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South Carolina school district to return Bernard Malamud’s ‘The Fixer’ to shelves after yearlong removal
(JTA) – A school district in South Carolina will return Bernard Malamud’s “The Fixer,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about antisemitism, to shelves nearly a year after it was removed following a parental complaint.
The decision made Wednesday by a review committee for the Beaufort County School District concludes another episode in which a Jewish book has gotten caught up in a national book-ban push by conservative parents.
The district pulled “The Fixer” and books from school libraries last fall, citing safety concerns for school employees. Malamud’s novel had been on a long list of nearly 100 books challenged by a parent affiliated with Moms for Liberty, an activist group powering the book-ban movement. Booklooks.org, a ratings site often cited by Moms for Liberty chapters, says “The Fixer” contains “controversial religious and racial commentary; hate involving racism; violence including self harm; and profanity.”
The committee voted Wednesday to return “The Fixer” and four other books to school library circulation, according to records of the meeting a district spokesperson shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The school board must sign off on the decision, but the board has so far signed off on all of the committee’s recommendations. (One other of the reviewed books was removed permanently, while another was placed back in the review process.)
“I’m relieved the committee found the text was appropriate and hope the board agrees to replace it back on the shelves,” Emily Mayer, a Jewish former Beaufort County educator who has been lobbying against the book bans, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
But, she added, “I don’t believe it should’ve been questioned to begin with, as I can’t imagine many students had checked ‘The Fixer’ out of the library as of late anyway. Allowing students access to texts that give them diverse perspectives of historical events helps us make sure history doesn’t repeat itself.”
“The Fixer” is not the first Jewish book to be removed following a parental challenge in schools, nor was it the first time such a removal was overturned. A school district in Texas quickly reversed a decision to remove an illustrated version of Anne Frank’s diary following public outcry last year, while a district in Missouri recently voted to keep Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust graphic memoir “Maus” in schools despite concerns that a state law could put educators in legal jeopardy for doing so.
But restorations are not always the outcome. That same illustrated edition of Frank’s diary, along with “Maus,” a Holocaust novel by Jodi Picoult and a children’s book about Purim featuring LGBTQ parents, have been permanently removed from other districts, in all cases because of concerns from parents or officials that their content was inappropriate for children.
“The Fixer” holds special historical significance in this battle, as the novel was also at the center of a 1982 Supreme Court case on the constitutionality of school library book bans. That case ended without a clear precedent from the court.
The novel fictionalizes a 1911 case of a Jewish laborer in Kyiv, Mendel Beilis, who was charged with murdering a Christian boy and using his blood to make matzah — a classic example of the blood libel, an antisemitic accusation that Jews murder children and use their blood for religious rituals.
Beilis’ own family has heavily criticized Malamud over the years for his portrayal of Mendel, even alleging that the author plagiarized his diaries. Yet grandson Jay Beilis, who has long campaigned against the book, told JTA, “I’m not going to celebrate the book being banned.”
Malamud himself, who won the Pulitzer Prize for “The Fixer” in 1967, commented on book bans in the lead-up to the 1982 Supreme Court case. “I wish those school board members and others who want to ban books would make an effort to understand them before shoveling them off library shelves,” he said in 1976, a decade before his death. “If they read ‘The Fixer,’ they might be clamoring to have more students read it.”
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The post South Carolina school district to return Bernard Malamud’s ‘The Fixer’ to shelves after yearlong removal appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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250 Hezbollah Terrorists Including 21 Commanders Eliminated in Ground Op
DF operating in southern Lebanon. Photo: IDF Spokesperson
i24 News – The Israeli military eliminated 250 Hezbollah terrorists including 21 commanders in four days of ground combat, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement on Friday.
IDF soldiers operating in southern Lebanon have uncovered vast caches of weapons and munitions in civilian residences, showing how central embedding within civilian population is to Hezbollah’s mode of warfare.
Meanwhile, heavy strikes targeting the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahieh in southern Beirut were ongoing, Lebanese media reported.
The post 250 Hezbollah Terrorists Including 21 Commanders Eliminated in Ground Op first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Airstrikes Launched on Several Parts of Yemen, Houthi Al Masirah TV says
Illustrative. Hodeidah, Yemen, July 20, 2024. Houthi Military Media/Handout via REUTERS
Airstrikes were launched on Friday at several parts of Yemen including its capital Sanaa and Hodeidah airport, Al Masirah TV, the main television news outlet run by the Houthi movement controlling much of Yemen, and residents said.
Strikes also targeted the south of Dhamar city and the southeast of al-Bayda province, the channel added.
Residents said that the attack on al-Bayda province targeted several Houthi military outposts.
Al Masirah TV reported that the strikes had been carried out by the United States and British forces, but a British government source said Britain was not involved.
Iran-aligned Houthi militants have launched attacks on international shipping near Yemen since last November in solidarity with Palestinians in Israel‘s war with Hamas.
The attacks have drawn US and British retaliatory strikes and disrupted global trade as ship owners reroute vessels away from the Red Sea and Suez Canal to sail the longer route around the southern tip of Africa.
Following the airstrikes, a Houthi spokesman called the attack “a desperate attempt,” adding that “Yemen will not be deterred by these attacks and will continue its steadfastness in confronting the enemies.”
The post Airstrikes Launched on Several Parts of Yemen, Houthi Al Masirah TV says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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IDF Kills Hamas Commander in Tulkarem
Illustrative. Israeli troops during counterterrorism activity in Tulkarem, northwestern Samaria, September 2024. Photo: IDF.
JNS.org – An Israeli Air Force fighter jet conducted a rare strike in Tulkarem in the West Bank on Thursday night, targeting top Hamas terrorist Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi.
The Palestinian Authority reported at least 18 fatalities in the strike, with a local security source telling Agence France-Presse it was the deadliest in Judea and Samaria since the Second Intifada.
Ayyth Radwan, the head of Islamic Jihad’s Tulkarem branch, was also reportedly killed.
Oufi was planning a terrorist attack “in the immediate time frame,” according to the Israel Defense Forces, and directed the thwarted car bombing last month near Ateret in the Binyamin region of Samaria.
There were no casualties in the incident, which Israel Ganz, the head of the Binyamin Regional Council, called a “great miracle.”
The IDF said Oufi was involved in smuggling weapons to terrorists who perpetrated several recent attacks against Israelis, including some that resulted in injuries to civilians.
He also “worked to establish terrorist networks on behalf of Hamas and assisted terror operatives in the area to carry out significant shooting and explosive attacks,” added the military.
The post IDF Kills Hamas Commander in Tulkarem first appeared on Algemeiner.com.