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‘Persecution of Jews is educationally significant’: How a school district put a contested Bernard Malamud classic back on the shelves
(JTA) — Even before Joanna Sargent had read “The Fixer,” she knew about it.
A middle-school librarian in South Carolina, Sargent first heard of Bernard Malamud’s novel about antisemitism during her professional training. Budding librarians often study Island Trees School District v. Pico, the only U.S. Supreme Court case to address the holdings of school libraries. The 1982 case pitted a high school student against his school board, which had removed several books from the school library — among them “The Fixer.”
Last year, Sargent felt she was seeing history repeating itself when the book showed up on her own district’s list of challenged materials and was temporarily removed from library shelves. “The Fixer” was one of 96 books challenged by a local parent affiliated with the conservative activist group Moms For Liberty and a local business owner who doesn’t have a child in the district.
When the Beaufort County School District convened a committee to review the challenged books and appointed Sargent to join it, she finally got a chance to read “The Fixer” herself.
“I was blown away,” Sargent recalled to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The novel, based on the real-life case of Mendel Beilis, a Jewish day laborer in Kyiv accused of murdering Christian children to make matzah in 1913, reminded her of the Biblical story of Job. “I was just like, ‘Oh, this poor man! Is anything going to go right for him?’”
Sargent and the six other members of the review committee got together to discuss the book and several others that had been challenged as inappropriate for students. The experience, she said, didn’t feel like a politically charged debate on censorship. Instead, it felt like a book club.
“We were all fascinated and captivated by the book,” Sargent said of the committee’s reaction. “It was about a man who had so many things going on for him, and the antisemitism was just so heartbreaking to me. I think I was in tears reading that book. I was just like, ‘How can we not let this voice be heard?’”
Sargent’s experience, along with the notes recorded by her fellow committee members and obtained by JTA, sheds light on an oft-unseen battlefield of the culture war over books currently playing out in states and school districts around the country. Parents’ challenges against books tend to make headlines, and so do districts’ decisions to ban books in response — but there’s frequently a review process behind closed doors that does not. That process, which in many districts requires staff and others to read books their own challengers may not have read, can be key to whether children continue to have access to contested literature.
In Beaufort County, the school district convened a rotating committee of seven people to review the challenged books, making their way through about seven a month starting with titles used in classroom instruction. For each book, committee members had to complete a checklist with their assessment of the book’s quality and content, its value in an educational setting, how thoroughly it avoids “pervasive vulgarity” and, in an echo of language frequently used by book challengers, its “appropriateness.”
The district signaled from early on that it was not very sympathetic to the charges leveled by a handful of parents that it was making explicit and inappropriate books available to children. A district spokeswoman said the books were removed from public access, despite not being contested according to the district’s regular process, only because of concerns about the safety of educators and officials in a heated environment. Over the course of the school year, the committee had returned all but four of the titles it reviewed to school library shelves.
When it came time to review “The Fixer,” Sargent was tapped alongside three other district employees, including a middle-school language arts teacher; a parent; a member of a school improvement council and a “community member.” The committee is meant to represent different constituencies in the district community, according to the district’s own guidelines for dealing with book challenges.
None of the members, to Sargent’s knowledge, were Jewish; the district, which has relatively few Jewish students, said it does not always achieve representation from the groups whose stories are being contested.
“The district could have done a better job with that,” Sargent said. “As librarians, we want to try to make our libraries inclusive and diverse.”
A review of the committee’s notes on the novel, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, shows that every member endorsed keeping the book available in schools, with one participant specifying it should only be accessible at the high school level. (The book had previously only been stocked in high schools, according to Sargent, who estimated it had been a part of the school library’s collection for more than 25 years without any controversy.)
In their notes, the committee members said they thought “The Fixer” had the power to offer students a valuable perspective on bigotry — and on Judaism.
“History of the time period and persecution of Jews is educationally significant,” one reviewer wrote.
“Something I really like about ‘The Fixer’ is that it introduces an education of Judaism to the reader,” another reviewer noted. Despite saying that they personally “don’t think it holds up as a timeless novel of literary quality,” the reviewer said the book “helps to expand the world of many Lowcountry students,” referring to the coastal region of the state where the district is located.
Another reviewer included a list of vocabulary in the book that could be of educational value, including terms like “Torah,” “pogrom,” “shtetl” and “goyim.”
A few panelists took things a step further, declaring that the story, about the persecution of Yakov Bok by antisemitic Russians, had echoes in the book’s very placement on the banned list.
“The same individuals banning these books follow the views of the Tsarist persecutors in this novel,” one wrote.
Another alluded to the review of “The Fixer” on BookLooks, a ratings site started by a former Moms For Liberty member cited by the local parent who challenged the books. BookLooks gave the novel a “minor restricted” rating in part because of the use of an antisemitic slur directed at the Jewish protagonist.
The site’s administrator told JTA the rating was not meant to encourage schools to remove the book altogether.
“Banning any book because of the term ‘Jew noses’ is doing exactly what the antagonists in the novel are doing,” the reviewer wrote.
The committee’s final decision was unanimous: The book should be returned to shelves.
Mike Covert, a Republican former Beaufort County council member in South Carolina, challenged Bernard Malamud’s “The Fixer” in his district and appealed a committee’s decision to return the book to schools on Aug. 9, 2023. (Screenshot via YouTube)
The ruling drew at least one formal appeal: from Mike Covert, a former Republican county council member who frequently attacks the school board on a conservative internet stream. Covert, a local business owner whose children no longer attend school in the district, worked with Ivie Szalai, the parent affiliated with Moms For Liberty, to file nearly identical challenges within minutes of each other last year. Covert added one more book, bringing the total of challenges to 97. He has appealed the review committee’s rulings regularly, without success.
In the appeal form, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, Covert referenced “The Fixer” by name and wrote that it and the other six books the committee returned to shelves during its most recent session are “lewd and vulgar. Period.” On recent video streams, Covert has taken his rhetoric a step further, telling his followers that “these books have no education value to anyone under the age of 18,” and declaring, “For those that think it is perfectly OK for your kid to read that s–t — and that’s all it is — there is something seriously wrong with you.”
Reached by phone, Covert told JTA he had read “The Fixer” — unlike Szalai, who said she had not read the books she challenged. He said the book had landed on his and Szalai’s radar because it was featured on conservative-run websites listing objectionable texts. He said he had appealed the board’s decision to restore it to shelves because he believed “it would be challenging my credibility if I didn’t.”
Covert also said he didn’t know the book was based on a true story or that it described a real episode of antisemitism in Russian history. His objections, he said, had largely been based on the incorrect idea that it was “completely fictional.”
“I like to think of myself as a pretty learned individual, and if somebody had said, ‘Would you bet that this was real?’ I would have taken that bet and said, ‘No, of course not,’” Covert said. “I would have had a different opinion right off the bat knowing that it’s true.”
Covert allowed that older grades could get some use out of “The Fixer” but also echoed the thinking of the Island Trees school board in 1982 in suggesting that reading the book could encourage antisemitism, rather than educate about it.
“The last thing we need is more kids going out there thinking, ‘Well, you know, maybe I should go shoot up a synagogue,’” he said. “Let them be kids. Let them mature physically as well as mentally, and then understand why were the Jews persecuted so disgustingly by the Russians. I mean, what was the reason? This book doesn’t go into the reason.”
At the same time, Covert said he could understand why Jews would be concerned with the specter of Jewish books being removed from schools. In addition to “The Fixer,” other books with Jewish content that have been challenged multiple times in various places include Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” and a new graphic adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary.
“If I was you all, I would be on guard as well,” Covert said. “Anne Frank and the whole litany of material with that is absolutely, completely educational, in my opinion.”
Other than Covert’s appeal, the review committee’s restoration of “The Fixer” to the Beaufort County School District hasn’t yet elicited any particular response, Sargent said. The committee still has dozens of titles to wade through, under different configurations. Having rotated off, Sargent has her own thoughts about the sort of people who bothered to challenge the novel nearly 60 years after its publication.
“I don’t think they’re seeing the significance of them,” she said of the parents who challenged “The Fixer” and others in the first place. “It just seems like, ‘Jump on the bandwagon, and here’s a list of books. Let’s just try to get all of these out of as many places as we can.’”
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The post ‘Persecution of Jews is educationally significant’: How a school district put a contested Bernard Malamud classic back on the shelves appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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UK to Ban Group Palestine Action Under Anti-Terrorism Laws
Police officers block a street as pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather in protest against Britain’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s plans to proscribe the “Palestine Action” group in the coming weeks, in London, Britain, June 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jaimi Joy
Britain said on Monday it would use anti-terrorism laws to ban the organization Palestine Action, making it a criminal offence to belong to the group after its activists damaged two UK military planes in protest at London’s support for Israel.
The proscription would put the pro-Palestinian group on a par with Hamas, al-Qaeda, or ISIS under British law, making it illegal for anyone to promote it or be a member. Those who breached the ban could face up to 14 years in jail.
Palestine Action has regularly targeted British sites connected to Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems as well as other companies in Britain linked to Israel since the start of the conflict in Gaza in 2023.
In its latest and most high-profile action, two of its members entered a Royal Air Force base in central England on Friday, spraying paint into the engines of the Voyager transport aircraft and further damaging them with crowbars.
“The disgraceful attack on Brize Norton … is the latest in a long history of unacceptable criminal damage committed by Palestine Action,” Home Secretary [interior minister] Yvette Cooper said in a written statement to parliament.
“The UK’s defense enterprise is vital to the nation’s national security and this government will not tolerate those that put that security at risk.”
She said the group‘s actions had become more aggressive and caused millions of pounds of damage.
Under British law, the Home Secretary can proscribe a group if it is believed it commits, encourages, or “is otherwise concerned in terrorism.” The banning order will be laid before parliament on June 30 and will come into effect if approved.
Palestine Action, which says Britain is an “active participant” in the conflict in Gaza because of military support it provides to Israel, called the ban “an unhinged reaction” which it would challenge, and accused Cooper of making a series of “categorically false claims.”
“The real crime here is not red paint being sprayed on these war planes,” it said in a statement.
Earlier on Monday, the group was forced to change the location of a planned protest after police banned it from staging a demonstration outside parliament, otherwise a popular location for protests in support of a range of causes.
The post UK to Ban Group Palestine Action Under Anti-Terrorism Laws first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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MAGA Commentators Clash Over Trump’s Choice to Bomb Iran
Tucker Carlson speaks on July 18, 2024, during the final day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Photo: Jasper Colt-USA TODAY via Reuters Connect
US President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb three of Iran’s key nuclear facilities over the weekend has divided his longtime supporters, with some prominent voices in the so-called Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement opposing the strikes and others standing with the administration’s military action.
Mark Levin, the longtime conservative talk radio host and vocal pro-Israel voice, called out US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for her disagreement with the US strikes, known as Operation Midnight Hammer.
On Sunday, Greene wrote on X, “I don’t know anyone in America who has been the victim of a crime or killed by Iran, but I know many people who have been victims of crime committed by criminal illegal aliens or MURDERED by Cartel and Chinese fentanyl/drugs.” She warned that “Neocon warmongers beat their drums of war and act like Billy badasses going to war in countries most Americans have never seen and can’t find on a map, but never find the courage to go to war against the actual terrorists who actually do kill Americans, invade our land, and make BILLIONS doing it day after day, year after year.”
In response, Levin labeled Greene a “shameless nitwit” and asked, “How incredibly dumb is this Marjorie Taylor Green? She doesn’t know anyone in America who has been a victim of crime or killed by Iran? You mean the thousands of Americans, especially military personnel, killed and maimed by the Iranian terrorist regime?”
Levin aimed his ire at other leaders on both left and right who he christened “America’s Iranian nukes coalition.” He wrote that “if the radical Democrats and their Isolationist fake MAGA reprobates had their way, Iran would have nuclear weapons. This is the new gravely dangerous coalition of Marxists-Islamists-isolationists-grifters. They’re represented by the likes of Bernie Sanders- AOC-Schumer-Jeffries and Rand Paul-Massie-MTG- Qatarlson-Bannon. And they’re giving aid and comfort to a regime that has murdered directly and indirectly thousands of Americans. Never forget. They will forever be opposed and challenged by we, the people — America First loving patriots.”
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host-turned-podcaster, has faced recent accusations promoted by social media influencer Laura Loomer, alleging links to Qatar, claims which he denies, thus prompting Levin’s “Qatarlson” epithet. Carlson had clashed over Iran in a recent interview with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), reportedly watched by Trump.
Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart News CEO-turned-presidential adviser-turned America First podcaster, declared his disagreement with Trump’s invocation of America’s potential engagement toward regime change in a Truth Social post on Sunday.
“Is this because the ultimate goal is regime change?” Bannon asked. “And if that’s fine, Israelis, have at it. If you want regime change, go for it, baby. Just no participation by the United States government.”
The Daily Beast reported that according to anti-Trump biographer Michael Wolff, unnamed sources within the administration described how Trump had initially leaned toward the Carlson-Bannon isolationist position until shifting Friday under congressional Republicans’ influence toward seeing the value to his image of a successful strike. “The tenor of the phone calls was him saying, ‘I think I’m gonna look very good if I do this,’” Wolff said.
Further exposing the extent to which the Iran strikes have diverged from the last decade of the MAGA movement’s tilt toward isolationism, two of Trump’s former close allies who later parted ways with him and went on to criticize his actions have now voiced their support.
Former Vice President Mike Pence and former National Security Adviser John Bolton have both historically identified with former President Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” hawkish foreign policy philosophy. Each praised the bombings of Iran’s nuclear sites.
Pence said to Fox News on Sunday that even though “the president and I have had our differences,” he “couldn’t be more proud [sic] of President Trump’s decisive leadership in this moment or the extraordinary professionalism and courage of our armed forces that brought about this historic mission.”
On Sunday morning, the conservative magazine Washington Examiner published an article with the headline “Trump did the right thing in Iran” by Bolton, one of the conservative movement’s most steadfast and robust Iran hawks.
“It was long past time that Washington did more to aid Israel in defeating Iran and took direct action against Tehran’s nuclear proliferation efforts,” Bolton wrote. “There are undoubtedly additional measures now underway to protect American deployed forces and civilian personnel in the region against Iranian retaliation now that we have taken offensive military action. Similarly, we should continue bringing forward additional forces to bolster Israeli and Gulf Arab state defenses against Tehran military retaliation.”
Bolton warned that “peace and security in the Middle East are impossible while the ayatollahs rule in Tehran.” He urged that “overthrowing the current regime is a necessary, even if not a sufficient, condition to reach that goal. The sooner the better.”
Trump said after Saturday night’s strikes that the US was acting to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons but not seeking regime change. The next day, however, he seemed to entertain the idea. Writing on Truth Social, he posted: “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”
The post MAGA Commentators Clash Over Trump’s Choice to Bomb Iran first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Spain Pushes EU to Suspend Israel Trade Pact Amid Gaza Conflict, Sparking Division Within Bloc
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares, Norway’s Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, and Ireland’s Foreign Minister Micheal Martin hold a press conference in Brussels, Belgium, May 27, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Johanna Geron
Spain will formally petition the European Union to approve an “immediate suspension” of its association agreement with Israel — a pact governing the EU’s political and economic ties with Jerusalem — to protest what it calls human rights violations in Gaza.
On Monday, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares announced that the country will also ask the EU to approve an arms embargo on Israel and impose sanctions on individuals accused of undermining the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
“We have on the table a report by the High Representative, requested for many months by Spain, which clearly indicates what Spain already knew, that there is a flagrant violation of human rights at this time in Gaza by Israel and that, therefore, that association council between the European Union and Israel, which is precisely based on human rights, is being violated,” Albares said in a statement.
“The Palestinian Gazans need action and, therefore, the important thing today is not to denounce … we have done it for months,” the top Spanish diplomat continued. “It is not the denunciations that are going to stop this inhumane war in Gaza, it is the actions.”
“The time for words, for statements, is behind us,” Albares said, calling on the EU to show the “courage” to take concrete action.
Spain’s latest anti-Israel move follows a newly released EU-commissioned report accusing Israel of committing “indiscriminate attacks … starvation … torture … [and] apartheid” against Palestinians in Gaza during its military campaign against Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group.
According to the report, “there are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations” under the 25-year-old EU-Israel Association Agreement.
While the document acknowledges the existence of violence by Hamas, it states that this issue lies outside its scope — failing to address the Palestinian terrorist group’s role in sparking the current war with its Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
Israeli officials have slammed the report as factually incorrect and morally flawed, noting Hamas embeds its military infrastructure within civilian targets and Israel’s army takes extensive precautions to try and avoid civilian casualties.
The eight-page document was set for discussion at Monday’s EU Foreign Affairs Council, followed by a personal briefing from EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas to the bloc’s leaders at the June summit later this week in Brussels.
“I will now address the results of the review with Israel,” Kallas said at a news conference following a meeting of European foreign ministers. “Our first goal is to change the situation on the ground and help humanitarian aid to get in.”
Kallas said she would return to the issue in July if there had been no improvement.
This latest anti-Israel push by several EU member states builds on Belgium’s recent decision to review Israel’s compliance with its trade agreement — a process initiated by the Netherlands and led by Kallas, after a majority of member states called for a formal probe.
Despite efforts by some European countries to undermine Israel’s defensive campaign against Hamas in Gaza, the Jewish state continues to have support within the EU.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has made clear that Rome opposes any suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
“Our position is different from that of Spain,” Tajani said in a statement, adding that maintaining open relations with Israel has helped facilitate the evacuation of civilians from Gaza.
Germany also does not support calls to suspend the pact governing Israel‘s relations with the EU.
“Our position is very clear — we do not support either a suspension or a partial suspension,” the official said at a German government briefing, according to Reuters.
For its part, Spain in recent years has been one of Jerusalem’s fiercest critics, a stance that has only intensified since Hamas’s onslaught on Israel.
Albares, with the backing of his government including Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, has actively pushed for anti-Israel measures on the international stage, all while portraying himself as a dedicated supporter of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In the aftermath of the Oct. 7 atrocities, Spain halted arms shipments from its own defense companies to Israel and launched a diplomatic campaign to curb the country’s military response.
At the same time, several Spanish ministers in the country’s left-wing coalition government issued pro-Hamas statements and called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, with some falsely accusing Israel of “genocide.”
Last year, Spain officially recognized a Palestinian state, claiming the move was accelerated by the Israel-Hamas war and would help foster peace in the region. Israeli officials described the decision as a “reward for terrorism.”
The post Spain Pushes EU to Suspend Israel Trade Pact Amid Gaza Conflict, Sparking Division Within Bloc first appeared on Algemeiner.com.