When the 'class leftist' is the victim - Haaretz

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Sun., November 11, 2007 Kislev 1, 5768

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Last update - 00:38 12/11/2007

When the 'class leftist' is the victim

By Efrat Even-Tzur

tags: Tamar Verete-Zehavi, Am Oved

Sruta (Aftershock) by Tamar Verete-Zehavi, Am Oved (Hebrew), 145 pages, NIS 59

In one of the stores of a large bookshop chain, I looked for "Rim hayalda mi'ein hod" (Rim, the Girl from Ein Hod), a book centered around a young girl from an Arab village whose lands were confiscated by Israel in 1948 and which, for years, was considered an "unrecognized settlement." As he scanned the bookshelves, the salesman said he was sure the book was in stock because he remembered seeing it and wondering who would ever want to buy a book like that. "Are you doing a paper on the image of the Arab in children's literature?" he wondered, checking his hunch. Looking for "Halomo shel Yusef," which is about a young boy from the Deheisheh refugee camp on Bethlehem's outskirts, another salesperson tried the Bible Stories bookshelf.

"Rim, the Girl from Ein Hod" (Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1999) and "Halomo shel yussef" (Yussef's Dream, Am Oved, 2003) were written jointly by Abedalsalam Yunis and Tamar Verete-Zehavi in Arabic and Hebrew. They focus on two Palestinian children - a girl and a boy - who live in localities that are not familiar territory in Israeli children's literature. Verete-Zehavi's latest book, "Aftershock," is apparently an attempt to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but from a different angle: It is aimed at teenagers - not at young children, like the two previous ones - and is solely in Hebrew. The narrative centers on a young Jewish girl from the heart of Israel's Zionist hegemony. The Other is not depicted in a direct, sympathetic manner but instead appears through the heroine's traumatic experience - a terrorist attack - and through the meetings she has with Palestinians in the wake of that event.

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The book is written from the perspective of Ella, a 15-year-old girl from Jerusalem, who describes how she deals with her injury and with the death of her best friend in the attack. It also depicts her encounter with Maher, a young Palestinian boy from East Jerusalem whom she meets in the hospital. Through her contact with him, Ella tries to answer some disturbing questions that prevent her from returning to "business as usual." After she gets in touch, via Maher, with the family of the female suicide bomber, Ella emerges from her state of mourning, and resumes her life with renewed energy. The book describes her therapeutic process against a political background, with both the plot's development and the many extra-textual references taking a back seat - for better or worse - to the heroine's emotional course.

A comparison of "Aftershock" with Verete-Zahavi's previous two books raises some interesting differences: The bilingual format of the latter made it clear that the children's books about Rim and Yusef were a political attempt to create a different kind of children's literature. In contrast, "Aftershock," which is part of the publisher Am Oved's juvenile series (with its exquisite overall design by Kobi Franco and Gila Kaplan), is readily available, being sold alongside books that deal, for instance, with how adolescents contend with their social problems. Although a roadblock can be seen in the background of the cover illustration, the excellent book jacket illustration (by Yifat Mittelman) focuses on the melancholy figure of a young girl. Nevertheless, the narrative is oriented toward Israel's political reality.

Inherently therapeutic Verete-Zehavi chose to adopt a political stance - not only in the way she refers to the sensitive issue of the conflict but also, even chiefly, in the way she presents the traumatic event into which she plunges her heroine. In "Aftershock," the trauma and the grief are processed through exposure to a radical Other, perceived as a direct threat to the heroine's physical existence and associated in various ways to the generator of the trauma: From an encounter with a young boy with a complex Palestinian awareness who cynically describes himself as a "good Arab" to the establishment of a relationship with the family of the suicide bomber herself.

We thus have here an interesting reversal: While conventional psychological approaches regard the ability to maintain a complex, non-monolithic, perception of the Other as a possible product of significant, constructive coping and processing, Verete-Zehavi describes contact with the Other as inherently therapeutic. The book proposes a fascinating, important combination of individual psychological processes and inter-group political relations. The encounter with the Other, who represents another national entity, appears here as a coping tool that the heroine herself develops and which she uses alongside other, recognized tools offered her by treatment professionals, such as writing about the traumatic event (which is indeed a recognized coping technique).

In contrast with the change that takes place in her emotional state, Ella's political positions do not undergo a metamorphosis in the course of the narrative: From the beginning, she defines herself as "the leftist in the class," and she maintains that stance to the end. The depiction of a 15-year-old as an individual with solid political views ("During this year alone, I participated in about a dozen demonstrations") amounts to a serious missed opportunity: Unlike the psychological insights she has of herself, which she shares with the reader, her political insights go unexplained, leaving the reader in the dark.

Missing information for instance, deeply troubled over the young girl who carried out the attack, who is the same age as her, Ella invents a "general impression" of the terrorist's character and, in every scenario she comes up with, envisions her as someone who has always savagely hated Jews. Subsequently, Ella decides to abandon the imaginary scenarios she has written because she does not feel they correctly or adequately explain the choice to carry out a suicide bombing. But the reader does not have the privilege of participating in the mental process by which she arrived at that conclusion. In addition, Ella is presented as someone who "already knows" about the difficult problems that the occupation poses for the lives of Palestinians; thus, the book scarcely touches on this subject. A much more extensive treatment could supply valuable information to young adolescent readers.

In sharp contrast with the author's refusal to convey information or political insights is her readiness to supply psychologistic messages, which sometimes cloud the literary richness of "Aftershock." The narrator, who is mature for her age, knows how to accurately describe her emotional "place," as if she were a young psychologist herself. Through her insights and through the suggestions offered her by the flat personality of the social worker whom she meets, we learn about characteristic ways that people respond to trauma and about recommended coping methods. But this dimension of the book is generated at the expense of other dimensions. In this context, the book's ending is its weakest part, because it depicts Ella's rehabilitation and her overly intensive, overly rapid, energetic return to life's routine; the depiction undermines the plot's credibility and the book's therapeutic aspect.

Despite the above problems, "Aftershock" is a readable, even engrossing book: The heroine's emotional difficulties arouse the reader's sympathy, and the plot's developments create tension and entice the reader to want to know more about the characters. It should be said, to Verete-Zehavi's credit, that she manages quite successfully to incorporate value judgments about feminism and multiculturalism.

Obviously, this book evinces a deep respect for the young reader and its therapeutic and political agenda will not significantly weigh down on the reader's enjoyment. While the author's earlier books were oriented toward parents interested in expressing some sort of political commitment, "Aftershock" does not demand such decisions. Like the rest of the books in the series, it is aimed at Israeli juveniles, including those who will feel challenged by the encounter with the Other depicted here. The book's political side is a welcome "added value," not its central feature.

Efrat Even-Tzur is a psychology student and a social activist; she has translated Demi's "The Empty Pot" into Hebrew (Babel publishers).

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