Giving "The Map That Lies" to middle school students

I recently spoke to middle school children in the school district where I live about Al Nakba. I took two handouts with me. One was the map of North America, showing the tribes and the territories they inhabited prior to Europe’s conquest of this continent. The other was the “Palestinian loss of land” postcard, showing the respective Jewish and non-Jewish populations of historic Palestine, from 1946 to 2011.

The response was very revealing. Students looked at the map of North America with curiosity, interest, but also with no guilt, no accountability. It felt “safe” to them to read the names of the tribes that lived where they, the descendants of immigrants, now do. Many had a one-word comment: “Cool.” They liked that map, not recognizing it was a visual representation of devastation, even genocide.

With the “Loss of Palestinian land” postcard, there was … silence. I prodded the students for some response, some feedback, and it became clear the silence was not because they had nothing to say, but rather because they were shocked at what the postcard depicted. One seventh grade Social Studies teacher kept looking at the map, and asking out loud “How could this happen? What were they thinking? The United Nations did this? What were they thinking?” And again, like a broken record, “what were they thinking?”