Amidst the recent surge of books for young readers on the Arab-Israeli conflict, we’re beginning to see a few titles focusing specifically on Gaza. Picture books, like Sarah Musa’s My Garden over Gaza and anthologies like Refaat Alareer’s Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine, are designed with one purpose: to engage young readers’ sympathy for the sufferings of their Gazan contemporaries, leaving a lasting image of Israel as a cruel, oppressive nation.
The picture book Sitti’s Bird: A Gaza Story features all the nostalgic motifs common to pro-Palestinian children’s literature: traditional foods prepared by the grandmother (“Sitti’s maqlouba is the best,” declares Malak), traditional Palestinian dances, and traditional Palestinian thobehs (robes). The only stock motif missing is the olive tree, a staple of most of the other Palestinian children’s stories I’ve reviewed on this page.
Author-illustrator Malak Mattar is a Palestinian from Gaza. As she explains on her Facebook page, “I started painting in 2014 when the 51-day Israeli assault was raging around as a way to discharge all of my negative energy.” The paintings in Sitti’s Bird may well draw on Mattar’s vivid memories of that traumatic period, but it is hard to believe that they were painted back in 2014 by the little girl in the pictures, since Mattar, who was born in 1999, was a teenager when the war broke out. There is something less than honest about presenting sophisticated paintings like this book’s pseudo-naïve illustrations as authentic mirrors of childhood innocence.
In Mattar’s story, Malak is a sweet little girl with a special gift for painting in brilliant colors to express her feelings. She lives a happy life “under siege” in Gaza near her beloved Sitti, with whom she has an especially close relationship (another staple of Palestinian stories for kids). Sitti has a bird Malak loves, and one day, while observing the bird in its cage, Malak asks her grandmother ingenuously (or disingenuously, if we recognize the motive behind the words the author puts in Malak’s mouth), “’Sitti, are we in a cage too?’ Sitti smiles sadly and says: ‘Habibi, you can fly in your dreams.’”
The metaphor is clear: We who live in Gaza are caged innocents. All we can do is wait passively, dreaming of salvation. Thus Hamas, which does a lot more than dream, is erased from the story Malak Mattar delivers to her young, uninformed readers, who will walk away from Sitti’s Bird having learned an unambiguous, though false, “fact”: Israel bad, Gazans good.
The next day, while the girls in Malak’s class are dancing, they hear loud explosions: war has broken out. The children are sent home, where they will remain for 50 days as the IDF’s Operation Protective Shield rolls out. it is a terrible time for the family, but Malak finds solace in her art, painting “what is in her mind: her family and friends, a bird flying . . She paints all day and it makes her feel better.” Then, in the middle of the war, her Sitti’s bird lands on her window sill. The war is destructive, Sitti’s home is destroyed, but Malak reassures her grandmother on the phone that her bird is alive!
Malak returns to school, where her touching wartime paintings are exhibited, prompting an invitation to an international exhibit. Once again, the Gazan child is victimized, denied permission to leave Gaza. Crestfallen, she sleeps and dreams that “Sitti’s bird flies her all around the world.” The book ends on a note of hope — that her art will free her to do just that.
To erase Hamas from an account of any of Gaza’s wars is to lie to your readers. Yes, Gazans, like Malak’s family, were trapped in Gaza, but why? Gaza hasn’t been occupied by Israel since the IDF forcibly removed every last Israeli from the strip in 2005. But, rather than building a country, Gazans proceeded to elect an antisemitic terrorist organization to govern them. Israel didn’t impose a blockade or movement restrictions from the get-go; these came in after they uncovered munitions and materials for military infrastructure Hamas had smuggled in. Yet you wouldn’t know from Mattar’s version of events that these restrictions were reactive, not malicious.
Young readers will encounter no Israeli victims in a war in which Hamas launched 3,356 rockets, 2,303 of which hit southern Israel. The 83 Israeli civilians wounded, the three killed, the 463 soldiers wounded and the 64 killed – all are invisible in this account. If Malak’s Sitti, like many Gazans today, lost her home to Israeli rockets, this is because Hamas embeds military infrastructure, including rocket launchers, in civilian residences (a strategy outlined in “Hybrid Threats: Hamas’ use of human shields in Gaza,” a report by the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence). If Sitti’s Bird is any indication, Hamas’s goal — to make Israel look bad by setting up a situation in which they can’t defend their civilians without victimizing Gazans – has been achieved.
The Author’s Note also lays all liability on Israel, informing the adults who read this book to children that “[s]ince 2007, Israel has blockaded Gaza, severely restricting access to food, medical supplies and building materials, and subjected Gazans to recurrent invasions and bombing attacks.” It’s not surprising that Hamas’s attacks on Israelis are entirely missing from this note. It’s written by anti-Israel educator Jody Sokolower, who has collaborated on a “Teach Palestine” curriculum with the Middle East Children’s Alliance, a radical pro-Palestinian organization which raised $75,000 in 2009 for antisemitic British MP George Galloway’s “Viva Palestina” convoy, as detailed in my review of Sokolower’s Determined to Stay on this page. Sokolower works with MECA’s Executive Director Zeiad Abbas Shamrouch, who has claimed that “Zionists have never abandoned their plan to get rid of Palestinian [sic] completely and to confiscate all Palestinian land. . . . Palestinians in East Jerusalem face ethnic cleansing every day.”
In the guise of a poignant story, Malak Mattar offers vulnerable young readers – and the adults who read the book to them – an anti-Israel screed that erases Israeli suffering and lays all responsibility for Gaza’s misery at the feet of the Israelis. Hamas isn’t exactly exonerated – it’s deleted.