Challenging Erasure: Books for kids that talk about Palestine and the lived experience of Palestinians

12 thoughts on “Challenging Erasure: Books for kids that talk about Palestine and the lived experience of Palestinians”

1. I didn’t really love books until I started reading the Nancy Drew books.

   Reply

2. I liked both Daniel and Ismail by Juan Pablo Iglesias and Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood by Ibtisam Barakat.

   Reply

3. Would love to have Ida in the Middle and sitti’s secret

   Reply

4. You asked, ‘what are your favorite children’s and/or YA books about Palestine?’ I’ll have to be honest… I’m not sure if I’ve read any or not… something I need to work on…

   Reply

5. Hi- These books do not provide balance. Israeli children are subjected to terrorism, rockets, and the threat of a nuclear Iran that pledges to destroy the US and Israel . Thousands of rockets are indiscriminately lobbed from Palestinian territories. We all want piece, but we need to teachall sides of the story.

   Reply

   1. Hi Elizabeth,
      I am not an expert in Middle East politics so I am not the right person to respond to your comment, but I will offer up a KidLit middle grade book that I found very illuminating, It’s Not So Awful Falafel by Firoozeh Dumas. In this book, I learned that the U.S. government assassinated the democratically elected leader of Iran because he pledged to privatize oil drilling. US oil companies and possibly UK (BP Oil?) would lose out.

      I think oil is a key driver in this conflict with the U.S. trying to protect access to oil, not for the sake of the price of gas at the pump for the U.S. consumer, but for the business titans who need cheap oil for their businesses.

      Look how the pandemic lockdown affected oil prices (the price per barrel of light sweet crude oil) … it actually inverted and went negative in price. And with Russia invading Ukraine, the price of oil shot up, causing inflation in the U.S. that only recently went down.

      Reply

      1. “Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell announced: “Although inflation has moved down from its peak—a welcome development—it remains too high. We are prepared to raise rates further if appropriate.” Powell’s hawkish tone on higher interest rates comes on the heels of a new survey finding U.S. consumer demand is contracting for both manufactured goods and services, which in turns threatens layoffs. Powell made no acknowledgement of the warnings voiced by a chorus of experts that continuing to raise rates would needlessly cause a recession and cost millions of Americans their jobs.”

         This just came out today.

         Reply

6. I am writing to register my concerns about many of the books on Alice Rothchild’s list. Many of these titles are not just biased, but engage in erasure of the Jewish connection with the land of Israel, contain libels against Israelis, and falsify events in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
   I review children’s books on the conflict for CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis. Almost all of the books to which I am alerting readers of this blog are exhaustively analyzed for accuracy on the “Biased Books” page on the Camera Education Institute website, at https://www.camera-edu.org/resources/biased-books/.

   I will post here a brief comment on some inaccuracies in each of these titles. For more detailed reviews, go to the Camera Education Institute “Biased Books” website.

   I will add one point: I note that there are links to Jewish books and to Holocaust books on Alice Rothchild’s guest blog. The acknowledgement of the Holocaust and the recognition of Jewish culture and religion do not absolve the writer of bias against Israel. If these books are biased and misinform young readers, that is what they are, and acknowledging the Holocaust doesn’t prove that bias against Israel does not exist on the part of the writer. I encourage readers of this blog to consult my CAMERA reviews for further evidence of the bias in the titles Alice Rothchild recommends. I also encourage readers to look at the CAMERA Education Institute website for a list of “Recommended Books” — titles that give Israel a fair shake.

   Baddawi, by Leila Abdelrazaq: The book repeatedly accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing”: “But Zionist gangs were ethnically cleansing villages all over Palestine, committing widespread massacres,” writes Abdelrazaq (p. 18). According to the methodical and reliable Israeli historian Benny Morris, Israel did indeed commit some atrocities (as did the Arabs, though Abdelrazaq never alludes to these). . . . Still, as Morris explains, if Israel had really had a policy of deliberate and determined “ethnic cleansing,” the population of Israel today would not be twenty percent Arab. That there was a war that the Arabs started by rejecting the UN Partition vote of 1947 is never mentioned. In fact, the reader will find no Arab-initiated violence in this book, no invasion by Arab armies in contravention of the UN partition vote. Nor are there any terrorists: Muhammad Abu Yousef Al-Najjar, assassinated by Israel in 1973, is a “Palestinian freedom fighter,” though he led the terrorist Black September organization, whose members were killed or violently expelled from Jordan under King Hussein in 1970.

   Ida in the Middle, by Nora Lester Murad. Murad has spoken openly of her refusal to show both sides of the argument (which should make her books unacceptable for use with young readers, who should be taught both sides of the conflict). Here is a quote from the CAMERA review: “Murad provocatively refuses to recognize that there may be multiple perspectives on the Arab-Israeli conflict, arguing that ‘if we start from the beginning of saying it’s a matter of settler colonialism, structural inequality, then we realize we would never have a debate between the slave owners and the slaves. You would never say, ‘You do the slave owner side, you do the slave side.’ To Murad, Israelis are as evil as slave owners.” As someone with family in Israel, I can vouch that none of my family members is morally equivalent to a slaveowner. Furthermore, within a few days of October 7th, Murad filmed herself on Instagram tearing down hostage posters. She claimed that posting pictures of kidnapped Israelis would exacerbate antisemitism. In fact, it is the denial that these people were captured and being held as hostages by Hamas that is antisemitic, as anyone with any conscience would understand. She also posted a video accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing. In Ida in the Middle, there are no Palestinian terrorists, only Israeli perpetrators; the Arabs of the West Bank are responsible for no aggressive acts; they are passive victims.

   Where the Streets Had a Name, by Randa Abdelfattah: Thirteen-year-old Hayaat lives in Bethlehem, where she is separated from Jerusalem by the security wall constructed by the Israelis against terrorist operations – although the rationale for the construction of this wall is never spelled out in Randa Abdelfattah’s Where the Streets Had a Name. Instead, it is described in loaded language as “the ubiquitous Wall, twisting and turning, devouring the landscape, towering over the fields, villages and towns.” This, of course, is a distortion, since most of the security fence is an electrified fence, not a wall at all. Because the context underlying the restrictions on mobility depicted in Abdelfattah’s anti-Israel screed is never outlined by the author, a young reader will come away from Where the Streets Had a Name with the impression that the Israelis make Palestinian lives miserable for their sport. That the security fence was constructed, and that checkpoints function, to ensure that armed terrorists and suicide bombers don’t enter West Jerusalem to bomb cafes or stab Israelis is never explained—perhaps because Israeli lives simply don’t matter?

   Code Name: Butterfly, by Ahlam Bsharat. In Bsharat’s version of life on the West Bank, English words have lost their meaning. For example, in the Western tradition, a martyr is someone who suffers for his faith, like St. Catherine broken on the wheel by the enemies of Christianity, or the Jews burnt alive in the Spanish Inquisition. But Code Name: Butterfly, published in Arabic in 2009 and released in an English translation in 2016, takes a curious twist on the term “martyr” – a word echoed multiple times in this short book. From the perspective of author Ahlam Bsharat, a “martyr” is any West Bank Palestinian killed by Israelis. The word “terrorist” is not in Bsharat’s vocabulary, so we don’t learn why any of the victims of Israeli gunfire she cites sympathetically might have been targeted by Israel. I object strongly to teaching young readers that vicious terrorists are martyrs.

   Tasting the Sky, by Ibtisam Barakat. Although this is a memoir of Barakat’s experiences as a child during the Six-Day War and its aftermath, her account of events is inaccurate. Yes, Israel fired the first shot, but this was pre-emptive, to defend itself against four enemy armies pledged to Israel’s annihilation: “Our basic objective will be to destroy Israel.” (Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, May 26, 1967); “In the event of a conflagration, no Jews whatsoever will survive.” (Ahmed Shukeiri, future chairman, PLO) Though the book reflects how events FELT to Barakat as a young child, it misrepresents history and erases the grave danger to the people of Israel in 1967. Barely two decades after the Holocaust, Israel was defending itself against a second annihilation, not perpetrating one on the Palestinians.

   Balcony on the Moon, by Ibtisam Barakat. The sequel to Tasting the Sky propagates more inaccuracies. Barakat’s Author’s Note offers a one-sided account of the history of what to her is exclusively “Palestine.” As she tells it, Israel was founded “because of the Holocaust and extensive Jewish immigration to Palestine, with the aim of making it a national home for Jews.” In other words, Jews were interlopers, with no roots in this region worth reporting to young readers. Is Barakat aware that there has been a continuous Jewish presence in Palestine since the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, well before the Arab invasion of the seventh century? Does she know that there were Jewish communities, some quite large, in Tiberias and Jerusalem? Why does she avoid mentioning Arab in-migration, which increased under the British Mandate in part because of economic activity and job opportunities generated by the Jews of the Yishuv (the Jewish settlement)? In fact, from 1922 to 1947, it was the cities with large Jewish populations, like Haifa, Jerusalem, and Jaffa, where the Arab populations increased most markedly, not the all-Arab cities. It is unconscionable to deny the long Jewish history in a land that has been holy to Jews for over three millennia.
   A Little Piece of Ground, by Elizabeth Laird. This toxic account of the life of two teenage boys in Ramallah during the Second Intifada is written by the wife of an official who worked in the 1970s with the now-discredited UNRWA, notorious for its pro-Palestinian bias and for the collaboration of some of its staff with Hamas and Fatah. In fact, Laird never explains the context behind anything the soldiers patrolling Ramallah do. What she lavishes her considerable stylistic gifts on is depicting Israeli soldiers not as what they really are — teenage boys in tanks — but as tanks incarnate: The Israeli tank that had been squatting at the crossroads just below the apartment block for days now had moved a few metres closer. Language like this dehumanizes and demonizes Israeli soldiers. As mutant green scaly monsters, they squat, crouch, crawl and pin the people of Ramallah down. One can only imagine the outcry if an American author applied similarly loaded terms to Black youths in an urban gang: “She could imagine the great hulking panthers, crouched behind the parked cars waiting to pounce on any passerby who neared their hiding place.” Caricaturing Israelis in the same way, though, gets a pass.

   Habibi, by Noami Shihab Nye. In Habibi, a friendship develops between a Palestinian girl and a Jewish Israeli boy, Omer. But Omer is the right kind of Jew – one who criticizes Israel. One of the most serious problems in the book is the misunderstanding of the Jewish concept of being a chosen people. Whether she consulted a rabbi or a Jewish scholar on the concept I do not know, but Nye misrepresents it in ways that have been used by antisemites to perpetuate a negative image of Jews. Her protagonist Liyana thinks it has to do with a sense of “being ‘chosen’ over anybody else” [my italics]. Though she allows Omer to present a different angle on Jewish chosenness — “Maybe Jews are also chosen to suffer. Or to be better examples” — in the end she concludes, “It seems like big trouble any way you look at it. I’m sorry, but I don’t like it. Do you believe you’re chosen? It sounds like the teacher’s pet.” Pace Liyana, chosenness in the Hebrew Bible means only that God chose the descendants of the patriarch Abraham, who first acknowledged the one God, to communicate the idea of God’s oneness to a pagan world. It does not mean that Jews believe they are better than others (“the teacher’s pet”). To the contrary, according to the Hebrew prophet Amos, it means that God will be particularly stringent with the Jews: “You alone have I singled out of all the families of the earth. That is why I call you to account for all your iniquities.” The proof that chosenness has nothing to do with racial superiority is that Jews believe the Messiah will descend from Ruth, a non-Jew born among the Moabites, the Hebrews’ enemies. But perhaps, at bottom, Nye attacks the Jewish idea of chosenness because it underpins the millennia-long Jewish claim that God selected them to live in the land of Israel, a claim that Nye herself cannot accept. Though Habibi is not anti-Semitic in intent, the author’s misreading of Jewish chosenness repeats an anti-Semitic trope that has perpetuated resentment of the Jew throughout history.

   These Olive Trees, by Aya Ghanameh. The author refuses to name Israel, calling it “the occupying state,” thus erasing Israel as a legally recognized sovereign state. Ghanameh’s Author’s Note delivers a false Palestinian narrative to vulnerable young readers. It is also cleverly crafted with an eye to inducting the adult reading this picture book aloud into the Palestinian narrative. Both will be told that “[t]he story of my family’s Nakba was only a fraction of a broader campaign to empty every Palestinian city of Palestinians.” But this was never Israel’s goal. As (left-wing) Israeli historian Benny Morris explains: “[A] ‘policy of expulsion’ in 1949 to 1956? If there was such a policy, why was it not implemented? Why did the number of Arabs in Israel increase steadily, in part due to infiltration of refugees back into Israel who, over the years, received identity cards?” Using primary-source documents in the Haganah Archive, the IDF Archive and the Israel State Archives, Morris states emphatically, “[T]here was no policy of expelling ‘the Palestinians’ and . . . the Haganah did not expel Arabs prior to April 1948 (with the exception of Arab Caesarea, where the motivation had nothing to do with the struggle with the Arabs).” In fact, the government’s policy was the policy of the Partition Plan, and that was not a plan for ethnic cleansing, but for accepting the presence of a large Arab minority. The Author’s Note falsely claims that the plan “to empty every Palestinian city” included Haifa. Not true. Morris again: “In Haifa, it was the Arab leadership that called on its population to evacuate (the Jewish mayor, Shabtai Levy, and the Histadrut labor federation activists asked them to stay).”

   Reply

   1. Hi Marjorie,
      I want to clarify that the links to Jewish and Holocaust books at the bottom below Alice Rothchild’s bio are from me. I typically list related posts on the book lists on my blog. It is simply to show related content on this topic.

      I would also note that CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, is considered by Media Bias/Fact Check to be right leaning:
      “These media sources are moderate to strongly biased toward conservative causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports, and omit information reporting that may damage conservative causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy. See all Right Bias sources.

      Overall, we rate CAMERA right biased based on advocacy and editorial positions that favor the right. We also rate them as Mostly Factual rather than High due to a lack of transparency.”

      https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/camera-committee-for-accuracy-in-middle-east-reporting-and-analysis/

      Reply

7. Thank you, Mia, for clarifying that the sources you have listed beneath Alice Rothchild’s guest blog are your selection.

   I would like to point out, therefore, that this list of sources is very biased against Israel, and should be balanced by other sources which present Israeli history and Israeli practices accurately and fairly.

   Here are two examples:
   1. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by the anti-Israel historian Ilan Pappe. Pappe is not a respectable historian. He is on record as saying that there is no such thing as objective history, just narrative. You can read historian Benny Morris’s critique of Pappe’s bias here, in a review from the New Republic:

   https://www.hnn.us/article/benny-morris-ilan-pappes-new-book-is-appalling

   In fact, Pappe openly admits that he is not an objective historian:

   “[M]y [pro-Palestinian] bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the ‘truth’ when reconstructing past realities. I view any such construction as vain and presumptuous.”

   Morris is a real historian, and he comes from the left (he was the first of the “New Historians” to dispel the myths that prevailed until the 1980s); he can be very critical of Israel, but he is objective. Here is an article, titled “Israel Had no ‘Expulsion Policy’ Against the Arabs in 1948” by Morris that counters the argument by Palestinians that ethnic cleansing was a policy of Israel in 1948.

   https://www.haaretz.com/life/books/2017-07-29/ty-article/.premium/israel-had-no-expulsion-policy-against-the-palestinians-in-1948/0000017f-eab3-d639-af7f-ebf779a50000

   2. Right To Maim, by Jasbir Puar. Puar is notorious for circulating the blood libel that Israel engages in organ harvesting from Palestinians. This is outrageous, as even during wartime, Israel cares for Palestinians.
   Here is a story that belies this libel:

   Hadassah Ein Kerem University Hospital in Jerusalem serves Jews, Muslims and Christians – and Palestinians. In 2005, its National Skin Bank, the largest in the world, sent the skin (the “homografts”) needed to treat the burns of a Gazan woman in a Beersheba clinic following a gas tank explosion. Five months after her treatment, Wafa Samir Ibrahim al-Biss was apprehended with explosives, attempting to blow up that clinic.

   What do Israelis actually do in medical outreach? Every week, the Israeli charity Save a Child’s Heart hosts a free clinic to screen, diagnose and follow up with children from the Palestinian Authority and Gaza. In 2019, they screened 576 Palestinian children. Save a Child’s Heart is a reflection of the truly big hearts of the Israelis the blood libel demonizes.

   It’s important to check your sources before spreading blood libels about Israelis, who are a very humanitarian people.

   Books to read for balance:

   1. Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, by Noa Tishby.
   Tishby is an American-Israeli actress; her family has deep roots in Israel. She is from the left, and a strong advocate for everyone’s human rights, including the rights of Israel’s minorities, including Arabs. Her book is a clear, fair exposition of Israeli history, and at the end there is a convenient appendix that strips down the points that she offers in detail to a few simple, clear sentences. I recommend for anyone who wants a fast course.

   2. Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn, by Daniel Gordis. Gordis is an American writer who moved to Israel. His blog, which I follow, explores all sides of every question. This book is a good history of the land; it is fair and balanced, and not hard to read. It captures the passion and poetry of the early Zionists. More than most histories of Israel, it stresses the arts, especially poetry. He is absolutely fair to Arabs as well.

   3. War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace, by Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf.
   Do you believe that if Israel just made more concessions to the Palestinians, there could be peace? Maybe it’s time to think again. This book, again by someone from the left (Einat Wilf believed the land could be divided, and advocated this as a member of Israel’s government for the left-wing Labor party) shows that this is never, ever what the Palestinians wanted. The authors show how, from the very first, the Palestinians blocked every attempt to resettle and help Palestinian refugees, because they wanted one thing, and one thing only: to destroy Israel, not to build a state of Palestine – an entity that did not exist historically, but could have existed if the Palestinians had agreed to a fair settlement. The evidence in this book shows how intransigent the Palestinians were.

   4. Industry of Lies: Media, Academia, and the Israeli-Arab Conflict, by Ben-Dror Yemini.
   This is by far the most densely factual book on the subject, but it will answer all kinds of blood libels (“genocide,” “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing”) and accusations against Israel. This book shows how Israel is a victim of a double standard – that is, of criticisms of its conduct that are not leveled against any other country in the Middle East. The chapter on the “severity scale”, for example, shows how the number of people displaced from Palestine in 1948 is really low in comparison with the numbers of people displaced, say, by the Turks in Armenia, or in Sudan. And the number of Palestinians who died was minuscule. It should make you ask, “Why the obsessive focus on the Jewish state?”

   Videos:

   If readers of your blog don’t want to plow through lots of history, may I recommend the following series of YouTube videos by Oren Cahanovitc, an Israeli tour guide. He has a Masters in Israeli history and knows the people, land and history of Israel like the back of his hand. He is used to talking to Americans, and I think your readers will enjoy him. He knows his facts!

   Here is my list of recommended Oren Cahanovitc videos:

   1. 10 Things you didn’t know about the Arab-Israeli Conflict:
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5JbNNtNKLc
   2. Free Palestine? No Thanks:
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNf40sBcvKk
   3. Geo History is 55% WRONG about the Arab-Israeli Conflict
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_JuY3iQ77A
   4. Israelis Must Listen to the Palestinians:
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svIa02N6JUo
   5. A Two-State Solution is not the Solution. So what is?
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-1wXx2-skM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-1wXx2-skM
   6. Are the Palestinians wrong about Everything?
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-x-cRReI1A

   One More Article:
   Does anyone believe that Israel causes excessive civilian casualties?
   Here is an article from Newsweek by John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point, who served for 25 years as an infantry soldier and two tours in Iraq. Spencer proves just the opposite – that Israel could teach the rest of the world’s armies how to conduct urban warfare more humanely:

   “Israel Has Created a New Standard for Urban Warfare. Why Will No One Admit It?”

   https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286

   Respectfully, Marjorie Gann

   Reply

   1. Hi Marjorie,
      Here is an map of the damage in Gaza:
      “This map illustrates a satellite imagery-based comprehensive assessment of damage and destruction to structures within the area of interest in the Gaza Strip, Occupied Palestinian Territory, based on images collected on 6 and 7 January 2024 when compared to images collected on 1 May 2023, 10 May 2023, 18 September 2023, 15 October 2023, 7 November 2023, and 26 November 2023. According to satellite imagery analysis, UNOSAT identified 22,131 destroyed structures, 14,066 severely damaged structures, and 32,950 moderately damaged structures, for a total of 69,147 structures. These correspond to around 30% of the total structures in the Gaza Strip and a total of 93,800 estimated damaged housing units. The governorates of Gaza and Khan Yunis have experienced the highest rise in damage, with 10,280 new structures damaged in Gaza and 11,894 in Khan Yunis. Gaza City had the highest number of newly destroyed structures, with 8,926 in total.”

      https://reliefweb.int/map/occupied-palestinian-territory/unosat-gaza-strip-comprehensive-damage-assessment-january-2024

      Amnesty International: “Damning evidence of war crimes as Israeli attacks wipe out entire families in Gaza”

      Since 7 October Israeli forces have launched thousands of air bombardments in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 3,793 people, mostly civilians, including more than 1,500 children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. Approximately 12,500 have been injured and more than 1,000 bodies are still trapped beneath the rubble.

      https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/damning-evidence-of-war-crimes-as-israeli-attacks-wipe-out-entire-families-in-gaza/

      Reply

8. Thank you, Mia, for clarifying that the sources you have listed beneath Alice Rothchild’s guest blog are your selection.

   I would like to point out, therefore, that this list of sources is very biased against Israel, and should be balanced by other sources which present Israeli history and Israeli practices accurately and fairly.

   Here are two examples:
   1. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by the anti-Israel historian Ilan Pappe. Pappe is not a respectable historian. He is on record as saying that there is no such thing as objective history, just narrative. You can read historian Benny Morris’s critique of Pappe’s bias here, in a review from the New Republic:

   https://www.hnn.us/article/benny-morris-ilan-pappes-new-book-is-appalling

   In fact, Pappe openly admits that he is not an objective historian:

   “[M]y [pro-Palestinian] bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the ‘truth’ when reconstructing past realities. I view any such construction as vain and presumptuous.”

   Morris is a real historian, and he comes from the left (he was the first of the “New Historians” to dispel the myths that prevailed until the 1980s); he can be very critical of Israel, but he is objective. Here is an article, titled “Israel Had no ‘Expulsion Policy’ Against the Arabs in 1948” by Morris that counters the argument by Palestinians that ethnic cleansing was a policy of Israel in 1948.

   https://www.haaretz.com/life/books/2017-07-29/ty-article/.premium/israel-had-no-expulsion-policy-against-the-palestinians-in-1948/0000017f-eab3-d639-af7f-ebf779a50000

   2. Right To Maim, by Jasbir Puar. Puar is notorious for circulating the blood libel that Israel engages in organ harvesting from Palestinians. This is outrageous, as even during wartime, Israel cares for Palestinians.
   Here is a story that belies this libel:

   Hadassah Ein Kerem University Hospital in Jerusalem serves Jews, Muslims and Christians – and Palestinians. In 2005, its National Skin Bank, the largest in the world, sent the skin (the “homografts”) needed to treat the burns of a Gazan woman in a Beersheba clinic following a gas tank explosion. Five months after her treatment, Wafa Samir Ibrahim al-Biss was apprehended with explosives, attempting to blow up that clinic.

   What do Israelis actually do in medical outreach? Every week, the Israeli charity Save a Child’s Heart hosts a free clinic to screen, diagnose and follow up with children from the Palestinian Authority and Gaza. In 2019, they screened 576 Palestinian children. Save a Child’s Heart is a reflection of the truly big hearts of the Israelis the blood libel demonizes.

   It’s important to check your sources before spreading blood libels about Israelis, who are a very humanitarian people.

   Books to read for balance:

   1. Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, by Noa Tishby.
   Tishby is an American-Israeli actress; her family has deep roots in Israel. She is from the left, and a strong advocate for everyone’s human rights, including the rights of Israel’s minorities, including Arabs. Her book is a clear, fair exposition of Israeli history, and at the end there is a convenient appendix that strips down the points that she offers in detail to a few simple, clear sentences. I recommend for anyone who wants a fast course.

   2. Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn, by Daniel Gordis. Gordis is an American writer who moved to Israel. His blog, which I follow, explores all sides of every question. This book is a good history of the land; it is fair and balanced, and not hard to read. It captures the passion and poetry of the early Zionists. More than most histories of Israel, it stresses the arts, especially poetry. He is absolutely fair to Arabs as well.

   3. War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace, by Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf.
   Do you believe that if Israel just made more concessions to the Palestinians, there could be peace? Maybe it’s time to think again. This book, again by someone from the left (Einat Wilf believed the land could be divided, and advocated this as a member of Israel’s government for the left-wing Labor party) shows that this is never, ever what the Palestinians wanted. The authors show how, from the very first, the Palestinians blocked every attempt to resettle and help Palestinian refugees, because they wanted one thing, and one thing only: to destroy Israel, not to build a state of Palestine – an entity that did not exist historically, but could have existed if the Palestinians had agreed to a fair settlement. The evidence in this book shows how intransigent the Palestinians were.

   4. Industry of Lies: Media, Academia, and the Israeli-Arab Conflict, by Ben-Dror Yemini.
   This is by far the most densely factual book on the subject, but it will answer all kinds of blood libels (“genocide,” “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing”) and accusations against Israel. This book shows how Israel is a victim of a double standard – that is, of criticisms of its conduct that are not leveled against any other country in the Middle East. The chapter on the “severity scale”, for example, shows how the number of people displaced from Palestine in 1948 is really low in comparison with the numbers of people displaced, say, by the Turks in Armenia, or in Sudan. And the number of Palestinians who died was minuscule. It should make you ask, “Why the obsessive focus on the Jewish state?”

   Videos:

   If readers of your blog don’t want to plow through lots of history, may I recommend the following series of YouTube videos by Oren Cahanovitc, an Israeli tour guide. He has a Masters in Israeli history and knows the people, land and history of Israel like the back of his hand. He is used to talking to Americans, and I think your readers will enjoy him. He knows his facts!

   Here is my list of recommended Oren Cahanovitc videos:

   1. 10 Things you didn’t know about the Arab-Israeli Conflict:
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5JbNNtNKLc
   2. Free Palestine? No Thanks:
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNf40sBcvKk
   3. Geo History is 55% WRONG about the Arab-Israeli Conflict
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_JuY3iQ77A
   4. Israelis Must Listen to the Palestinians:
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svIa02N6JUo
   5. A Two-State Solution is not the Solution. So what is?
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-1wXx2-skM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-1wXx2-skM
   6. Are the Palestinians wrong about Everything?
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-x-cRReI1A

   One More Article:
   Does anyone believe that Israel causes excessive civilian casualties?
   Here is an article from Newsweek by John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point, who served for 25 years as an infantry soldier and two tours in Iraq. Spencer proves just the opposite – that Israel could teach the rest of the world’s armies how to conduct urban warfare more humanely:

   “Israel Has Created a New Standard for Urban Warfare. Why Will No One Admit It?”

   https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286

   Respectfully, Marjorie Gann

   Reply