From the Mouths, and Paintbrushes, of Babes

By LISA TRAIGER

TURBULENT TIMES, PROPHETIC DREAMS
Art From Israeli and Palestinian Children
By Dr. Harold Koplewicz.
88 pp. Devora Publishing. $18.95.

Heartbreaking. There's no other way to describe Harold Koplewicz's work with Israeli and Palestinian children. Any hopeful desires for the peace process have been dashed in recent months, but the work of this book began more than two years ago. Koplewicz, a child psychiatrist and director of the New York University Child Study Center and the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Bellevue Hospital Center, invited Israeli and Palestinian children to express with colored pencils and paper their hopes for their lives and their countries.

The results are wrenching, provocative and, on the whole, remarkably similar: Kids are kids no matter on which side of the fence they reside. Gail Furman, a child psychologist, describes the children's expressions as "graphic hopes." And both Israeli and Palestinian children have hopes. Hopes for peace, hopes for security, hopes for their families, hopes to live and grow up in a non-violent world.

Organized into three sections—“Turbulent Times,” “War/Peace,” and “Prophetic Dreams”—the drawings, done by ten to fourteen-year-olds, show a truth more compelling than that frequently depicted in the media, on television, in the newspapers and on radio and the Internet. Koplewicz has given each picture a theme: peace, war, conflict, homeland, power, fear, self-confidence, sadness. But it's the children's words that prove the most heart wrenching.

David, an eleven-year-old Israeli, writes: "The Palestinians throw stones at us and we shoot at them. This must stop if there is to be peace...We are fighting over symbols but people are being killed...they must stop or else the only thing that will be left is the symbols." His drawing depicts an Israeli in a jeep, a Palestinian throwing a stone and another being carried on a stretcher.

Likewise, Jarah, an eleven-year-old Palestinian, says: "We don't know what will happen in the future because the Palestinians are in conflict and the Jews are in conflict...I want peace but when I see the soldiers on television hitting the Palestinians, I can't believe it." The accompanying picture includes a soldier striking a civilian Palestinian with tears streaming down the latter's face.

Ten-year-old Yael, an Israeli, writes: "In the future, Jews and Arabs will be able to pray in Jerusalem and respect each other. Peace will open the gates of Jerusalem to everyone." And Rokyah, a nine-year-old Palestinian, writes: "We can live in peace...Once we stop thinking of how we can win wars we will begin to think how we can make peace."

Finally, Noah, a twelve-year-old Israeli, says: "Sometimes it seems as though there is a clear road to peace, and at other times, it seems like peace is only a dream. But if we believe and we work at it—PEACE WILL HAPPEN!"

If we could all be as hopeful.

Children's voices—they can be the purest and most telling. Peace, once nearly at hand, now a dream forgotten amid the fighting in Israel and the territories, is what all children—Israeli or Palestinian—deserve.