A pro-Palestine children’s book sparked outrage in New Jersey as Jewish groups protested, resulting in the cancellation of a reading at a public library.
Republican New York Rep. Lee Zeldin explained during Sunday’s “Fox & Friends” why the book was such a problem. (RELATED: Zeldin Addresses Feud With Omar Over Her Support For Anti-Israel BDS Movement)
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“I think it’s very justified and it’s understanding what an intifada is, the first intifada, the second intifada, we’re talking about violence, gunfire was used, suicide vests, a lot of death, rock throwing,” Zeldin began. “Intifada is looked at as a vehicle for the Hamas and Palestinian jihad in order to fulfill their mission and the charter they call for the murder of all Jews and they say that jihad is an obligation.”
Zeldin went on to recall the recent videos showing children from the Muslim American Society of Philadelphia, singing about killing the infidels and cutting off heads in the name of Allah.
“What we see out of Congress, on college campuses and abroad, it’s bad timing and it’s bad substance to be providing to the kids whether it’s here or over in Israel and the Palestinian areas,” he added.
“Fox & Friends” host Jedediah Bila explained that the book in question, “P is for Palestine,” included in its alphabetical list the sentence, “I is for intifada.”
“It’s arabic for ‘rising up for what is right if you are a kid or a grown-up,’ so when you look at this the graphics are geared toward children, this is a children’s book it calls for this rising up and the question most people have when they look at that is what exactly are you calling for what type of rising up are you hoping this incentivizes in people, in children, in particular,” Bila added.
My old hometown thought it would be cool to teach children, in a town full of Jews, that “I Is For Intifada.” Be a good liberal citizen and kill the Joos in your class, kids. https://t.co/SFOdqmZXgj
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) May 10, 2019
Zeldin concluded saying that the way the word has been used in the past had to be considered.
“I think history is an important lesson in looking at what has happened over the course of the decades past when it has taken place and Hamas has been involved in it, Islamic … Palestinian Islamic jihad has been involved in it, people have died,” he explained. “There were many suicide bombings in the 2000s when the second Palestinian intifada took place, there are people who call for a third Palestinian intifada with the goal of wiping Israel off of the map, so understanding what that word means, it’s really important to see how an intifada has been used in the past.”