When I was approached in 1994 by Lewis Bernstein of the Children’s Television Workshop to participate in a joint Israeli-Palestinian production of Sesame Street, I was reluctant. I argued then, as I have argued since, that Palestinians under years of occupation prefer an amicable divorce from the Israelis rather than an equal marriage without equal rights.
With funding from the Ford Foundation and other philanthropy, we agreed on training Palestinians and producing a separate Palestinian show (Shara’a Simsim) while also producing some crossover segments. Before we began, a radical right-wing Israeli assassinated Yitzhak Rabin, with the brave Israeli leader’s blood spilling during a song that was part of a rally for peace in Tel Aviv.
For me, the concept of mutual respect was translated into children’s episodes by concentrating first on internal mutual respect, between male and female, between abled and disabled, between urban and rural people, as well as between people of different faiths and nationalities.
The project was not without challenges. At the time we had no studio big enough for such a huge production, so we used the studios of Israeli Educational Television. Of course, we had lots of trouble getting our set from Ramallah to Tel Aviv and allowing our actors, including our star puppeteer, to pass the local security guards at the Israeli public service studio. It was also challenging to get the New York team to approve of some of our episodes that included pride in our culture, for fear it would anger and touch some nerves, including those of the funders.
But we fought our way through all that, and on my 40th birthday, we broadcast the first season of Shara’a Simsim from the tiny studios of Al Quds Educational Television in Ramallah. The first season was produced working with Palestinian teachers and child psychologists, as well as artists and puppets, to craft 26 episodes around themes of tolerance, sharing, and friendship.
The second season included some funding from USAID and the participation of the Palestinian Ministry of Education, which used the program as part of its early childhood education. A studio in Ramallah was able to host the filming.
USAID again funded the third season. This time it was expanded to include Jordanian production. The three-way separate but equal production was a success. We won a BAFTA nomination in England and the Japanese Emperor’s Award.
In addition, learning from the world’s best children’s programming teams, we acquired the practical translation of life concepts into a fun children’s program. Palestinian and Jordanian children loved the program, and Jordan’s Queen Rania spread the curriculum of mutual understanding to all schoolchildren in Jordan.
But in 2012, after USAID had signed a $2.5 million grant that was scheduled to cover the program’s costs until 2014, Congress canceled the funding due to the decision by the Palestinian leadership to seek a vote at the U.N. for the state of Palestine. The star of this unfair stoppage was Florida Republican chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Ileana Ross-Lehtinen of Florida.
The Shara’a Simsim cancellation raised the question of whether a U.S. bias toward Israel is reflected not only in the political arena but in the humanitarian realm as well. Congress froze the funds for Palestinians, but the State Department is still investing $750,000 in the Israeli version of Sesame Street.
When Donald Trump denounced spending American dollars on “the Arab Sesame Street” in his address to Congress Tuesday night, he cited a figure of $20 million. I am not sure where that $20 million figure came from, but for an American export that encouraged peace and goodwill, the amount is nothing compared with what is spent on war, death, and suffering.
For some time, the Congress was the bastion of pro-Israeli American popular support while the executive branch was much more interested in the soft power that programs like Sesame Street provided. Now we are in a new stage where even the White House has become beholden to a few powerful hawks who see their power emanating from the barrel of a gun rather than from the lens of a camera or the actions of a puppeteer.
While I loved working on the Palestinian version of Sesame Street, the experience and the politicization of it has proved to me that no children’s program, however wholesome, can replace or defeat the ugliness of war, occupation, and colonial settlements.
By disparaging the very idea of funding Sesame Street, the president is criticizing one of the most wholesome American exports to the world. Why? Is it because of the crazy anti–diversity, equity, and inclusion crusade that the Republican right has brought to the center of American policy landscape?
Donald Trump can try to use a tiny grant over many years that helped encourage peace and tolerance among children of the Middle East to boast his and Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative. But instead of making fun of Elmo and Big Bird, Trump should follow up his own words of wanting world peace and work for peace in Palestine as well as in Ukraine. He says he wants that, but disparaging an educational children’s show that teaches tolerance is not the way to do it.
For countries in armed conflicts, what is needed more than ever is the end of wars and occupations. After that, and for countries that are not experiencing war, should come an increase in wholesome children-focused programs like Sesame Street.
