Israel/Palestine: the 70% 70 year old solution

The problem of Israel/Palestine was solved 70 years ago. Amazing but at least arguably true. It was determined then that the establishment of two states within the land then known as Palestine was the only feasible or practicable way to resolve the murderous impasse between Arabs and Jews. Depressingly enough, that prospect seems as distant now as it must have been back then.

What has inspired this train of thought was a very interesting book I was reading over the weekend, Mandate Days, by A.J.Sherman, published ten years ago. Sherman based his book primarily on the hitherto unpublished private correspondence, records and diaries of British officers and other ranks deployed to Palestine between 1918 and 1948 to execute the Mandate with respect to Palestine conferred on Britain by the League of Nations following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War.

To my reading, Sherman is scrupulously fair, as unflinching about Jewish terrorism in the immediate post-WWII period as he is about Arab terrorism during the Arab Rebellion of 1936-39.

The Mandate, as is well known, was based on the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

Over the years of the Mandatory Government, it became clear that it was impossible to reconcile the two wings of the Declaration: a national home for the Jews, and preservation of the rights of the indigenous Arabs. Yet Britain was bound by the Mandate to struggle for the achievement of both.

The British officers posted to Palestine to implement the Mandate saw clearly their task was impossible. The hatred between Jews and Arabs could, even then, be cut with a knife. It smouldered below the surface like an inextinguishable fuse.

The British didn’t care for the Zionists by much. Accustomed to the more amenable “natives” of India and Kenya (even if such existed only in their imaginations), they found the Jews — especially those born in Palestine — hard, brash, arrogant, pushy. Most of all, and quite unlike the Arabs, they lacked the proper spirit of deference. They didn’t know their place. To the upper-middle and upper classes of the Empire, effortlessly possessed of a sense of their own social and cultural superiority, this was both puzzling and offensive. In the words of Reader Bullard (see this post), the unintellectual, sport-loving British found a natural affinity with the Arabs, and reserved their distrust for the “intellectual, complicated Jew”. Sherman’s correspondents are almost universally pro-Arab.

From the first, the British on the ground tried to turn Palestine into the kind of colony they were familiar with, complete with hunts (for jackals!), parties, “at homes” and the endless social round. They seemed not to understand that the Mandate did not confer upon them imperial powers, but only administrative responsibilities.

For their part, the Zionist Jews were uninterested in becoming the subjects of Empire. They busied themselves, instead, with fulfilling their part of the Mandate — the construction of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. They bought land from absentee Arab landlords, usually domiciled in Damascus or Cairo, drained the swamps, rescued the sand dunes and, as even the British grudgingly recognised, really did make the deserts bloom. They built a state within a state, with its own schools, language (Hebrew), administrative machinery and taxation to fund their education and health infrastructures. Undoubtedly this was in preparation for the formal establishment of a Jewish state (as opposed to a mere “homeland”).

Meanwhile, the Arabs of Palestine too had their aspirations. Like Arabs elsewhere, they longed for national self-determination. This they had been promised by the British in return for their help in defeating their overlords, the Ottomans. By the late 1930’s, Syria and Iraq were on the verge of achieving it. But in Palestine, the terms of the Mandate made it impossible, for their land had, perforce, to accommodate a national home for the Jews. This the Palestinian Arabs hated above all else. They watched the increasing pace of Jewish immigration and land acquisition with fury and fear, as their land was sold from under them, and the remorseless logic of demographics foretold they would soon be a minority in their own land. The dream of self-determination would be gone like drifting smoke.

The British in Palestine, torn between pro-Zionist policy directives from Whitehall and a profound local conviction that both the Mandate and the Declaration upon which it was based it were profoundly mistaken and unworkable, tried hopelessly to keep the irreconcilable parties apart. Violence erupted throughout the 1920’s, with a series of massacres perpetrated against Jewish populations of Hebron and and other towns in 1929, and culminating in a serious, territory-wide uprising by the Arabs beginning in 1936, urged on by the anti-Semitic Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini.

It was then, in 1937, that the solution to Israel-Palestine was proposed: partition. Lord Peel was appointed to lead a Royal Commission into the causes of the Arab Rebellion. The Commission’s report is a model of impartiality, diligence, good sense and good governance. The summary of the report is here.

In short, Peel concluded that the Mandate had failed, that the differences between the peoples were irreconcilable, and that the only feasible solution was the establishment of two states, one for the Arabs, and one for the Jews.

The problem cannot be solved by giving either the Arabs or the Jews all they want. The answer to the question which of them in the end will govern Palestine must be Neither. No fair-minded statesman can think it right either that 400,000 Jews, whose entry into Palestine has been facilitated by the British Government and approved by the League of Nations, should be handed over to Arab rule, or that, if the Jews should become a majority, a million Arabs should be handed over to their rule. But while neither race can fairly rule all Palestine, each race might justly rule part of it.

Seventy years later, now as then, it remains the only solution. And seventy years later, now as then, the Jews accept it, and the Arabs do not.

Other highlights of the Peel Commission’s findings are below the fold. They’re rich in insight and well worth reading.

Chavez goes down

Hollywood’s favourite full-on-dictator-in-waiting, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez –

Graphic via Gateway Pundit.

– has lost his attempt to change to the constitution to allow him to be president for life (and other important measures).

Venezuela celebrates.

The BBC grits its teeth.

The villain of the peace

David Kopel at The Volokh Conspiracy describes the history of the United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA), set up in 1949 to assist the Palestinians who who fled or were expelled from Israel, but which has only served to ensure they maintain their refugee status in perpetuity.

Established in December 1949, UNRWA began operations the next May. The UN Agency’s job was to help settle the Palestinians who had left Israel because of the 1948-49 war. According to General Assembly resolution 302(IV), UNRWA’s mandate was that “constructive measures should be undertaken at an early date with a view to the termination of international assistance for relief.”

Over half a century later, UNRWA’s annual budget is nearly half a billion dollars, including nearly $150 million from US taxpayers. As UNRWA’s website explains, “In the absence of a solution to the Palestine refugee problem, the General Assembly has repeatedly renewed UNRWA’s mandate.” Stated another way, UNRWA’s bureaucratic existence depends on making sure that the Palestinian refugee problem is not solved, and that “international assistance for relief” is not terminated at an “early date,” or ever.

Well worth a read, as are the comments.

One commenter, Prof. Ethan, makes some important observations, which echo an argument advanced by Bernard Lewis prior to the recent Annapolis conference:

The Palestinian refugee situation is hardly unique, neither in suffering nor in scale.

There was a lot of these events at the end of WWII and during decolonization:

About ten million Germans had to flee their centuries-old homes in eastern Europe in 1945. A million died; another million were raped. They were not welcomed in western Germany, and there was much suffering. None of these people or their descendants is blowing up discos in Danzig.

About seven million Hindus had to flee from what became Pakistan (and an equal number of Muslims fled from India). No Hindus are blowing up schoolyards filled with students in Islamabad.

The number of Palestinian refugees resulting from the Nakbah of 1948 is about 750,000. Bernard Lewis is right: the number of Jewish refugees expelled from Muslim states between 1948 and 1960 was larger: about 850,000. These Jews were forced to leave everything behind (uncompensated). Some Muslim is enjoying their property even as we speak (perhaps this illegally-seized property could be a source of compensation for the Palestinians!). None of these people is blowing up supermarkets in Marakesh or Aden.

About 300,000 Greeks were intentionally forced from Egypt by the Nasser government policies 1953 and 1960–in order to Egyptianize and Muslimize Egypt; ethnic and religious cleansing to the max. Most of these Greeks had come to Egypt in the early 19th century; but some had been in Egypt for 2,300 years. The refugees weren’t happy, nor was it easy for them to assimilate where they ended up. They had to leave everything behind (uncompensated); some Muslim is enjoying their property as we speak. No Greeks are blowing up buses in Cairo.

Millions of Greeks were forced from western Turkey in 1922; the ethnic cleansing of Greeks by the Turkish government went on as late as 1955 in the area called “Pontus” on the south coast of the Black Sea; the refugees remain bitter and when a Greek “Pontic” refugee girl won a gold medal in the Olympics in 1992 the bitterness in Greece was very public. None of these Greeks or their descendants is blowing up restaurants in Ankara.

About 50,000 Hindu Indians were driven from Uganda in 1972 by Idi Amin in a program of ethnic and religious cleansing. Their property was confiscated (uncompensated). None of these people or their descendants are intentionally shooting rockets at civilians in Uganda.

When I pointed out these parallel tragedies to a Palestinian, his response is revealing: “None of these people is as honorable as the Palestinians are.”

I wish I was making up this psychologically revealing story. I assure you that, unfortunately, I am not.

As far as I can see, there was no just solution to the problem of Palestine in 1947 — at least, not one that would be just to both sides. A solution just for the Jews involved an injustice to the Palestinians. And the opposite was equally true.

The British were tired of of the burden of their Mandate, and wanted out. The Jews had fought for the establishment of a Jewish state against the Mandate, and their struggle was not going to stop. The Arabs did not accept the Jews in Palestine, and their struggle was not going to stop. The only possible solution was what the UN in fact proposed: two states, one for each people. The Jews accepted, the Arabs did not.

And still do not.

“A Stranger By the Gulf”

Another marvellous poem by Iraq’s greatest poet, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, translated from the Arabic by Shareah Taleghani.

“A Stranger By the Gulf” is from 1953.

The wind gasps with the midday heat,
like a nightmare in the late afternoon
And on the masts, it continues to fold, to spread for departure
The gulf is crowded with them–laborers roaming the seas
Barefoot, half-naked
And on the sand, by the gulf
A stranger sat–a baffled vision wanders the gulf
Destroying the pillars of light with the rising wail
Higher than the torrents roaring foam, than the clamor
A voice thunders in the abyss of my bereaved soul: Iraq
Like the crest rising, like a cloud, like tears to the eyes
The wind cries to me: Iraq.
The wave howls at me: Iraq. Iraq. Nothing but Iraq.
The sea is as wide as can be, and you are as distant
The sea is between you and me: Oh Iraq.

Yesterday, as I passed by the café, I heard you Iraq . . .
You were a spin of a record
This, the spin of the cosmos in my life–it rolls time on for me
In two moments of tranquility if it has lost its place
It is the face of my mother in darkness
And her voice,
They glide with the vision until I sleep
And it is the palm trees that I fear if they grow dim at sunset
Crammed with ghosts snatching every child
who doesn’t return from the paths,
And it is the old woman and what she whispers about Hazam

And how the grave split open over him before the beautiful, young Afra
And he took hold of her . . . except for a braid

Rose red . . . do you remember?
The glowing fireplace crowded with palms seeking warmth?
And my aunt’s whispered tales of bygone kings?
And behind a door like a decree
That was closed on the women
By hands forever obeyed–as they were the hands of men
The men would carouse and pass the night in revelry
without tiring

So, do you remember? Do you remember?
Content, we were resigned
With those sad stories–as they were the stories of women.
A collection of lives and times, we were in its prime
We were its two spheres–between which it rested
So, isn’t that nothing but dust?
A dream and a spin of the record?
If that were all that remains, where is the consolation?

In you Iraq, I loved my spirit or I loved you in it
Both of You, the lantern of my spirit, you–
and evening came
And the night pressed down–so let both glow in the darkness,
so I will not lose my way
If you came to me in a foreign land–the encounter would be
incomplete
Meeting you–Iraq at my hand . . . this, the encounter
Longing for it penetrates my blood, as if all of my blood is desire
A hunger for it . . . like the hunger of the blood of the drowned for
air
The desire of the unborn stretching his neck from the
darkness to birth
I wonder how it is possible for traitors to betray
Does one betray his country?
If he betrays the meaning of being, how can he be?

The sun is more beautiful in my country than any other, and
darkness
Even darkness–there, is more beautiful
for it embraces Iraq

What a pity . . . .when will I sleep
And sense on the pillow
Your summer night–gilded by your perfume, Iraq?
Between timid villages and strange cities, my footsteps
I sang your beloved soil
And I carried it–for I am the Messiah in exile dragging his cross
And I heard the footfall of the famished moving, bleeding
from faltering
And dust, from you and from padded feet–my eyes filled with
tears
I still walk, disheveled–with soiled feet on the roads
Under foreign suns
In tattered rags, hands outstretched, calling
Pale from fever and disgrace, the disgrace of a strange
beggar
Amidst foreign eyes
Amidst scorn, and rejection, and aversion . . . or pity
Death is easier than pity
Than the pity foreign eyes squeeze out as
Drops of mineral water
So be doused, you, Oh drops, Oh blood, . . . oh . . . currency
Oh Wind, Oh needles tailoring the sail for me,
when will I return
To Iraq, when will I return?
Oh Flash of the waves staggered by oars—
carrying me to the Gulf
Oh great constellation . . . oh currency.
If only the ships didn’t charge their passengers for traveling?
If only the earth like the vast horizon was without seas
I am still calculating, oh currency, I count you–I ask for more

I am still repelled by you from the intervals of my alienation,
I still ignite my window and my door with your glow,
On the other shore over there,
So tell me, oh currency . . .
When will I return, when will I return.
Do you see that joyous day approaching before my death?

And in the sky, in the fragments of clouds
And in the breezes, hailstones saturated with August perfumes
I reveal with a cloak, the remainder of my lethargy, like a silk veil
Disclosing what is and is not visible,
What I have and barely have forgotten,
when doubt is within certainty
It is clear to me–as I extend my hand to slip on my clothes–
What answer was I searching for in the darkness of my soul
That the hidden joy did not fill the abyss of my spirit like fog?
Today–as delight floods through me–surprising me–I return

What a pity–
I will not return to Iraq
And will he who lacks currency return?
And how is it saved?
And will you eat when you are hungry? And will you spend
what
Dignity deems generous, on food?

So cry for Iraq
For what do you have but tears
But your futile anticipation, for the winds and the masts.

Middle East apocalypse

I happened on this 55-year old quote today, from a man long dead — legendary British diplomat Sir Reader Bullard — which really struck me:

It is through the Middle East — Cairo, Baghdad and the Arab shore of the Persian Gulf — that the great airlines run connecting Europe with India, Australia and the Far East. Ancient and modern commerce join when the pipeline which carries oil from Iraq to the Mediterranean forks at the Euphrates and embraces along the coast, a territory which was in ancient times Phoenecia. Not far away, in Palestine, is the traditional site of Armageddon, where those who read prophecies into the Book of Revelation look for a battle to be waged in which evil will finally be overthrown. If an ideological war will satisfy them, let them know it has begun in the Middle East already.

Sir Reader Bullard
Britain and the Middle East
Hutchinson’s University Library, 1952

Something to ponder in the wake of Annapolis. Maybe.

Interestingly, Bullard described himself, at the time of his diplomatic posting to Stalin’s Soviet Union, in 1930, as a ‘former rebel and socialist’. Gosh, there were some of us around even then.

Running from the Sixties

Edie Sedgwick ran until 1971. She had it all. Scion of an old New England family, picture girl of Andy Warhol’s Factory, beautiful almost beyond the possibilities of the physical.

Watch here:

The Sixties were a strange time. Looking back, it was an age described by an arc, at one end innocence, at the other, corruption. Innocence was defined for us by Simon and Garfunkel, corruption by the The Velvet Underground (whose song, below, was said to be about Edie Sedgwick, envied by all). Some of us went for the one, some for the other.

Innocence:

Corruption:

 

______________________

It’s hard to understand the Sixties now. Forty years down the track, who really cares for the dreams and the fantasies that were the playgrounds of the present generation’s adolescence? But that period of the past was a crucial time for the present, because those who grew up then basically run the place now. We were children, and cruelly naive. Naivete was the key to our innocence and our corruption.

We resisted our parents, for we thought (wrongly — oh, how wrongly!) that we knew far more than they did, the generation of war, the generation of suffering, of toil, of stoic endurance. We had the answers to everything, and we listened to no-one. Most of our answers were tragically, or comically, if not indeed criminally wrong, and the resonances of our mistakes are only now becoming fully felt, a generation later.

But it was an intoxicating time, and that almost makes the wrongness right, especially through the softening veil of memory. We rode the crest of the wave of the times, and we didn’t care where we rode it, or to what ending. It was enough to ride. Like Edie Sedgwick, we rode the wave right up to the wall, and there we crashed, like she did, at the end of that lacerated decade, although it took us another thirty and forty years to realise the fact.

“Icon of Hatred”

Those who have been following the Mohammed al-Durah hoax will already have seen this film, Icon of Hatred, by Richard Landes of Augean Stables and The Second Draft.

It’s hard viewing, but necessary. Richard reminds us just how serious the al-Durah affair was. It was far from being just another instance of journalistic malfeasance of the kind with which we have become all too familiar. This was journalism with consequences — real consequences, like the similarly false Gitmo-guard-flushes-Qu’ran-down-toilet story, which sparked riots across the Muslim world and claimed a dozen deaths.

It’s not easy to say how many people will have died as a result of this footage — on both sides during the Intifada, at the hands of Al Qaida in America, Afghanistan and Iraq, on the streets of the Middle East. Bin Laden gorged on it, as did the beheaders of Daniel Pearl, and the waves of suicide murderers destined for the clubs and bars of Israel’s cities. The tally may run into thousands.

Yet it was false, fraudulent, faked. And though so many people have lost their lives in consequence, not one journalist has lost even his livelihood.

Power without responsibility: the whore’s prerogative throughout the ages. And now it is the singular privilege of the journalist.

Mohammed al-Durah update: the rushes see light of day

Yes they did, and it’s looking bad for Charles Enderlin, Talal Abu Rahmad and France2.

From HonestReporting:

HonestReporting together with Take-A-Pen covered this afternoon’s hearing in France where raw footage of the Mohammed Dura was publicly screened for the first time. HonestReporting/Take-A-Pen’s Alain Benjamin, who saw the video in court, discussed by phone the proceedings with MediaBackspin editor Pesach Benson.

What did the raw footage show?

We can definitely say that nobody can say who was shooting at who. Charles Enderlin said in court that the Palestinians started shooting first, but in the end, there’s no way we can say what happened that day. You can’t tell who did what. The assertion from Charles Enderlin, that the Israeli army killed the boy, is totally wrong. The least he could’ve said was that the boy was killed–but we don’t know by who.

There was a dispute over how much footage was to be screened. Was the full video shown?

Charles Enderlin submitted 18 minutes of footage. The judge, without any prompting from Philippe’s lawyers, asked what happened to the 27 minutes. Enderlin said on record in court that he had to manipulate some footage that was not relevant to that day. He said he transferred the footage onto DVD for the court. That was amazing.

So she asked if anyone in attendance had seen the full footage. Luc Rosenzweig was there, stood up , and said he saw a tape that was more than 20 minutes long. Richard Landes also stood up. He saw the footage at Enderlin’s office. He said the timer he saw was at least 21 minutes long. The judge basically let that issue rest, but there was serious doubt hanging over the room that the footage was tampered or doctored.

After the hearing ended, how did people react to what they saw?

Not one person believed that the version of France 2 was right. Some people maintained that the footage was staged. Others think the footage was real. Clearly, nobody believed that anybody died.

Does the footage vindicate Karsenty?

Everyone was going, “Wow” and talking about whether he’ll take action against France 2 for trying to swindle the court. He can wait for the verdict, or sue France 2 for tampering with the tape. He has quite a few options. Clearly, the judge wasn’t convinced by France 2’s version. The judge’s verdict is to be given on February 27.

How did the France 2 people react after the hearing?

France 2 left immediately. They just ran out and left. They didn’t want to speak to anyone.

More from Richard Landes and Melanie Phillips, both of whom were in the courtroom.

Here’s the video:

Mohammed al-Durah redux

Tomorrow — or whenever it’s Wednesday in France — is a kind of high noon in the seven-year struggle to get to the truth of what it was that happened, or did not happen, to a Palestinian child, Mohammed al-Durah, at Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip just days after the eruption of the second Intifada in September 2000.

Richard Landes of Augean Stables has waged an almost solitary battle in the English-speaking world to demonstrate that the boy’s ‘killing’, which inflamed the Intifada with irrevocable force and led to the deaths of thousands on both sides, was faked. His latest, indispensable summary is here. It’s up at Pajamas Media as well.

On the information available, I believe that on that day of 30 September, 2000, out of sight and out of the line of fire of a local Israeli police post, Palestinian kids and some adults were playing games. They were acting out a series of tableaux for the benefit of attendant cameramen, who wanted library footage to accompany stories of ‘violent’ clashes in (then) occupied Gaza — film which they could safely retrieve from their databases and include as real-life footage, without having to venture into harm’s way to get it.

One of them, a Palestinian stringer named Talal Abu Rahmah, shot some footage of a boy and his father acting out the scene ‘crouching terrified under withering Israeli fire, boy then agonisingly killed’. He recognised its particularly powerful impact, notwithstanding it was staged, and sent it off to France2’s Jerusalem editor, Charles Enderlin, as coverage of a real event. Enderlin had it broadcast, the world picked it up, and the rest is history.

Tomorrow the rushes of the footage will be shown in a French court. They have already been viewed by senior journalists, and Landes himself, and all are agreed they depict no more than play-acting by a bunch of Palestinian kids.

But what will the media make of it? I’m a pessimist in this regard. I doubt the MSM will touch it. And if they do, it will be along these lines:

(Note: Just to be clear. What follows is an imagined pre-construction. It is not a news report.)

Anger, sadness greet ’smear’ of Palestinian boy martyr

GAZA CITY, 15 Nov., 2007. Palestinians reacted yesterday with a mixture of sadness and anger to allegations in a French court that the death of 12-year old Mohammed al-Durah, killed by IDF gunfire at Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip in 2000, had been ‘faked’.

The allegations, which have not been supported by either the Israeli or French governments, arose from a little-known libel case in France, which involved a so-called ‘independent’ analysis of the seven-year old killing by pro-Israeli activists in France and the US. Some of them have been described by world-renowned US journalist James Fallows as fanatics.

The dead boy’s father, Jamal, reacted bitterly to news of the allegations. ‘My son was a martyr slaughtered at their hands’, he said angrily, ‘and now they smear and slander him in his death and dishonour his memory, and the memory of all the Palestinian children they have destroyed’.

Veteran Ha’aretz journalist Gideon Levy - regarded as one of the finest and most fiercely independent of Israeli journalists - agreed, though more cautiously. ‘Undoubtedly the allegations are designed to deflect attention from the IDF’s appalling human rights record in the Occupied Territories,’ Mr Levy said, ‘especially its proven history of killing innocent children.’

Mr Levy also questioned the timing of the allegations, just days before the crucial summit in Annapolis, where the hopes of moderate Israelis and Palestinians for a negotiated peaceful settlement will rely heavily on the goodwill of both sides. Mr Levy thought the sudden appearance of these allegations might derail the peace conference by destroying the atmosphere of trust. ‘Is this what Olmert actually wants? Is this what’s behind the resurrection of a story that was dead seven years ago? The death of the peace process?’, Mr Levy asked.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, the site of the boy’s death, Hamas spokespeople were playing down the possibility of violence in response to the charges. In Gaza, Mohammed al-Durah remains an icon of the Intifada, and an adored role model for thousands of Gazan children. Allegations that his death was ‘faked’ could be expected to be controversial, to say the least.

However, Government spokesman Hamid Ismail said the mood in the Strip was sad rather than angry. ‘We understand’, he said, ‘why Israel has to do this, why they will stop at nothing to tear down the shrine of this martyr. Even in death and silence he condemns them’.

He added: ‘There remains the chance that some will be so outraged that it will be difficult to prevent them shouting out loud in the streets, and possibly firing weapons into the air.’ But he was confident restraint would prevail.

The charges in the French court were sparked by claims that examination of the footage of the shooting broadcast by France2 showed some scenes might have been staged.

No-one, including the veteran journalist and cameraman who broadcast the story, has admitted any wrong-doing and no-one has ever been charged with any breach of professional ethics.

These claims have not been taken seriously by any court or tribunal in seven years. As for the case before the French court, it is actually an appeal by one of the pro-Israel activists, Philippe Karsenty, against his conviction in a lower court on a charge of libelling France2 and its Jerusalem editor, Charles Enderlin, who is both Jewish and an Israeli citizen.

Satire ends.

There are at least seventeen conscious and identifiable spins in that ‘article’. If it were a real one, and I were writing it, I would be careful to say nothing that was factually inaccurate. Spin’s easy. Everything can be spun. That’s why journalists do it.

Update: When word got around that the court hearing Philippe Karsenty’s appeal had ordered France2 to produce the rushes — which comprise 27 minutes of footage — cynics predicted that the TV station would ‘lose’ the film or censor it in some way. According to this video from Karsenty (and I’ve seen similar reports around the blogosphere), France 2 is going to show only 18 minutes of the footage. Hmm.

Hat tip: Carl in Jerusalem.

A poem from Iraq

Badr Shakir al-Sayyab (1926-1964) was Iraq’s most celebrated poet.

Perhaps his most famous poem was “The Song of the Rain”. It is beautiful, breathtaking, even if translated with necessary imperfection from the Arabic into English.

Your eyes are two palm tree forests in early light,
Or two balconies from which the moonlight recedes
When they smile, your eyes, the vines put forth their leaves,
And lights dance . . . like moons in a river
Rippled by the blade of an oar at break of day;
As if stars were throbbing in the depths of them . . .

And they drown in a mist of sorrow translucent
Like the sea stroked by the hand of nightfall;

The warmth of winter is in it, the shudder of autumn,
And death and birth, darkness and light;
A sobbing flares up to tremble in my soul
And a savage elation embracing the sky,
Frenzy of a child frightened by the moon.

It is as if archways of mist drank the clouds
And drop by drop dissolved in the rain . . .
As if children snickered in the vineyard bowers,

The song of the rain
Rippled the silence of birds in the trees . . .
Drop, drop, the rain
Drip

Drop the rain

Evening yawned, from low clouds

Heavy tears are streaming still.
It is as if a child before sleep were rambling on
About his mother (a year ago he went to wake her, did not find her,
Then was told, for he kept on asking,
“After tomorrow, she’ll come back again . . .
That she must come back again,

Yet his playmates whisper that she is there
In the hillside, sleeping her death for ever,
Eating the earth around her, drinking the rain;
As if a forlorn fisherman gathering nets
Cursed the waters and fate
And scattered a song at moonset,
Drip, drop, the rain
Drip, drop, the rain
Do you know what sorrow the rain can inspire?

Do you know how gutters weep when it pours down?

Do you know how lost a solitary person feels in the rain?
Endless, like spilt blood, like hungry people, like love,
Like children, like the dead, endless the rain.
Your two eyes take me wandering with the rain,
Lightning’s from across the Gulf sweep the shores of Iraq
With stars and shells,
As if a dawn were about to break from them,
But night pulls over them a coverlet of blood.
I cry out to the Gulf: “O Gulf,
Giver of pearls and shells and death!”
And the echo replies,
As if lamenting:
“O Gulf,
Giver of shells and death .

I can almost hear Iraq husbanding the thunder,
Storing lightning in the mountains and plains,
So that if the seal were broken by men
The winds would leave in the valley not a trace of Thamud.
I can almost hear the palm trees drinking the rain,
Hear the villages moaning and emigrants
With oar and sail fighting the Gulf
Winds of storm and thunder, singing
“Rain . . . rain . . .
Drip, drop, the rain . . .
And there is hunger in Iraq,

The harvest time scatters the grain in-it,

That crows and locusts may gobble their fill,
Granaries and stones grind on and on,

Mills turn in the fields, with them men turning . . .
Drip, drop, the rain . . .

Drip
Drop
When came the night for leaving, how many tears we shed,
We made the rain a pretext, not wishing to be blamed
Drip, drop, the rain

Drip, drop, the rain

Since we had been children, the sky

Would be clouded in wintertime,

And down would pour the rain,
And every year when earth turned green the hunger struck us.
Not a year has passed without hunger in Iraq.
Rain . . .
Drip, drop, the rain . . .
Drip, drop . . .
In every drop of rain
A red or yellow color buds from the seeds of flowers.
Every tear wept by the hungry and naked people
And every spilt drop of slaves’ blood
Is a smile aimed at a new dawn,
A nipple turning rosy in an infant’s lips
In the young world of tomorrow, bringer of life.

Drip…..
Drop….. the rain . . .In the rain.
Iraq will blossom one day ‘

I cry out to the Gulf: “O Gulf,
Giver of pearls, shells and death!”

The echo replies
As if lamenting:
‘O Gulf,
Giver of shells and death.”
And across the sands from among its lavish gifts
The Gulf scatters fuming froth and shells
And the skeletons of miserable drowned emigrants

Who drank death forever
From the depths of the Gulf, from the ground of its silence,
And in Iraq a thousand serpents drink the nectar
From a flower the Euphrates has nourished with dew.

I hear the echo
Ringing in the Gulf:
“Rain . . .
Drip, drop, the rain . . .
Drip, drop.”

In every drop of rain
A red or yellow color buds from the seeds of flowers.
Every tear wept by the hungry and naked people
And every spilt drop of slaves’ blood
Is a smile aimed at a new dawn,
A nipple turning rosy in an infant’s lips
In the young world of tomorrow, bringer of life.

And still the rain pours down.

Still the rain pours down.