More Ways to Die

According to the Palestinian news agency Ma'an, "A Gazan woman was found stabbed to death Wednesday morning."

So the woman, still unidentified, survived Israeli artillery shells, missiles, and sniper fire in order to be stabbed to death by a husband or a brother. Read more.

The Art of Israeli Soldiers

"Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex," next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills." A "graduation" shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, "No matter how it begins, we'll put an end to it." Read more of the twisted minds produced by the so-called most moral army in the world.

(thanks Nada)

Mahmoud Darwish's Last Poem: "I Don't Want for This Poem to End"

Mahmoud Darwish's last poem, "I Don't Want for This Poem to End," will be appearing in the last issue of Al karmel, the journal that had been founded and edited by Mahmoud Darwish since 1981. Issue number 90 is the last one, put together by Palestinian critic Hassan Khader. The demise of Al Karmel is a loss that reminds us of our bigger loss in the death of Darwish. Here is the poem in Arabic followed by my translation:

لا اريد لهذي القصيدة ان تنتهي'

'لا اريدُ لهذي القصيدة ان تنتهي ابدا
لا اريد لها هدفاً واضحاً
لا اريد لها ان تكون خريطة منفى
ولا بلدا
لا اريد لهذي القصيدة ان تنتهي
بالختام السعيد، ولا بالردى
اريد لها ان تكون كما تشتهي ان
تكون:
قصيدة غيري. قصيدة ضدي. قصيدة
ندِّي...
اريد لها ان تكون صلاة اخي وعدوي.
كأن المخاطب فيها انا الغائب المتكلم فيها.
كأنَّ الصدى جسدي. وكأني انا
انت، او غيرَنا. وكأني انا آخري!'

"I don't want for this poem ot end"

I don't want for this poem to ever end
I don't want for it a clear target
I don't want it to be the map of an exile or a country
I don't want for this poem to end
with a happy ending, or with death
I want it to be as it desires to be:
Someone else's poem, my opponent's poem, my equal's
poem...
I want it to be the prayer of my brother and my enemy.
As if the one addressed in it is me the absent speaker.
As if the echo is my body, as if I am
You, or other than us, as if I am my other.

Djamel Laroussi in DC

I finally managed to catch a performance at the Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World festival at the Kennedy Center. Between sold-out shows, stand-by lines, and my son's flu, I missed Marcel Khaliefeh, Karakalla, Simone Chahin, Suhair Hammad, The Pomegranete and the Myrh, among others. Come to think of it, I barely made it to the panel I moderated. So it's not surprising that I began to think "curse."

But tonight the curse was broken and I managed to make it to the last free performance of the festival: Djamel Laroussi and his band from Algeria. Laroussi mixes traditional Algerian and western sound, and he and his guys show much energy and playfulness on stage. It was a good performance and the crowd got into it nicely. I didn't know anything about him before tonight. Here's a u tube clip:

Rape for Rehabilitation

Some men in South Africa think that the best way to de-lesbenize lesbians is to rape them. This is according to a report by a South African NGO that defends against hate crimes.

The report quotes one lesbian woman as saying: "We are humiliated every day, and get beaten if we walk alone. We are always reminded that we deserve to be raped. They scream at you, 'If I rape you, you will become straight, and buy skirts, and start cooking because you will learn how to be a real woman.'"

This kind of rape is called by its perpetrators "rehabilitation rape." The NGO said that a pro-gay organization deals with 10 such cases of rape a week against lesbians in Cape Town alone.

The post-apartheid South Africa has a very progressive constitution regarding gay and lesbain rights, but that obviously doesn't mean that homophobia seizes to exist. Rape is also endemic in the country.