tioned theft that is unnecessary in terms of protection from terror and in fact only increases the desperation of Palestinians. As Jews who love eretz, we must support those in Israel who are trying to curb these behaviours. Part of that is to select books that are critical of these thngs or that show the negative results that come from them - yes, with balance as to how the Palestinian leadership has acted. 4. Here I agree, we must be careful that "certain uncomfortable facts" are not "facts out of context". The problem is that one person's "context" is another person's lack of context, or lack of sufficient context. So how to be reasonable about it? I thought that Linda said it very well: It must be acknowledged that no book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is going to satisfy everyone. The issues are so fraught with hatred, resentment, prior assumptions, and group loyalties that com- plete balance is impossible to achieve. [Opening lines of her review of D. Ellis, Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak] And in a posting on Hasafran on March 6, she wrote: Few books, no matter what their subject, are without some flaws. Not every book concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is going to express only the Israeli point of view. Nor should it. To be well informed and to be able to make reasonable critical judgements, kids need to know more than one side of an issue... There is often a fine and fragile line between selecting books about Israel and censoring those that depart from the Israeli position or what we, as Jews, believe. Inaccuracies, bias, or skewed interpretations are not accep- table to me as a reviewer, but in the case of subjective opinion, as expressed by the children interviewed in Three Wishes, I would err on the side of inclusion, if that is the alternative to censorship. In the hope that others will join in the discussion with David and me, b'shalom, Bernard. Bernard Katz, former head, Special Collections and Library Development McLaughlin Library, University of Guelph author, descriptive bibliog. of L.M. Montgomery's books (in progress) and founding treasurer, AJL - Ontario Chapter Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the AJL =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: Hasafran @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
