Images in Children’s Books Reflect Depth of Hatred Between Arab, Jew

Israeli soldiers are drawn as dogs and Jewish settlers as rats toting rifles. As for the Arabs, they are depicted as having sinister mustaches and jagged scars across their cheeks.

The drawings are not the work of political cartoonists on one side or other in the Arab-Israeli conflict. They are illustrations for children’s books meant to entertain and teach Palestinian or Israeli youngsters.

Prof. Adir Cohen, author of a study of Hebrew children’s literature called “An Ugly Face in the Mirror,” says such books give birth to lifelong hatreds among Israelis and Palestinians.

“We learned from Freud how stories and fairy tales enter our subconscious. . . . It infiltrates to those places of the subconscious and comes up repeatedly,” said Cohen, head of the education department at Haifa University.

He described Arabs in Hebrew children’s books as having “a huge terrible mustache and scary eyes, the nose of an eagle . . . a scar and a narrow forehead.”

“We are talking about processes of dehumanization that are connected to the (Arab-Israeli) struggle, connected to defense and wars,” he said. “It is much easier to fight a roach.”

Cohen used as an example the typical detective stories for young boys--who in a few years will be soldiers--in which the Israeli hero battles Arab murderers, bandits or terrorists.

In Avner Carmieli’s “The Young Detectives Settle in the Wild Negev,” a young hero overcomes hundreds of Arabs, among them kings. He lines up his prisoners and strides up and down shouting:

“Left, left--faster Gamal, Abdul, Nasser! Straighten your backs Hussein and Faisal! Look front Nuri a-Said!”

The book goes on to explain how “the kings and dictators and leaders marched forward quickly” under his orders. The names used are typically Arab, but Gamal Abdul Nasser was also the late Egyptian president who was one of Israel’s chief enemies.

Many of the Hebrew books with such messages are aimed at boys in their pre-teens. Similar Arab literature is intended for even younger readers who in other societies might be reading about fairy princesses.

In Nasser Abed Alaltif’s “The Flower Beauty Queen,” Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank are pictured as rats wielding rifles. Former Prime Minister Menachem Begin curls his dragon claws over an Arab village in Hamdan Youssef’s “The Sad Times of Deir Yassin.”

Khawla abu Bakr, author of a study called “The Political Socialization of Palestinian Children by Means of Arab Children’s Literature,” says West Bank children’s books have as many stereotypes as Israeli works.

“The (Israeli) soldier is always depicted as a wolf, a chicken, an elephant, dogs,” she said. “Human figures are always seen as bureaucrats, inconsiderate officials, police who break arms or cruel soldiers.”

Abu Bakr, an Arab Israeli from the Jewish-Arab seaside town of Akko, defended the stereotypes of Israeli soldiers as a reflection of the Arab children’s daily life.

For example, she said, a story by Rawdeh Alhodhod called “The Secret of the Red Devils In El Bire” tells of Arab boys on a trip who are arrested after one of them throws a stone at an army jeep.

Youngsters often have been at the forefront of the Palestinian uprising that began in December, 1987. Thousands of youngsters have been arrested, and 158 Palestinian children ages 16 and under have died of Israeli army or civilian gunfire.

Palestinian children’s books also make references to the real world. The Deir Yassin mentioned in Hamdan Youssef’s book was an Arab village where more than 200 Palestinian men, women and children were massacred by Jewish militiamen in 1948.

Another feature of the Arab children’s books is a clearly stated moral. The story of the arrested boys concludes: “Our enemy is not the boy but the soldier. . . . (The boy) is a hero and did nothing wrong to be punished for. You have to suffer and be a man.”

Cohen agreed that the intifada , or Palestinian uprising, enforces the message in the Palestinian books, but he noted many were published before the revolt. “No doubt, had we known how to read this literature correctly years ago, we would have seen how they were preparing for the intifada ,” he said.

For his study, Cohen examined more than 500 Hebrew works and interviewed hundreds of Jewish children to determine the influence of the books. Abu Bakr studied 300 books written in Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.

Cohen said he hoped a new stream of Israeli children’s literature stressing coexistence would gain in readership. But he added that adventure stories featuring Israeli heroes and wicked Arabs remain more popular.

Abu Bakr said stories without stereotypes are too much to expect from an occupied people.