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I almost got my daughter kicked out of her Jewish preschool over a map of Israel

2 1
22.05.2025

The moment that led to me being threatened with having my daughter booted out of her temple preschool for a social media status began the way every weekday began, with me dropping my daughter off late.

I have a pet peeve — one many Americans don’t have to think about. I like correct maps in the places my kids frequent. It’s not a controversial objective, but if you are Jewish, Muslim or Arab, it can be.

That’s because you can walk into any number of mosques or temples and see maps of the same land, but with different boundaries. I prefer when the boundaries on maps are recognized by the United States and the international community, but many Americans, including Jews and Muslims, don’t know what these borders are.

Often folks don’t pay attention to the images surrounding them, so you find maps slapped on walls that wipe clean either the Palestinian claim or the Jewish claim to the lands known as Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Similar to when folks don’t speak up when protests are flooded with antisemitic or anti-Palestinian chants and signs, as long as members within these communities are unwilling or unable to recognize the messaging these maps relay to others and our children, we will remain stuck in endless conflict. Change won’t begin until we look inward.

That’s what happened on that drizzly mid-morning last December, when I schlepped my daughter into her school, both of us half asleep.

“Do you love this artwork that I made,” I said, mustering all the energy I could to crack a corny joke. I smirked and gestured at a scribble picture taped to the wall, drawn by one of her 4-year-old peers, claiming it was my masterpiece.

Then I saw it on the bulletin board: a map of Israel, but with no green line separating Gaza and the West Bank from Israel proper. The Israeli flag flooded the entire territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, including the West Bank and Gaza.

Such a depiction is both politically freighted and widely understood to be inaccurate, even for those on the Israeli right who aspire to make it real. Much of the international community considers the West Bank illegally occupied by Israel, and even those who favor perpetual Israeli control of the territory have called on Israel to annex it — an acknowledgement that it does not, at present, enjoy the same status as Israel proper. Meanwhile, Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 — yet still Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

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