Mommy Facebook Group Shuts Down Over ‘P Is For Palestine’ Book
The children’s book “P is for Palestine” stoked controversy because of its entry “I is for Intifada.” Image by LaunchGood
By Aiden Pink November 21, 2017
A popular Facebook group for New York moms has temporarily shut down amid an internal battle sparked by the promotion of a children’s book called “P is For Palestine.”
The group “UES Mommas,” which has more than 27,000 members, usually posts about strollers and tutors. But when the author of the new book, Golbarg Bashi, posted in the group to promote her upcoming appearance at a Manhattan book store, all hell broke loose.
Group members were angered by what they saw as the book’s anti-Israel leanings — especially the book’s entry “I is for Intifada, Intifada is Arabic for rising up for what is right, if you are a kid or grownup!”
“Intifada,” the Arabic word for “tremor” or “shaking off,” was used to refer to two violent Palestinian uprisings in the 1980s and 2000s. More than 1,000 Israelis and 5,000 Palestinians combined were killed in the two intifadas in the 1980s and 2000s.
The Forward was able to access screenshots of some members complaining about Bashi’s post and book. One woman accused Bashi of “inciting death.”
“Nothing more racist than Muslims!!!!!!!” another wrote.
Some were critical of Bashi but also dismayed by the furor: “In the years I’ve been a part of this fb group I’ve never seen this kind of dialogue and it’s very upsetting and inappropriate,” one person posted. “I’ve also never seen a politically motivated agenda be promoted. Politics should be kept off this site.”
By Sunday evening, group moderators “archived” the group, banning new posts.
A group monitor announced that she was “meeting with Facebook” to discuss next steps, including possibly shutting down the group permanently.
“The actions of certain members highlight the extreme level of intolerance for varying opinions that is plaguing our world,” she wrote. “We have no interest in maintaining a group that cannot engage in respectful dialogue due to an overwhelming sense of entitlement and zero accountability.”
This is not the first time the group has seen vicious debates: According to Jezebel, the group had a “war” over vaccines in 2014, and arguments in August over Black Lives Matter and the Charlottesville white nationalist rally led some members to threaten defamation lawsuits for being called “racists.”
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
