- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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".
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- "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.
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- "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."
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- "The book is not so much about politics as about
brothers, friendship, falling in love and football."
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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?'"
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- 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."
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- 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."
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- Family crisis
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- Extract from A Little Piece of Ground
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- Karim has watched his father being dragged from the family
car and stripped at an Israeli checkpoint...
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- He [the young Israeli soldier] is terrified, Karim thought,
with surprise. He thinks we're going to attack him.
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- He could almost smell the soldier's fear.
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- "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."
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- 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."
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- Karim scooped Sireen up in his arms and ran back to the
car with her.
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- 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.
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- "Oh, my darling," sobbed Lamia, her face in
Sireen's hair.
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- Karim was trembling violently. He felt sick with the
backwash of fear.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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