Following is an excerpt from an interesting post by Noam Sheizaf over at +972. Read the entire piece here.
When I was a kid, I loved Danni Din stories. Their hero was wonder-kid Danni Din, which became the worlds’ only invisible person after mistakenly drinking a strange liquid left on the window by the reckless Prof. Katros. As befits superheroes of his kind, Danni didn’t take advantage of his unique condition by rushing into the girl’s dorms, but instead dedicated his childhood to helping Israel’s security forces. Danni Din fought in the Six days war, caught terrorists and rescued IDF prisoners, and though even at a very young age I sensed there was something tragic in his condition (he was to remain invisible forever, not to mention the fact that he never seemed to grow up), I dreamed of getting the opportunity to perform such heroic acts for our country myself.
Last week, in the wake of another round of the endless debates over the “Palestinian incitement”, I got an e-mail with pictures of the front (above) and back cover of one of the latest Danni Din stories, published in 1997. The author of the mail, an Israeli parent, was shocked to see the militaristic tone in the book his son, a second grader and an avid reader, brought home from the public library one day.
“Saving the president”, the 1997 Danni Din story, featured a new heroine: Dina Din, the invisible girl. The book has a somewhat bizarre plot: the invisible kids are abducted by extraterrestrials (the late 90’s were the days of the X-Files mania), only to escape after a fierce battle, in which they take control over the aliens’ spaceship. Headed back to earth, they intercept a plot by Hamas to send a flying suicide bomber that would crash into president Bill Clinton’s Air Force One – on his way to Israel, naturally – with the intention of blowing up the plane and killing all its passengers.
“Will our invisible heroes succeed in saving the beloved president and the planes passengers from death?” asks the back cover.
Danni Din’s war on Arab terrorists is not unique. Almost every adventure book I remember from my childhood featured at least a handful of evil Arabs (never mention the P word), if not full Egyptian military divisions. Some of the Arabs in those books were thieves and kidnappers, but most of them were terrorists.
The best known of these books were the “Hassamba” series, featuring a group or kids operating like a secret army unit in the service of Israel’s defense, getting their orders directly from the most senior generals. These books weren’t about politics: While Shraga Gafni, the author of Danni Din series (as well as many other Israeli classics), was a rightwing ideologue , Hassamba’s Yigal Mossinson was a Tel Aviv bohemian. His books were a bit more sophisticated, but the militaristic-nationalist tone was largely the same.
Whenever I hear Israeli advocacy groups speaking of incitement, I think of Danni Din and Hassamba. I also remember the maps of Israel we use to draw in school: none of them featured the green line, just one big happy Jewish state, from the sea to the Jordan; and we never marked the Palestinian towns on them, only Jewish cities. Does this qualify as incitement?
Read the entire piece here.
and of course there is no Palestinian/Arab incitement at all. It is all mistranslations or a Zionist conspiracy to make it appear that there is incitement.
I think I get it.
Obviously, you don’t. Don’t feel too bad about it, though. I’m sure you’ll be spoon-fed some links from MEMRI to regurgitate at us in the next few minutes.
Good Lord, have I been making life difficult for myself! All my frickin life I have been, with admittedly limited success, trying to negotiate the needs of others versus my own. I didn’t know that all I had to do is start yelling “I know you are but what am I?” To have all my demands instantly met, and my opponents discredited.
If only I had gone to Israel that summer long ago when I had the chance!
Really, I don’t get it, DBG? What is supposed to be the pay-off, the good for, oh, at the very least, Israel, out of this kind of stuff? What happens when your bluff is called, as it damn well should be?
DBG: – “and of course there is no Palestinian/Arab incitement at all. It is all mistranslations or a Zionist conspiracy to make it appear that there is incitement.
I think I get it.”
Oh Nooooooooes, D, I do not think you ‘get’ it, at all, at all, at all.
It actually CLEARLY states, in the article linked,
But of course DBG you never read the full article at the link provided – so ended up looking like a complete fool, as per . . . . .
The responsibility is about Israel and the discussion is about propaganda for children.
Did you get your first edition of Captain Israel ?
link to captisrael.com
link to 972mag.com
This newest version of youth propaganda has moved beyond the KZ soft porn kitch that the generation of Barak and Netanyahooo grew up on and now has the message that the entire world must be fought by Captain Israel.
Then again there is always EXODUS !
Exodus, p. 228: “Without water the Arab world disintegrated into filth; unspeakable disease, illiteracy, and poverty were universal. There was little song or laughter or joy in Arab life. It was a constant struggle to survive.
In this atmosphere cunning, treachery, murder, feuds, and jealousies became a way of life. The cruel realities that had gone into forming the Arab character puzzled others. “
“The cruel realities that had gone into forming the Arab character puzzled others.”
Not Lady Diana Mayo. In fact, after a little while she positively dug those cruel character traits.
funny you should quote that passage from exodus.
link to csmonitor.com
The Libyan government says the 26-year project has cost $19.58 billion. Nearing completion, the Great Man-Made River is the largest irrigation project in the world and the government says it intends to use it to develop 160,000 hectares (395,000 acres) of farmland. It is also the cheapest available option to irrigate fields in the water-scarce country, which has an average annual rainfall of about one inch.
“Rainfall is just concentrated in 5 percent of the [country’s] area, so more or less, 95 percent or 90 percent of our land is desert,” says Abdul Magid al-Kaot, minister of agriculture, during a PowerPoint presentation that accompanied a recent several-hour government tour of the project and farms outside the capital of Tripoli. “Water is more precious for us than oil. … Water here in Libya, it’s life.”
These stories spoon-feed images of Arab people as a farm from which terrorists grow out of. It’s not much different from depicting Jews as carriers of Bolshevism.
Making real Arab people invisible to Israeli children constitutes incitement.
Not the point. Israelis point to the fact that Palestinians incite, accusing them of such as a WHOLE, while leaving out Israeli incitement.
If my kid bullies another kid, I need to rectify my kid’s behavior, NOT point out how other kids do it too.
Very base, defenisve and immature.
“Will our invisible heroes succeed in saving the beloved president and the planes passengers from death?” asks the back cover.
the occultic powers of ‘the jews’ used to secretly manipulate international affairs. jeez. how does this fit into the definition of anti-semitism?
Expect this article to get spammed with links to a Mickey Mouse knock-off video where the words spoken in Arabic are totally not the words in the English “subtitles.”
Good call, Noam. Israel is full of this kind of stuff, from cradle to grave – the implicit message all the time that ‘Arabs’ are terrorists, history is rewritten in favour of myth, Israel never does any wrong blah blah. The really sad thing is that if you visit Gaza schools and see the children’s artwork there, as I have done, you will find that it is almost exclusively of planes and bombs and soldiers – yes the same ones in the Israeli kids books, except that these kids daily experience is not fantasy, and their drawings are those of traumatised children who have nightmares about the horrific violence inflicted upon them and their families by Israel. And of course the incitement Noam identifies for Israeli kids to hate and wage war, is mirrored by the Palestinians as incitement to hate and gain revenge on Israel – all the result of Israel’s murderous activity upon them. If ever there was a need for a superhero to protect the weak and fight evil, the Palestinians certainly have by far the strongest case.
The inner wall.
I wonder if they would be so concerned with Pres. Clinton’s well-being these days.
Youtube is incitement. In the sense of something that turns people against Israel. Cameras are incitement.
Human rights are incitement. Traditional Jewish culture is incitement.
Israel’s international treaties are incitement.
Headed back to earth, they intercept a plot by Hamas to send a flying suicide bomber that would crash into president Bill Clinton’s Air Force One – on his way to Israel, naturally
there’s something oddly freaky and surreal about israeli ‘security’ programming. invisible child zionists rescuing the american president from terrorists?
oy vey, no wonder we pay them 3 billion a year. if the children can save the american president i suppose the adults save the world.
i had never heard of these children stories. my son was raised on micky, mini, where’s waldo…and of course the little engine that could. his favorite children’s video was lady and the tramp (spaghetti scene every night). then he graduated to wayne’s world which lasted at least 5 years. swwwwang. then he got hooked on michael crichton novels by the time he was nine.
somewhere in there we squeezed rocky, natasha and bullwinkle …. and the ninja turtles. but i don’t recall any specifically american nationalist stuff. it just wasn’t on our radar.
i should amend that. maybe michael crichton was nationalist programming. i never read them.
I used to read his stuff, he did biology and evolution fiction in a very satisfying manner, at least to me being a professional biologists. I abandoned him now that he has come out against global warming in his 2004 novel. (Evil professor that is lying about the science of green house gases.)
“somewhere in there we squeezed rocky, natasha and bullwinkle”
I have no doubt he’s growing up a wonderful kind and caring person. Model yourself on Bullwinkle, I tell all young people, and you can’t go wrong. Well, not too far wrong.