The Politics of Teaching Palestine to Americans: Addressing Pedagogical Strategies

285 Pages·2011·5.24 MB·English

by  Marcy Jane Knopf-Newman (auth.)

T he P olitics of T eaching
P alestine to A mericans
Also by Marcy Jane Knopf-Newman
Beyond Slash, Burn, and Poison: Transforming Breast Cancer Stories into
Action
The Sleeper Wakes: Harlem Renaissance Stories by Women (editor)
The Chinaberry Tree & Selected Writings by Jessie Redmon Fauset (editor)
T he P olitics of T eaching
P alestine to A mericans
A ddressing P edagogical
S trategies
Marcy Jane Knopf- Newman
THE POLITICS OF TEACHING PALESTINE TO AMERICANS
Copyright © Marcy Jane Knopf- Newman, 2011.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-11688-7
All rights reserved.
First published in 2011 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
I SBN 978-1-349-29756-6 ISBN 978-1-137-00220-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137002204
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.
Knopf-Newman, Marcy Jane, 1969–
The politics of teaching Palestine to Americans : addressing
pedagogical strategies / Marcy Jane Knopf-Newman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Palestine—Study and teaching—United States. 2. Arab-Israeli
conflict—Study and teaching—United States. 3. Zionism—United States.
I. Title. II. Title: Addressing pedagogical strategies.
DS115.95.K56 2011
956.940071(cid:2)073—dc23 2011020076
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: December 2011
Transferred to Digital Printing in 2012
For Laila Shereen- Sakr who first opened my eyes
To the memory of my grandmother Marian Newman Gibbons
who taught me about activism
For Ziad Abbas and Areej Ja`afari, and all
Palestinians, so they may return
Contents
Preface i x
Acknowledgments x xiii
Introduction 1
1 On American Zionist Education 19
2 Separate and Unequal: On Coexistence 65
3 Narrating the Nakba, Teaching Palestine 103
4 Hip- Hop Education and Palestine Solidarity 149
Conclusion 1 93
Notes 197
Select Bibliography 2 37
Resources 2 45
Index 249
Preface
A
t my grandmother’s recent funeral an elderly man approached
me inquiring, “What’s a nice girl like you doing in Lebanon?” I was
taken aback; I was not expecting to have to enter into a political dis-
cussion in my time of grieving. My friend Laila came to my rescue by
gently describing the landscape and beauty of the country. We both
knew where the conversation was heading; she attempted to divert it.
Unfortunately, he persisted in steering the conversation in a differ-
ent direction, “Well, you should tell them to make peace with Israel
because Israelis want to go skiing there.” My grief returned to the
rage that I often feel when I am in the United States. I replied, “Well,
perhaps you should tell them to stop bombing us then there will be
peace.” Under normal circumstances I would have said more, but it
was enough to silence him and he walked away, likely with the sense
that I’m not the nice girl he assumed me to be.
As I sifted through my grandmother’s papers after the funeral, I
discovered some of my own from my mother’s funeral eighteen years
earlier. There were two certificates from the Jewish National Fund
(JNF) saying that trees had been planted in her name to honor her
memory. I cringed as I recalled these papers knowing now what they
mean in ways that I hadn’t even begun to understand in 1992. When I
first received them I felt touched, not understanding the implications
of what planting trees in Israel meant. It would be another decade
before I began the work of unlearning what I knew about Israel and
understanding my role in it.
I grew up in what was perhaps a typical, liberal, Jewish, middle-
class home in Los Angeles. During the first eight years of my life my
biological mother and father raised me, although they were divorced,
and my maternal grandparents assisted with my upbringing. We did
not go to synagogue, even for the holidays when many secular Jews
attend, but we did celebrate Passover each year—t he holiday when
Jews pledge “next year in Jerusalem.” These cultural commemora-
tions were Zionist; in other words, they served to foster an unques-
tioned support of Israel. One of my strongest memories of this time
x Preface
Figure 0.1 USA Independence Park, funded by the JNF.
was of my maternal grandfather putting me to bed. Part of this ritual
included saying prayers. But it was a rather generic prayer from the
eighteenth century, “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.” He also would
make me repeat the Golden Rule to him each night, “treat others as
you would like to be treated,” something that would later open me
up to questioning Zionism, though that was not his intention. The
subject of Israel would certainly come up on a regular basis, usually
when my family would discuss current events, and while I cannot
recall specifics, a Zionist view was imparted to me if only through the
emotional thrust of adult conversations.
Friendships in childhood also contributed to the emergence of my
Zionist beliefs, perhaps more than my family. Like many Americans
I grew up in a neighborhood with children whose families were just
like mine: secular, Zionist Jews. At school, however, I was exposed
to other points of view because children came from all over the city
and all over the world. But my closest friend through much of my
childhood was Israeli. She spoke Hebrew in her house, and I spent
most of my time after school and summers at their house. During
the summers I was sent to Zionist summer camps, although I can-
not remember what ideas were instilled in me there. But one thing
Preface xi
set me apart from all the Jewish children I knew: they all went to
Hebrew school and I didn’t. I asked my parents if I could go and
they consented. At the time I was not sure what that would entail,
but on some level I imagined that I would learn Hebrew and more
about my religion. On some level this is what I got: I learned how
to read Hebrew enough for my bat mitzvah (though I never learned
what those words I read meant) and I learned about Jewish holidays
(although we never read the Bible). Perhaps I never studied the Bible
or became fluent in Hebrew because I started much later than my
peers. What I did get was a healthy dose of Zionism, as if it replaced
Judaism. The textbooks in class focused on Israel, and class time was
a place to use that material to foster an emotional bond with this place
halfway around the world.
As I got older most of my friends from Hebrew school would
spend summers living on a kibbutz and continuing Hebrew stud-
ies in Israel on Ulpan (there was no Birthright program then grant-
ing young Jews free trips to Israel). 1 Although I remember feeling
tempted, I never went, possibly because I did not want my parents to
incur that expense. But I did continue with Sunday school in a pro-
gram called Havurat Noar, which was a cultural studies curriculum
covering themes such as World War II, Israel, and Soviet Jewry. We
spent time in the classroom exploring the subject and then joined
other youth from the Los Angeles area for a weekend camp on the
topics. We would act out various scenarios related to the subjects we
studied, sing songs, and participate in political activities such as peti-
tioning political leaders to help Soviet Jews move to Israel.
My father, who sees himself as a liberal, secular Jew, has always
been a Zionist and I’m sure he was pleased when I first wanted to
learn about my religion. When I was eight he met a woman whom
he later married. She was Christian and contradicted the message my
father always gave me, which was that I must marry a Jewish man.
After their marriage I spent an increasing amount of time at their
house, until I turned thirteen and moved in with my father and step-
mother, who became my mother. My new living situation was trans-
formative. For one thing my family was now half Christian and so we
celebrated holidays like Christmas and Easter, although my mother
converted to Judaism the same week as my bat mitzvah. But more
importantly, perhaps, my new mother and my new grandmother were
powerful forces in my life. My mother was a journalist who indirectly
taught me to question and to research. She had also been an activ-
ist against the Vietnam War and was a feminist; she conveyed to me
the importance of struggling against injustice. My grandmother was