Terrorism supporters are very upset over "Under the Rockets' Glow: Shira's Journey to Courage", which shot to prominence after being endorsed by Mayim Bialik.
They keep going on about "genocide", children dying under the rockets' glow and allegations that the "rockets" are missiles falling on Gaza (when it's crystal clear just from the cover that the "rockets" are the ones launched by the Palestinians to try and kill Israelis and people in Israel, as well as the Iron Dome rockets launched to intercept them) and other nonsense - it's clear they've never read the book (or even thought critically about what the title and image might be referring to, instead just recalling their anti-Semitic lines).
We even have memes like this:
"Baby's First Genocide"
Annoyed by the rampant stupidity, I decided to pay USD 8.71 to buy and read the book myself. Happily, "A portion of all proceeds will be donated to the victims of the October 7 massacre".
Frankly, I found the book disappointing, since I was really curious as to how a children's book would justify genocide. I was looking forward to seeing how the author, Roman Sandler, could package such a complex adult topic into a 26-page book targeted at kids (of which only 20 pages are actual content).
Surprise surprise, not only did the book not justify "genocide" - it didn't even mention the Palestinians (or Arabs). Much less mention Gaza or the West Bank.
As for the "rockets" mentioned in the title of the book, here is what they look like:
Compare this with the following:
"Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts rockets launched from the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, as seen from Ashkelon, Israel, January 1, 2024" (Reuters)
So it's incontrovertible that the rockets the book refers to are indeed the ones launched by Palestinians and the ones fired by the Iron Dome to destroy them; in my research, I could not find instances of the IDF firing rockets. This is unsurprising, since rockets are not very precise and the IDF goes to exhaustive lengths to minimise civilian casualties. Here is what Israel bombing Gaza looks like:
"Flames and smoke rise during Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza Strip on May 11, 2021." (via the Washington Post)
Not to mention how the city over which the rockets are shooting seems to be Jerusalem, so presumably the Israelis are trying to "genocide" themselves (then again, terrorist supporters, e.g. Piers Corbyn, Jeremy Corby's brother, keep claiming that October 7th was an inside job false flag by the IDF/Mossad, so).
Here is a photo of Jerusalem by night, where you can see the Al-Aqsa Mosque (compare it with the image of the city in the book, and the characteristic shape of the Dome of the Rock):
(via Flickr user joiseyshowaa)
Further driving home the point, the girl in the book, Little Shira, cannot sleep because she is scared of the shadows cast by the rockets, and asks "Why can't they let us sleep, Abba?" Presumably "they" is not referring to the IDF:
Of course, I remember when the terrorism supporters got very upset over a study on sleep deprivation in Israelis due to Palestinian terrorists' rocket attacks (I think it was this study) so who knows how their twisted logic interprets this page.
The book even ends on a wish for peace:
Sadly, peace will never come even in Israel itself as long as the "River to the Sea" crowd demand the ethnic cleansing they've been dreaming of for 76 years.
There're certainly legitimate criticisms that can be made of this book - for example, that it uses AI-generated images (there is no illustrator credited). It's also clearly made for an American audience, with 12.5% of the content (well, all of 2.5 panels) dedicated to Chanukah/Hanukkah when it is relatively unimportant minor festival in Israel and is only big in the US because of Christmas.
I'm not sure that criticisms of it over-simplifying history are valid if one takes off any ideologically-tinted lenses one happens to be wearing - the genre of children's picture book is not known for its sophistication or nuance. I'm sure a pro-Jewish reviewer could equally criticise it on these spurious grounds if he were so retarded since, for example, it doesn't mention the Babylonian Captivity, instead doing a time and narrative jump between Nebuchadnezzar destroying the temple and Ezra rebuilding it.
On reflection, perhaps the apparent lack of comprehension skills of terrorist supporters is revealing, and is a tacit admission that the "genocide" that they are protesting is really just Israel defending itself. We can see this too by how demands for a "ceasefire" are accompanied by calls to bomb Tel Aviv - the mask has once again dropped, and terrorism supporters proclaim that the "ceasefire" they so crave means that Israel must stop defending itself and let its enemies kill as many of its people as they want.
