Exporting Israel’s settler-colonial narrative by exploiting children

As Palestinians marked a year since the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza on 7 October, Israel’s settler-colonial society marked the occasion in selective oblivion. One example is a children’s book published by Yediot Books titled The Heroes of October 7th: Heroic Stories for Children, which the Times of Israel described as the first children’s book published in English by the publisher. Exporting Israel’s settler-colonial security narrative to the West through children’s literature couldn’t have been easier, and more hypocritical.

Israeli media noted that, “The stories don’t contain real descriptions of fighting or death, and don’t contain deep background about the events depicted.” Editor Hadassah Ben Ari explained that since the target audience is young children, the book focused on “friendship, camaraderie, giving, love and the warm Israeli-ness which all came vibrantly to life during the war.” The stories, she said, “explain the horrors in a way that also protects our children, and to tell them about moments of grace and heroism from the war.”

Without context, it is easy to dissect slivers of reality and construct a narrative that glosses over genocide.

But how about a book that would give readers the context of the Zionist colonial movement and what it stands for? How about detailing the Zionist paramilitary gangs’ early terrorism in Palestine, and how these terrorists were incorporated into the Israeli military? How about a description of the 1948 Nakba, while also telling children that Israel managed to displace 1.9 million Palestinians in Gaza in a shorter time frame, while killing at least 42,000 others, a figure that is disputed, and should be much higher? And that most of those killed were children and women?

Children could also be told that Israeli leaders planned and executed its genocide with US-supplied weapons, through starvation, routine displacement and heavy bombardment of areas where Palestinians sought refuge, with the destruction of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure including hospitals and schools. They could also be told that the entire “international community”, committed as it is to keeping Israel intact, is complicit in the genocide against Palestinians. And as a result, Israeli children can then discuss how ethical it is to have their government exploit their presence to promote a security narrative that is fake and has embroiled the entire world in war crimes in Gaza and violations of international law abroad. They could also discuss how and why their country has been deemed to be an “apartheid state”. Since the book is also targeted at a global audience, the same questions can be pondered by readers acting as outsiders looking in.

To live on stolen land, it is imperative to know the history of the dispossessed. However, eliminating the “deep background” behind 7 October – how Israel is said to have allowed the cross-border infiltration to happen to have an excuse to carry out a genocide, for example — is not good enough; context is everything in these matters. Children need to know that anticolonial resistance is legitimate, but genocide is not. Saving lives is a humane thing to do, but saving lives selectively is a colonial framework which Israel even applied in order to lay down its foundations.

Children, especially Israeli children, would do well to learn how David Ben Gurion was selective when it came to saving lives: “If I knew that it was possible to save all the [Jewish] children in Germany by transporting them to England,” he said, “but only half by transporting them to Palestine, I would choose the second.” Zionists were ready to sacrifice half of the Jewish children in Germany for the purpose of their settler-colonial enterprise.

This is what Israel is about. A cold-blooded killing machine that would bargain with the lives of children for a colonial presence and expansion.

No warmth, no grace, no heroism, no humanity.

Children in Israel and abroad should be taught that living in Israel is scary, not because of the Palestinian resistance, legitimate as it is, but because of Israel itself. If keeping children safe and addressing trauma is truly a priority, the truth must be made accessible.

Exporting Israel’s settler-colonial narrative by exploiting children