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Ryan, mother Wendy, and Jessica Fields are concerned about the news from the Middle East.
For American Jewish
children, media images of
the Arab-Israeli conflict
have ugly connotations
LILA ORBACH
Special to The Jewish News
Palestinian throws a rock.
An Israeli soldier shoots
and kills.
Bored by these familiar
television images, Ryan
Fields of West Bloomfield grabs the
remote control and switches to
another channel. But the report is the
same. An Israeli soldier is beating a
Palestinian boy.
"The Palestinians are right;'
Fields declares. "They want their
land and the Israelis won't give it
back. The Israelis took their land."
Fields' sentiments are not uncom-
mon among U.S. Jews. After six
months of violence in Israel's ad-
ministered territories, more and more
have been questioning Israel's
policies.
24
FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 1988
But Ryan Fields is 11 years old.
Since December, Americans of all
ages have watched the eruptions on
the West Bank unfold in living color.
Through it all, the politicians,
psychologists and journalists have
reported the impact of the distur-
bances on the Palestinian cause, the
Israeli political climate and the inter-
national arena.
Yet who has stopped to think
what kind of an effect the uprisings
are having on young American Jews
— the future champions for the State
of Israel and a potential source for
aliyah?
If Ryan's opinions are any indica-
tion, America's future support for
Israel may be in jeopardy.
R
yan is not alone. His sister,
Jessica, 9, sits next to him on
the couch and announces,
■
"Israel is just a place where wars take
place."
In living rooms throughout the
United States, Jewish children like
Ryan and Jessica have been introduc-
ed to a new picture of Israel. Gone are
the traditional portraits of the Israeli
as pioneer, kibbutznik or Holocaust
survivor. Today, the image is a man
in uniform, well-armed and ready to
fire.
In a religious school classroom in
Detroit's northwest suburbs, a group
of 12- and 13-year-olds were asked to
draw editorial cartoons depicting
Israel on its 40th anniversary.
Nearly all the pictures were the
same: A powerful Israeli with a large
machine gun spraying smaller and
weaker Palestinians with bullets.
In one drawing an Israeli soldier,
standing under a banner that reads
"Happy Birthday Israel," shoots a
barrage of bullets at a dead Palesti-
nian and screams, "Eat lead sucker?'
In another picture, a soldier shoots
while singing "Hava Nagila." In yet
another, a soldier laughs at the
Palestinians he just killed.
While evidence of a new view of
Israel is easy to uncover, parents,
teachers, religious leaders and child
psychiatrists said they had no idea
the uprisings are affecting American
youth so strongly.
"I'm shocked by my children's
answers," said Wendy Fields after
hearing Ryan and Jessica talk about
Israel. "I think it's a tragedy?'
"This comes as a total surprise,"
said Dr. Morris Weiss, a child
psychiatrist in Southfield. "I'm ap-
palled."
"It's terrible," said Rabbi M.
Robert Syme of Temple Israel. "It's
the Jewish soul that's in danger.
These pictures verify that our
children are developing the attitude
of Jews being the oppressors."
Despite the initial surprise, there
is little doubt where the children are
getting these ideas: television.
Young people between the ages of
6 and 11 watch about 27 hours of
television a week — spending the
equivalent of two months a year glued
to the screen. By the time the average
American child reaches 17, he will
have spent 15,000 hours watching TV
Quite likely, young Jewish children
receive more information about
Israeli politics from television than
from weekly religious school.
For many of these boys and girls,
the Israeli soldier has turned into
Rambo.
"Our kids see so much violence in
the media on a constant basis;' said
Rabbi Shmuel Lopin, principal of
Akiva Hebrew Day School. "Televi-
sion videos and the cinema are indoc-
trinated with violence, so the kids
simply transfer that violence to
Israel.
"These pictures are a reflection of
the violent atmosphere that exists
here. In America, violence is a way of
life. They do see the Israeli soldier as
Rambo. But I don't think this violence
is limited to their thoughts on Israel.
It's part of what America is today.
They just transfer that violence to
Israel and the Israeli soldier."
"They're really being propagan-
dized by the media. They really buy
it;' Dr. Weiss added. "It's as if there's
no neutralizing these mass media im-
ages. What they see on TV is so emo-
tionally powerful and potent, it can
wipe out a lot of what they learned?'
Since the spaceship Challenger
exploded on television before the eyes
of millions of children, there has been
an increased awareness of the power-
ful impact of the mass media on our
nation's young. But unlike the
Challenger image, which came and
went, pictures of the West Bank re-
main and are leaving their imprint.
"A picture is worth a million
words," said Dr. Steven Spector, a
child psychologist in Beverly Hills.
"Everybody is affected by these media
images, but children are vulnerable
and impressionable and identify with
what they see?'
"Adults have the advantage of an
historical sense and remembrance,"
said Dr. Weiss. "We can put this into
perspective, but kids can't."
While comments and drawings by
some children suggest they identify
with the Rambo image of the Israeli
soldier, others clearly empathize with
the Palestinian.
"The Palestinians seem like the
oppressed," Ryan Fields said. "At
least that's how it looks on TV, and
I don't have any other way to know."
No matter with whom the
children are identifying, experts say
their responses are alarming.
"If they identify with an image of
Israel as the big, powerful, aggressive
body doing horrible things to un-
protected people, it isn't good or