ZGram - 8/25/2003 - "Orwell paraphrased: All children are equal, but some are more equal than others"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

August 25, 2003

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Think how many millions of children in the world have had to read The 
Diary of Anne Frank, at the insistence of Jewish pressure groups. 
Now read the following:


[START]

Children's author faces Jewish wrath

Tale of boy's life in West Bank prompts pressure groups to call for withdrawal

Fiachra Gibbons, arts correspondent

Saturday August 23, 2003

The Guardian

Jewish pressure groups are calling on a publisher to withdraw a 
children's book about a Palestinian boy growing up amid the intifada 
on the West Bank.

A Little Piece of Ground, by the multi-award-winning author Elizabeth 
Laird, is a fictional account of how a 12-year-old called Karim - 
whose family's olive groves have been confiscated by settlers - copes 
when his father is stripped and humiliated by Israeli troops.

As the boy is swept up in the protest against the occupation, and his 
friends make a fake bomb, he dreams of developing an "acid formula to 
dissolves the steel in Israeli tanks".

Macmillan has received three demands for the book to be pulped, and 
many bookshops are worried about stocking it, lest it provoke further 
protests from Jewish groups. So far, most of the attacks on Laird 
have come from North America, led by a chain of Canadian bookshops 
which made the first "vitriolic" complaint to her publisher. It is 
understood that others have come from Jewish pressure groups.

The New Zealand-born novelist wrote her book after visiting Ramallah 
as part of a British Council scheme to encourage writing for 
children. She denies the story is anti-Israeli.

"I did expect comeback, but to say that any criticism of Israel is 
anti-semitic is doing Israel a disservice. This is an important story 
that should be told. It shows a child under military occupation. It's 
terrible for the occupiers, and terrible for the occupied. I hope I 
have shown how awful it is for the soldiers too," said Laird, who has 
lived in Beirut and Iraq.

"There is already a great deal of understanding of Israel. All 
western people have felt sympathetic to Israel, for good reason 
often; and I don't think that should stop. The voice of the 
Palestinian child, on the other hand, has not been heard."

Children's writer Ann Jungman, a member of the liberal Jews for 
Justice in Palestine group, said that she admired the book but still 
found it biased. "It's not what is in there that I object to. It's 
what has been left out. There should have been a broader picture. All 
the Palestinians are reasonable, and all the Israelis are monsters."

Laird, who has won the Children's Book Award, the Smarties Prize and 
been nominated three times for the Carnegie Medal, claimed A Little 
Piece of Ground was not meant to explain politics. "It's true, lots 
of Israelis are trying to come to an accommodation with the 
Palestinians, and many refuse to serve in the West Bank. But the book 
is written through the eyes of a 12-year-old who just sees men with 
guns. It would not have been true to my characters to do otherwise.

"The book is not so much about politics as about brothers, 
friendship, falling in love and football."

The title comes from a scrap of waste land that Karim and his friends 
turn into a football pitch and which later becomes a flashpoint in 
the violence.

Laird insisted that everything in the book was drawn from real 
events. "A lot of the incidents have come from the main Israeli human 
rights website", while others were taken from the experiences of her 
collaborator, Sonia Nimir, a lecturer at Bir Zeit university on the 
West Bank.

Laird said she "toned down" several parts of the book, but that the 
motivation for suicide bombing had to be tackled. "Suicide bombings 
are going on in the background, and in one scene I have Karim's uncle 
questioning his [Karim’s] hunger for vengeance after his father is 
humiliated by the soldiers. He tells him: 'Does that make it right 
for us to go and bomb them?'"

Britain's children’s laureate, Michael Morpurgo, has defended the 
novel. "Sometimes we need more than escapism. No one but Elizabeth 
Laird could have written this book. She has lived in the Middle East. 
She knows it, loves it, grieves for it, and hopes for it."

He urged parents to encourage their 11- to 14-year-olds to buy it. 
"Read it, and we know what it is to feel oppressed, to feel fear 
every day. And we should know it, and our children should know it, 
for this is how much of the world lives," he said.

Macmillan refused to discuss where the demands to pull the book had 
come from, but Kate Wilson, managing director of its children's arm, 
said the firm had no intention of withdrawing it. "We thought long 
and hard about whether it was responsible to go ahead. We were aware 
it might provoke a range of opinions."

She said Macmillan was not afraid of enraging Jewish opinion: "I do 
not think there is a powerful Jewish lobby in this country. Elizabeth 
is a remarkable writer, with an amazing ability to get under the skin 
of her characters - we see the perspective of the soldiers as well as 
Karim's."

Ms Wilson maintained that the book directly confronted Karim's 
support for suicide bombers. "Its central theme in many ways is his 
clash with his uncle, who opposes them."

Family crisis

Extract from A Little Piece of Ground

Karim has watched his father being dragged from the family car and 
stripped at an Israeli checkpoint...

He [the young Israeli soldier] is terrified, Karim thought, with 
surprise. He thinks we're going to attack him.

He could almost smell the soldier's fear.

"She didn't mean any harm," he said, hating the placating note he 
could hear in his own voice. "I'll take her back to the car."

The soldier shoved at him roughly. "Take her. If there's any more 
trouble from you, you go over there and join the other terrorists."

Karim scooped Sireen up in his arms and ran back to the car with her.

Lamia had half opened the door, but another soldier was alongside the 
car now, ordering her to shut it. Karim handed Sireen to her and 
jumped into the back seat.

"Oh, my darling," sobbed Lamia, her face in Sireen's hair.

Karim was trembling violently. He felt sick with the backwash of fear.

Farah moved across and leaned against him, her thumb firmly in her 
mouth. Her other hand clutching at his arm. This time, he didn't push 
her away.

I hate them. I hate them. I hate them, he thought, unable now to look 
at his father, who still stood, reduced to an object of ridicule, 
beside the bewildered old man.

[END]

(Source: 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1028034,00.html )