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Banned Israeli-Palestinian love story novel becomes top seller

A semi-autobiographical love story between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man becomes an unlikely bestseller after education ministry refused to add it to the high school curriculum

Ersin Çelik
18:58 - 8/01/2016 Friday
Update: 17:19 - 8/01/2016 Friday
Yeni Şafak

A novel banned from school curriculum by Israeli education ministry for featuring Israeli-Palestinian love affair became Israeli bestseller.



Dorit Rabinyan's “Gader Haya," English title “Borderlife," presents an uncommon story of love between an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian Muslim to its reader. It has become an unlikely bestseller after the ministry refused to allow the book in the high school curriculum.



“Borderlife," published in 2014, won the Bernstein Prize for young writers, an annual Israeli award for Hebrew literature.



A lower committee of the education ministry suggested adding the book to the high school curriculum after getting many requests from teachers. However, senior ministry officials overruled the suggestions.



Among the reasons given was, “intimate relations between Jews and non-Jews threatens the separate identity," according to the protocol of a parliamentary debate on the issue.



The ban sparked a backlash by Israeli cultural figures and a buying frenzy as the book shot to the top of the fiction chart, becoming a bestseller in bookstores and online, according to The Guardian newspaper.



The country's main chart does not provide numbers, but Rabinyan's agent said more than 5,000 copies had been sold in a week, a huge figure in Israel's small market, with many bookstores selling out.



Borderlife is a semi-autobiographical story of an Israeli woman who falls in love with a male Palestinian artist in New York. The two part ways as she returns to the Israeli city of Tel Aviv and he to Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.



Relationships between Israeli Jews and Palestinians are rare and frowned on by large parts of both societies.



The ministry said the book was not disqualified but merely not included among the curriculum, adding that teachers were still permitted to study the book with their students.



Rabinyan thanked her readers and said she thought that the response of the public was “a demonstration" against the authorities' attitude.



The decision also provoked fury from left-wing Israelis and cultural leaders.



In a video shared on social media in reaction to the controversy, Arabs and Jews kiss on camera to break what they call a taboo in Israeli society.



#Israeli-Palestinian love affair
#Arabs and Jews
8 years ago