Legal consciousness and moral conscience in children's weeklies during Israel's first decade

The article analyzes texts from the leading Hebrew weeklies for children during Israel's first decade and shows how journalism of this kind developed as a meaningful platform for legal and moral issues. It addresses the concern of children's journals with the laws of the newly established State of Israel and current and judicial matters in general. An exception to this preoccupation with the rule of law was the coverage of the IDF's act of retribution in the vil¬ lage of Qibya in Jordan (1953), in which dozens of innocent citizens, including women and children, were killed and injured. The article takes a critical look at the depiction of this act in certain weeklies for young readers as legitimate retributivism by Israeli citizens beyond state lines and distinguishes between the intention to promote legal awareness and national consciousness and the effort to mediate moral-conscientiousness and rule-of-law values.