Who is arresting Egypt's democracy?

Just received this in the mail. Was the army sending innocent civilians to fight for it's hidden satisfaction?

Will the army, able to to imprison a pacifist blogger - let the election free of any interference and manipulation?

What future awaits Egypt, the Middle East?







am I insulting the Egyptian army, G-d forbid?



EGYPT: Pacifist blogger and conscientious objector Maikel Nabil Sanad sentenced to three years in prison

War Resisters' International has learnt this morning that pacifist blogger and conscientious objector Maikel Nabil Sanad has been sentenced to three years' imprisonment yesterday on charges of "insulting the military".

Yesterday, April 10, 2011, in front of the military court in Nasr City in Cairo, his family and friends were told that the trial had been adjourned, while in fact it was happening, and Maikel Nabil Sanad was being sentenced to prison, without his family or lawyers present.

This is an outrageous violation of the right to fair trial according to article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

Maikel Nabil Sanad was arrested by military police in the night of 28 March 2011, and has been kept detained since. He is being tried in a fast-track trial in a military court, although he is a civilian.


Egypt is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Freedom of expression and opinion is a human right, protected under article 19 of the ICCPR, as repeatedly stated by the UN Human Rights Committee.

The newly approved interim constitution of Egypt also guarantees the right to freedom of expression, and the freedom of the press.

In his writings, Maikel Nabil Sanad made use of his right to freedom of opinion and expression. This includes his right to criticise the role of the military during and after the revolution.

The sentencing of Maikel Nabil Sanad to three years in prison is a violation of his human rights - especially his right to freedom of opinion and expression and his right to a fair trial. In addition, Maikel Nabil Sanad was tried in a military court, although he is a civilian. This again is against Egyptian and international law and legal standards. He was sentenced deprived of the presence of family and friends, which is a violation of the principle of public trial, an important aspect of the right to fair trial.

War Resisters' International calls for letters of support to Maikel Nabil Sanad:
Maikel Nabil Sanad
Toura Prison
Mansheya El-masry
Tora
Cairo
Egypt

War Resisters' International calls for letters of protest to the Egyptian authorities:

Director of Military Judiciary
Major-General Ahmed Abd Allah
Military Judicial Department
Cairo, Egypt
Fax: +202 2 402 4468 / +202 2 411 3452 (ask for fax)

Military General Attorney
Major-General Medhat Radwan
Military Judicial Department
Cairo, Egypt
+202 2 412 0980 (ask for fax)

Minister of Defence
His Excellency Muhammad Tantawi
Ministry of Defence
Cairo, Egypt
mmc@afmic.gov.eg ; mod@afmic.gov.eg
A protest email can be sent at http://wri-irg.org/node/12728.

Egyptian Embassy in Britain
26 South Street, London W1K 1DW
Tel.: 020 7499 3304,
Fax: 020 7491 1542,
E-Mail Address: eg.emb_london@mfa.gov.eg
A list with contact details for Egyptian embassies is available at
http://www.mfa.gov.eg/English/Embassies/Pages/Listing.aspx

War Resisters' International calls on the Egyptian authorities to immediately release Maikel Nabil Sanad and all those other activists arrested during and after the revolution.

Andreas Speck
War Resisters' International

Is the Egyptian Army/Military still a Sacred Cow?

Non Violence is stil illegal in Egypt.
What can one do from far away except spread the word?


Cairo/London, 3 April 2011

PRESS RELEASE:
EGYPT: Trial against detained pacifist blogger and conscientious
objector Maikel Nabil Sanad adjourned to Monday 4 April

The trial against Egyptian pacifist blogger and conscientious objector Maikel Nabil Sanad on charges of "insulting the military" and "obstructing public security" has again been ajourned, this time to tomorrow, Monday, 4 April 2011, War Resisters' International's observer, conscientious objection campaigner Andreas Speck reports from Cairo.

Maikel Nabil Sanad was arrested by military police in the night of 28 March (see co-alert, 29 March 2011, and has been kept detained since. He is being tried in a fast-track trial in a military court, although he is a civilian. "According to international human rights standards, civilians should not be tried in a military court", says WRI's conscientious objection campaigner Andreas Speck. "Especially on charges of 'insulting the military', there is serious doubt that a military court can be impartial. In fact, the whole way this trial is being conducted is a clear violation of article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the right to a fair trial. Maikel Nabil Sanad has no time to prepare an effective legal defence with his lawyers, with only a few days between arrest and sentencing, which we expect to happen tomorrow. In addition, interested members of the public - such as myself, and his friends and supporters - have not been allowed to attend the trial, thus there is a clear breach of the principle of trial in public," he adds.

"Besides these shortcomings in relation to procedure, the charges themselves do not stick. Maikel Nabil Sanad only exposed the truth when he published his blog post on the role of the Egyptian military during and after the revolution. But this is probably what the military does not like, and why they are having a go at him. He showed that the military does everything but defending the revolution - it is defending the status quo. But then, you probably insult someone more by telling the truth than by spreading lies", he continues.

"However, his blog posts are protected by the right to freedom of opinion and expression. And the UN Human Rights Committee is very clear that this freedom also has to include the freedom to criticise the authorities and the military - whether they like it or not."

"War Resisters' International calls on the Egyptian authorities to immediately release Maikel Nabil Sanad and all those other activists arrested during and after the revolution. And we call on everyone to make their protest heard with letters to Egyptian embassies wherever they live", he adds.

Ends

Contact:
Andreas Speck, War Resisters' International (in Cairo)
Mobile: +44 (0)79-7368 3936

Javier Garate, War Resisters' International (in London)
Mobile: +44 (0)78-5303 8160

War Resisters' International office
Tel +44 (0)20-7278 4040
Email: info@wri-irg.org

Addresses for protest letters

Director of Military Judiciary
Major-General Ahmed Abd Allah
Military Judicial Department
Cairo, Egypt
Fax: +202 2 402 4468 / +202 2 411 3452 (ask for fax)

Military General Attorney
Major-General Medhat Radwan
Military Judicial Department
Cairo, Egypt
+202 2 412 0980 (ask for fax)

Minister of Defence
His Excellency Muhammad Tantawi
Ministry of Defence
Cairo, Egypt
mmc@afmic.gov.eg ; mod@afmic.gov.eg
A protest email can be sent at http://wri-irg.org/node/12474.

Egyptian Embassy in Britain
26 South Street, London W1K 1DW
Tel.: 020 7499 3304,
Fax: 020 7491 1542,
E-Mail Address: eg.emb_london@mfa.gov.eg
A list with contact details for Egyptian embassies is available at
http://www.mfa.gov.eg/English/Embassies/Pages/Listing.aspx

--
War Resisters' International
5 Caledonian Road - London N1 9DX - Britain
tel +44-20-7278 4040 - fax +44-20-7278 0444
Skype warresisters
email info@wri-irg.org http://wri-irg.org
Use email encryption! More information at http://wri-irg.org/node/11496

My Island

It's 4:48 in the morning and I am happily at my computer. Writing.

Ages ago, in a different incarnation, I was a writer in disguise: mother, cook, cleaner, counselor - not necessarily in this order. We lived in a two-tiny-bedrooms apartment, and naturally those went to the kids. The living room doubled as the masterbed at nights.

A room of my own? Not even a bed, or a chair.

From time to time friends would give me keys to a vacant house, and I would sneak off for a day to write.

One day I discovered there are places known as Writers' Colonies. It gave me so much strength! So, there are places where not only writing but the writer herself is respected! I started telling people that we need to have such a place here in Israel.

To my great surprise, no one said, "Fine! I'm going to build one!" What they said - the ones who did not declare this a crazy idea - was: "Fine! Do it!"

Finally in 1984 I plucked up courage and established two residences for writers and artists, in Galilee and in the Desert. International they were, and the writers each had his/her modest renovated old apartment, for up to three months.

In exchange for this they contributed to the regional Jewish-Arab community actually over five hundred cultural and educational activities.

As for myself, I did have a room and a chair and a table and a bed - in the respective offices, or worldwide where I went to raise funds.

I was always writing in my head and on scraps of paper, in the bus, on planes, waiting for meetings. Then one day, eleven years later, my innkeeper, my devoted innkeeper which my body is, reminded me, not so gently, that it was time to have a room of my own before I collapsed.

Dutifully, I obeyed.

So here I am, in my large apartment, free at last and on my own. One room is my independent studio. Another room is the archive, with all my writing projects, except the current one, organized on files and far out of sight.

A third one is the room where I keep my sewing machine and ironing board and the winter clothes. I go there from time to time to dust and water the plants... Sewing, ironing, all those mundane "have-to's" can wait.

My apartment is filled with plants, the window frames and the doors covered with colorful paint. I'm surrounded by art and books and classical music. When people come in, they say, "It's like Nirvana here. So different from the violent world outside!"

But the outside knocks on my windows, seeps in through the radio news, throws itself in my face from the newspapers lined up outside kiosks down the whole length of the main and side streets.

So my working place, my faithful apartment, is my refuge, the only place where up to now I can be "the mistress of my destiny", sovereign.

I choose when to turn on the radio, open the door, answer the phone. Banished are the TV and all mobile phones.

I was a resident at two distinguished artists' colonies in the USA. The food is good, the country green and peaceful, (or so it used to be back then before 9/11); but nothing compares with my little tranquil island.

Here I'm closer to my colleagues, Palestinian and Israeli writers and peace activists.

In the Heart of Darkness, they are my island.

Once she was a child (Noffey Haneffesh: Soul Landscapes)

Soul Landscapes tells the universal story of childhood in times of upheaval, as conveyed by some of the most extraordinary international woman writers. Done mostly on location, these intimate encounters mirror a rainbow of human existence shaped by injustice, turmoil and struggle, and still victorious: six year-old Russian Svetlana Vasilenko awaiting death while caught between the Powers dueling with nuclear bombs; the little Italian child Dacia Maraini starved in a Japanese concentration camp; twelve-year-old. Belgian Am?lie Nothomb, reading by candlelight in a Bangladeshi lepers' house; five-year-old Leena Lander living in the Finnish prison for delinquent boys where her father worked as a supervisor, contemplating in fear and horror her sexually mangled doll found thrown in the forest; eight-year-old Palestinian Anissa Darwish torn by war from the Malkha village of her sweet childhood and the author herself - Corinna Hasofferett, born in Tecuci, Romania - all and each of the writers in this book map the way to survival and hope.
They ask us also to take a second look at our own life, and, well informed, to make sure the right decisions are taken in all that concerns this precious little world.

As a literary form, ONCE SHE WAS A CHILD is a hybrid: it owns the genes of literary fiction, with its attention to language, ambiguities and symbols, carved out by the author's mostly invisible questions, and editing; and it carries the genes of narrative nonfiction as those are real life stories of real, and most impressive persons, showing how gloriously they've survived Evil. Glimpses from The Past, of childhood recollections, set, like pearls on a string, with the author's journal as the connecting thread or background. The reader is invited to absorb. At the end of the book s/he'll discover in a separate section, as an addendum, how far they've reached in The Present.

HudnaPress. Hebrew Publication Date: Spring 2003
Rights information can be obtained at: hudnapress (at) gmail (dot) com

Excerpt:

In the Beginning

When my children were little we were standing one day at the bus stop. It was very hot, August. Suddenly, across from us, two children, suddenly one of them cried to his friend: 'You Arab!'

I looked at my children startled. The younger was then three, the same age I was when I came out of kindergarten and they threw stones at us and cried, 'Jidans, go away to Palestine!' Children I'd played with the day before.

I wanted my children to know that 'Arab' was the name of a people, not a curse.

So I made contact through friends of some friends with members of the Arab intelligentsia who lived in a village in the Galilee and we visited them, they visited us, a contact was made. Mahmud and Lutfia Diab, from Tamra, two hours from Tel Aviv. That was in 1970.

Three years later Lutfia's younger sister, Amal, married her teacher, Munir Diab. And Munir began in those years to manage there the first Arabic community center. So in 1975 the idea occurred to me to arrange a meeting between educated youths from Tamra and from a neighboring Jewish settlement with Jewish and Arabic artists. Munir loved the idea and thanks to him it really happened. We had meetings and conversations with Aharon Meged, Anton Shamas, A. B. Yehoshua. Once every two weeks. One time in Tamra and one time in Shlomi. Finally we had an evening of theater improvisation with the late Peter Fry. He came several times and prepared them.

From the start I'd limited my involvement in that for only half a year. I would come there every two weeks. Shlomi is located eight hundred meters, half a mile, from the Lebanese border. At that time terrorists murdered at night a mother and her two year old daughter, in Dovev. And still people came to the meetings and participated. Very willingly. But in one of the meetings, in Shlomi, someone said, 'Fine. Only you are returning to Tel Aviv and we are staying here not knowing what terrorist will roll upon us at night from the mountain.'

In my apartment in Tel Aviv we lived at the time five people in a space of four hundred and twenty square feet. No room of my own, there wasn't even a bedroom.

Then I thought, if there was a place to which artists would come for a stay of some weeks or months so they can be free to create, then both the artists and the community would benefit. It would answer to the needs.

I returned to Tel Aviv and began telling all kinds of people and organizations, that that was what they had to do. Some said, How come, and some would say, 'Why not, do it.' In those days the world was divided for me into dreamers, and doers. Two separate groups. Me, do? I come up with ideas, and they should do. But all the time it still bothered, burned in my bones. In 1984 I suddenly got up and said, 'I am acting to found such a place.' Now I understand that in that moment I turned from a child citizen into an adult citizen. Very difficult. You need to go to the world, and bow down. It's impossible without money.

Within all these hardships, in Europe as well as in the United States, I would go into bookstores, to find solace. And I would think, So many books, So many woman writers! Who are they?

view/add comments :: 0 comments :: updated Friday, 4 April 2003 03:24 PM GMT+02

Haaretz on "Sodot" (A Minyan of Lovers)

Beside the road I saw two kittens. One jumped between the cars and managed to reach the other side of the road. His brother remained on the traffic island, hurt, his hind legs paralyzed, and was trying courageously to reach a safe place, dragging himself on his front legs.

I stopped the car in the middle of the road. Horns hooted, it was raining, I was late for an important meeting - but the sight of that kitten was wounding my heart.

There are such moments: The world stops its rush for a second, you feel almost suffocated, the stomach hurts. Naked nerves. a sudden need to touch, face pain, feel.

Those are the moments Corinna relays. The heroines of her book, Anna and Siwar, live on the naked nerve, where love and pain interchange continuously:

"What happens to one who continually embraces an iceberg? Whose heart will be first to melt? There is always this longing, call it a yearning." (page 241)

Corinna writes from both inside the body and the body itself - in a way which is so physical and emotion laden that it is hard to believe she's using the language we all know. There is total symbiosis between the writing and the feeling. Corinna creates a kingdom where there is no room for the governing of syntax rules. Most of her sentences are simply coming into being, are present on her own terms. The dialogues are uttered some from her mouth, some from her head, in a whirlpool in which times, speakers, and subjects intermingle, creating words and sentences written with the rhythm of poetry:

"Salim is calling from the village,/and Andrei/ who'd asked,/'It's not hard on you, don't you miss sex?'/'The alternative is much better?'/'Once one man has caused you harm and you punish all men?' asks the interviewer in the newspaper the woman that was victim of rape and has written a book. She's not answering and goes back to her home where she sleeps with a revolver under the mattress." (page 157)

In the same way in which she sheds the rules of prose and mixes them with the association-laden poetic form - Corinna also refuses to accept completely the rules of State and Religion, replacing them with her own morals.

Anna, the heroine, standing before the Rabbis at the divorce ritual, refuses to cover her rebelious shoulders with the offered rag and puts on her own scarf. She's the one sending away the husband and she expresses this not in words but in what is unsaid:

"A man and a woman are splitting apart, they have been together for many years and now must be weaned of so many habits, like when you remove a bunion and it grows right back...
...he says, 'OK, I'll find myself some dump to live in.';
This time she no longer says, 'Stay.';
Puts on a red skirt and appears before three male judges in the religious court. They stand with grave faces behind a tall bench.
'You-are-hereby-permitted-to-any-man.';
None of them laid a warm hand on her belly to feel the foetus move.
Imposing themselves as permit-givers out of their territory.
In hers." (page 156)

Anna, in a feminine dress, is sexual, attractive, independent and tempting.
Mimmicking men's ways, she counts the males who come to her bed upon her divorce. She's the mother who struggles to protect the son imprisoned in the military cell, attempting to translate his naivety as stemming from hers, to hold on to the similarity between them; trying to give love, warmth and tenderness to the whole world except her own self, which she's not really hugging.

"Dorn, now I know why you looked at me the way a loving, indulged child looks at his mother when I gave you a midnight snack at home. Johanna would stand in front of the refrigerator, protecting it with her body so the children wouldn't take food for their friends. She was frigid. Now she'ss a vegetable. If I had stayed, that would have been my fate too." (page 204)

It's not spelled out if those are the words said to him or that have never been uttered. It's not even important from her point of view since the intensity of her feelings covers all. Her thoughts tear her from deep inside and like water seep to all avalable spaces.

Her fights against laws, her silences, her secrets and decisions, have left her with no room of her own. She stands exposed, withdrawn and above all - exhausted, left with the unsaid and silenced sayings, with thoughts which, if only uttered, might have helped create a bridge between her and the world instead of pain and exposed nerves shrinking away from closeness while longing for it.

"Revelation", the last chapter, is Siwar's journal pages. Yet it is not only the revelation of Reality before Siwar's eyes (her observations of her husband's betrayal, her dependance upon him as a man, father and home, her obedience to society's rules).

The journal is also Anna's revelation, as much as it is Corinna's Manifest on loneliness. A manifest on the inability to reach out and touch, not only a man but also the mother; on pain and oblivion and the shattered option of salvation.

Because, who are we realy saving. when we save a kitten? Are we saving it or is the act pointing to our own self?

"At night when the baby's asleep and Salim's at his meetings, when a hidden pain wells up despite my tiredness, I turn to you, my notebook. The rest of the time, it is I, not you, who am abandoned. I have become a married woman and a mother, like my mother. Not grieving over what my mother did to me any more, but wondering when I get lonely what it was that that man did to her. When I was young I refused to see her when she asked for a meeting. I was thinking while the social worker's muffled blows struck home, isn't it enough that she and her lover murdered her old husband? Who will punish her for her other murder, for the murder of me?

There is a point midway between forgetting and knowledge. I am destined to circle round it, unable to forget, disabled by memory."

(c) all Hebrew rights, except to the quotations: Gal Karniel, Haaretz Book Review, 21.1.03
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

An Urgent letter to Sir Martin Gilbert

Dear Sir Gilbert,

I've just read in the Haaretz Hebrew online pages about your work on a new film relaying Righteous diplomats' courageous acts during the Holocaust.

I am a published writer of Hebrew literary fiction and narative non fiction. May I bring to your attention a name I have not seen mentioned in the article - that of the Portuguese Aristides de Sousa Mendes. By now there is plenty of information on him on the net.

Please allow me to quote from my book How Far From Paradise - encounters with international women writers on Childhood dramatic recollections.

The quotation is from the Lidia Jorge chapter:

"...we have a hero here, like Schindler: the Consul Aristides, Portugal's Consul to Bordeaux during World War II, who saved thousands and thousands of Jews despite Salazar, the terrible dictator, and Salazar
threw him out of a diplomatic career and he became a poor man who ate the soup of the poor.
He and his youngest son.
It's a marvelous story.
In France, in Bordeaux, he issued visas for thousands of Jews, to allow them to pass through Portugal on their way to freedom, to the United
States and England.
Now we remember him and there are many books about him.
He risked more than Schindler - his life, his son, his wife. When he was far from Portugal, in a dangerous situation.
One of those books about Aristides is titled, A Good Man.
Can I write the name of this man? It's so important.
Aristides Sousa Mendes. Yes, only now they're talking about him.
My son is twenty three years old. Last year, when he read the book, he wept. He said, "But there are good people, there are heroes in Portugal.”

With warm regards, Yours,
Corinna Hasofferett

The 4th Estate - I like it!

Meet My Neighbors.


This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

DORON

The son changed too. When she hugged him, he hung his hands dryly at his sides, unlike once, "when you were three years old you said that I was the most beautiful one in the world."

"I can't be responsible for everything I blurted out at the age of three," he bent over to rummage in his mother's suitcases and pulled out the record of Tristan and Isolde. "And by the way, just so you won't make any mistake, the poster's mine. I'll take it out of here tomorrow."

Went off to close himself in his room with the music.

While she was away, he slept in her bed and hung on the wall a big poster of the statue of David. At the sight of the silky skin and the tender line of the knee, she wanted to touch it, but reined herself in. The testicles were levels with her lips, and the organ seemed sound asleep, restrained. A slight whimper, like the warning signal of an approaching train, suddenly burst out of her, followed immediately by many freight cars of thoughts: Why did I go there. Why not to Greece, for a rest. I could have lain in the sun with some warm Nikos. She stood between the closet and the suitcase and put the clothes away in slow motion as if each garment were a memory that had to be shaken out and arranged so as not to cause damage.

Translated from the Hebrew by Barbara Harshav

Visiting Nina Cassian

Getting to Nina Cassian isn't that simple.
I took the ferry.
It was evening. Men and women in suits and sneakers got off the boat and walked home.
One street, a promenade. Gulliver would have just lifted a leg and crossed over from this bank to the Manhattan bank on the other side.

The photograph on the back-cover of the poetry book was very bad. And here I was approached by a tall and upright woman. The more she talked, the more beautiful she seemed to me.

She said the place is very safe, "It's an island here, there's nowhere to run."
But at the entrance to the building there was a doorman, and a closed-circuit television system.

Right away she offered me some cigarettes, whiskey. I said, "No, thanks," and her face dropped when she heard that the cigarette smoke bothers me. She'll have to take smoking breaks.

What language did we speak? Ostensibly English, but that was only a cover for the real language -- Romanian.

As if I had lifted a leg and crossed over to Romania which is an island inside me, the real island on which Nina lives as well.

When we parted I said what I sincerely felt, that she was a beautiful woman.
She hugged me.

A few weeks ago I read that she got married. Love is the magician of beauty. It's great that it has come back to watch over Nina.

Nina recommended that I take the cable tram back to Manhattan. The cable tram moves very slowly, tottering high above the dark water as if it's about to fall any minute between the dwindling lights of the island and the splendor of Manhattan. Apart from me there were only two boys in the car, and they didn't seem bothered at all by the fact that no one had equipped us with parachutes and lifebelts.

All my life I've been like that, hovering between the Romania slumbering inside me and the present. It was a miracle we survived. If we had stayed there after Ceausescu came to power, who knows were I would have been now.

If only politicians could thus be tamed...

Thanks to Mark Forrester for the inspiration.

Introduction To Niam el Baz, part One

It turns out that the British knew about the death camps already in 1941. They knew from the German army transmissions that they were able to decipher. From these transmissions it was clear also that the German army cooperated with the SS and not as has been claimed all those years, that they had no part in the murder of the Jews.

Churchill knew.

Before and after 1941, the British Empire knew, and did not let my parents immigrate to Eretz Israel. With the knowledge that by doing so they were abandoning us to the hands of the murderers.

So I was born in Romania, Niam.
A small house, that my maternal grandfather and grandmother collected penny to penny to build. That we left behind, in December 1947, since the exit from Romania had to be done in secret.

Tile-roofs, spotted hens in the courtyard. A pleasure to discover an egg among the flowers, to punch a tiny hole and drink it on the spot, warm and fresh, and the egg-yolk soft.
A neighbor who had returned from a visit to see relatives in Eretz Israel said that there in the kibbutzim they had this piece of furniture, a play-pen, for infants, and they should build one just like it for the twins.

A year ago my aunt told me, "Even when you were babies, we used to take you out of the play-pen first. You were like that, quite a number."
They say it was a large piece of furniture, of heavy wood.

One evening, when I was four, four and a half, I collected the letters from a piece of newspaper and read a whole word, out loud. The room filled with silence like during the revelation of the Messiah.

Our uncles, twenty, twenty-five years old, would come in the evenings and dance ballroom dances with us, when we were three, four, five. Then they took them, and our father, all the Jewish men, to forced hard labor.

They put them to work by the railway tracks. The German soldiers would pass by on the trains and shoot for fun, at them and at the Romanian guards. My uncle says that one of the prisoners would always lie with his ear on the tracks to hear if a
train was approaching, so they could hide from the Germans in time, they and their guards.

One in the afternoon.
A call from Idit, who works at Yad va-Shem. She is sending me a list of the books they have in Arabic about the Holocaust.
There is only the one problem, how to send them to Niam.

Now, after having completed the deciphering of the conversation with her, again and again I see Niam's bold face as she says authoritatively what she'd been fed by Neo-Nazis in Germany, "It's not true!".

The Jews weren't allowed to ride the trains, (except for those in which they were taken to the death camps) and father did, in order to send, each time from a different town, anonymous letters to the editor of the newspaper PORUNCA VREMEI -- The Order of the Day: "If you do not want us, why don't you let us go to Palestine, where Jesus bade almost two thousand years ago Love thy neighbor like yourself."

The Order of the Day answered:
'The leprous jidani, awaiting their Talmudic rule, are sending their leprous fingers across all the nations and taking dominance over them. This is the reason that rivers of blood have been shed, and not only Romanian blood.'

The neighbors to our right were Christians. Father, mother, daughter and a son a few years older than us. We would go over to them through a hole in the fence.
I saw them also on the sidewalk among the children, when they were throwing stones at us and shouting, "Jidani, go away to Palestine!"

Afterwards, but after what? What should have come later, maturity, came too early. In my life, like in the life of that whole generation, times got mixed up. One day they confiscated our house, and we lived in the servants' room in the yard. And another day we came out of a shelter, and on the street we found a parade
of Russian tanks, people were applauding, and the town was full of loudspeakers, Red Army songs, announcements of daily victories, while children, skin and bones from hell, were arriving to town, forbidden for us to touch lest we catch what they had been struck with. They put them up in the Jewish school until they were adopted or driven to orphanages.

But it was impossible to disinfect the entire world in order to protect us because right after that, or before that, someone brought a bar of soap from the death camps and the whole town marched at the funeral.

Yesterday, over the phone, I said to a Israeli friend, "My childhood stories were the Nuremberg trials" and she said, "What a terrible thing to say."

I would sit on my uncles' knees and give them the daily reports from the trials of the Nazis in Nuremberg after the war. I read from the newspaper and they were so pleased and proud of me, that yes, there was nothing to worry about, the memory-safe was in good hands.

So the world, which during the first years had behaved like a womb, was cut apart and healed again, cut apart and healed.
Outwardly there was still the appearance of paradise. In the spring, in the summer, and in the autumn, ornamental flowers blossomed. Large and warm raindrops fertilized the leaves of the trees and the bushes. In the winter the snow piled up as high as
the fence, and the frost painted Christmas tree decorations on the windowpanes.

There, amidst all this, for twelve winters and summers I was Corinna.

The Woman and Her Seven Sons

1.

While reading Italo Calvino's Italian Folktales, I noticed all of a sudden the heaps of good measures those folktales bestow upon women.

Truth is, we have our own Hebrew folktales. Our tradition notes and appreciates deeply the passive heroism of the Israeli woman.

2.

Is it because of Hanukkah that the first example which comes to my mind is the story I'm going to tell you now?

You know, Hanukkah is the celebration of the victory upon the Greeks.

Not at the Olympics.

Some two thousand years ago.

They demanded of the monotheistic Israeli people to bow to idols.

3.

She's "The Woman and the Seven Sons".

Or, "The Mother and the Seven Sons".

Later versions name her, "Miriam Bat Tanhum and the Seven Sons".

Or as of late: "Hannah and The Seven Sons".

4.

Kill me, but I do not believe this is a true story.

Who cares about such horrible stories today?

Maybe in a small provincial place...

Like at an educational site of the third largest city - Haifa...

With professional suggestions: Discuss the Nature of Heroism.

5.

The Woman/Mother/Miriam/Hannah advises her sons not to bow and witnesses their cruel executions, one after the other.

To the youngest, a mere toddler still suckling, who comes for her advise, she says:

"My Son, go to Abraham our father and tell him: 'Don't be too proud. You've only set one altar for one son - I've set seven. Yours was just a test - mine was The Act itself.'" (Talmud Bavli, the book of the Maccabees)

6.

What is Heroism? Abraham Our Father? Are you kidding?

With Abraham it was the abolishment of the pagan rite.

The Woman is reviving Tradition, speaking to the pagans in their own language.

They know only the language of Violence.

7.

At "Noffey Haneffesh" Dacia Maraini tells how she cringed whenever she was told the story of her namesake Dacia The Martyr, whose breasts were cut because she refused to bow to idols, or give up Christianity.

United We Stand!

8.

The mother sends her seventh to the bosom of Abraham.

For sure we are not as primitive as those who delude themselves with virgins' bosoms awaiting them in Paradise.

9.

One version relays that The Mother lost her mind a few days later and threw herself from the rooftop of her house.

This I believe.

One rooftop is the farthest The Woman/Mother is allowed to take her disobedience to, and Jump.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

read it in Hungarian;

You've landed at the right place...

Come in.
You must be tired, wandering around our Planet Virtual.
My screen swears this planet and everything on it are square.
Not me. I'm not square. I'm like you.

I'm like you, living here with one foot, or rather a toenail, outside my private bubble, which is supposed to stave off the anguish of the Other outside it, my own distress inside it.

I've thrown out the T.V. twenty four years ago, the radio is tuned to the classical music programs, I write during the night and sleep when the world is noisy, and each evening I vow to never again surf the News sites, yet do open them, and read, and shed an inward tear.
Like you.

So you might ask, Is it the right time to establish a new publishing house
(and dare name it HudnaPress),
come out with new books,
set a new web site? and now Odeo podcasting, YouTube Vblog?
What is it, self-pampering? A timid expression of sanity?

The Kabbalah, as much as I recall it from the university classes, teaches us that in the beginning of Creation the world was contained into ten vessels, such as Nobility, Wisdom, Charity, Valor, Splendor…

It so happened that the vessels fell, and broke into tiny pieces. "Sparks". Since then in each generation there are thirty-six (Lamed Vav) righteous men whose sole task is to find and put together those shattered tiny pieces, the Sparks.
Bring Tikkun (Repair).

Yet these men are to remain anonymous.
Not an easy feat nowadays, especially if you are a politician or a "celebrity".
Well, only thirty-six - no wonder it takes them so long. And them being all male, exclusively.

So this site, along with my deeds and writings, are the tiny pieces of clay I've volunteered to put together all my life.
Anonymously.

As much as it depends upon me, I promise to live forever. But why wait so long? Isn't it time for our generations to wake up from the stupor that has come to envelope the world? No Prince will appear to wake us up, although more than one drop of blood has been shed in our Age of Violence.

Your visit here was a nice first step.
Now, why not send an unbroken link to your closest Lamed-Vav friends?
Men and Women alike.

Leave the door open, and come again,
L'hitraot!
See you again,





Read it in Polish;in Farsi;in Russian; in Hungarian; in German; in French; in Italian;

Stop This War Now! Lebanon, Cairo, Revisited...

I've just found this important message in my e-mail.

In 1993, he was the Director of the Israeli Academic Center in Cairo, Egypt. I was researching for my "Noffey Haneffesh" - encounters with international women writers telling the story of Childhood Emotional and Spiritual Landscapes.

For a full week he put his entire staff at my assistance, in in our endeavors to meet with Egyptian women writers. A most warm, special person.
Here come his words of wisdom, uttered almost two weeks ago.

Our politicians choose to cover their ears and sadly enough, are able, as so often in history, to delude a majority of fools scared into blind submission.



End this War Now

To: Every Concerned Person
From: Emanuel Marx

Armies are trained to destroy enemies and conquer their territory. An army that runs out of control will find and fight more and more external and internal enemies, always in pursuit of an elusive victory.

That has happened to the Israeli Army on several occasions. Whenever it was allowed free rein, its campaigns ended in humanitarian disasters. Just now we are witnessing another instance: while the campaign against the Hizballah terrorist organization did not save the Israeli civilian population from rocket attacks, it rapidly turned into an assault on the Lebanese civilian population. Within days it deteriorated into a humanitarian catastrophe. Half a million innocent Lebanese civilians lost their homes and became refugees.

The Israeli Government must reassume control of the Army and stop the fighting immediately. Negotiations will surely achieve better outcomes.

July 21, 2006

(Emanuel Marx is a professor of Social Anthropology at Tel Aviv University.
He is a jubilee year (1998) Israel Prize laureate.)

About Me in Hebrew

נולדתי ברומניה.

בתוכנית "קפה תיאטרון", שאל נועם סמל, "מהי המולדת שלך?"
היינו ארבעה מתארחים אצלו.
רמי סערי אמר שבשבילו, השפה היא המולדת.
אני לא יכולה לומר שהשפה היא המולדת כי מתחת לעברית, שבה אני כותבת, מתנגנת השפה הרומנית. שפת אגדות ושירה.
שמעתי את עצמי אומרת, "המולדת שלי היא משפטי נירנברג."
דודי היה מושיב אותי על הברכיים שלו ומבקש שאקרא מן העיתון את הדיווח היומי מנירנברג.
וגם: המולדת היא לשון התנ"ך. הפשטות. התימצות. עושר האמירות שחבויות בין מלה למלה.

ב-1962 התפרסם ספר הביכורים - לילדים. "מי ראה את מיקי."
על הנוראות שבאו לי עמו סיפרתי בראיון עם עופרי אילני.
את הסיפור הראשון פרסמתי ב-1970, ברבעון "קשת".
ב-1973 יצא הספר השני: "כעין תשובה".
ב-1989, ראה אור הספר השלישי: "דפים ורודים."
לקח רק משהו כמו חמש-עשרה שנים.
בספטמבר 2002 ראה אור ספרי הרביעי: "סודות".
פרוזה. נכתב על פני שלושים שנה.
בתחילת יוני 2003 יצא אל העולם הספר החמישי: "נופי הנפש."
שלא כקודמיו, הוא ספרות תעודה.
שיחות עם סופרות בינלאומיות על ילדות פגועה, שזורות בין דפי היומן האימפרסיוניסטי שלי.
על הספר הזה עבדתי עשר שנים.

מאז דצמבר 2000 אני עובדת על הספר השישי. מקווה להשלים אותו עד תחילת 2006.
מלבדו עומדים בתור שבעה ספרים נוספים. ייקח לי בין שבעים למאתיים ועשר שנים, ואשלים גם אותם.

טוב שיש בלוג, מקום בו ניתן לכתוב במנות קטנות יותר.
בספטמבר 2002, עם צאת "סודות", עלה גם האתר הרב לשוני.

חצי שנה קודם לכן תחקרתי את האינטרנט לאורך ולרוחב. גיליתי אתרים של מעצבים יצירתיים מאד שהפכו את התחום לאמנות בזכות עצמה. מהם השכלתי.
האתר מתארח חופשי בצד עיתון אינטרנטי שאני תורמת לו מדי פעם. אלא שיש הגבלה: לא יכולה לעדכן לעתים תכופות.

לכן הקמתי בלוג עברי.

בהביטי מן הצד, אני עשר פעמים ביום אומרת, לא די לך באלה?!
מה עוד? אופנסיבת בלוגים?

כן. הבלוג הדעתן, מסתבר, יש לו כוח להפוך אותך מאזרח ילד לבעל/ת בית על החיים כאן. את זה השכילו להבין בעולם.

מה עוד את זוממת?
מתהווה בלוג רב לשוני. בזכות אנשים מופלאים מפה ומשם.

יש עוד?

בלוג רדיו באודיאו. בלוג וידאו ביו-טיוב. בלוג ממאדים.

כל החיים לפניי.

עד כמה שזה תלוי בי.

Lebanon and the Anthem: The Cult of Glory

Yet Charity is blissfully present - which gives way to hope.
Or is it the reason the Cult of Martyrdom seeks to overcome the Cult of Charity?
My heart goes to the people of Lebanon. Like us, like all people on this anguished Earth, they deserve a sane life.

All for the country, for the glory, for the flag
From the beginning of centuries, our pencil and sword
Our field and mountains are making the men
Our word and work on the way of perfection
All for the country, for the glory for the flag

Young and old at the voice of the country
Lions of forest at the time of violation
Our east is its heart forever Lebanon
Its God protects it all over the time
All for the country, for the glory for the flag

Its sea, its land, are the pearl of the two orients
Its symbol, its charity, fill up the two poles
Its name is its triumph since the time of our grandfathers
Its glory is its cedars, its symbol is for the end of epochs
All for the country, for the glory for the flag

Iran: The Cult Of Martyrdom is our Doom

The Flag and the Anthem, the words and the image, all directed to move our senses toward the prevailing mottif: You are but a tool in the hands of The-Power-Driven, who swirl your heart into the false, manipulating message:

Martyrdom Is Bliss. Life Is Hell.

Hence, to prove it they'll do everything in their power to create this hell on Earth - for you:


Three equal horizontal bands of green (top), white, and red; the national emblem (a stylized representation of the word Allah in the shape of a tulip, a symbol of martyrdom) in red is centered in the white band; ALLAH AKBAR (God is Great) in white

Arabic script is repeated 11 times along the bottom edge of the green band and 11 times along the top edge of the red band:



Upwards on the horizon rises the Eastern Sun,
The sight of the true Religion.
Bahman - the brilliance of our Faith.
Your message, O Imam, of independence and freedom
is imprinted on our souls.
O Martyrs! The time of your cries of pain rings in our ears.
Enduring, continuing, eternal,
The Islamic Republic of Iran.

War, Israel, Lebanon, Hizballa, The Other Side of the Moon?

Oh, how tired I am, and not just owing to the late hour - past 01:00!
Reading through Raja's report from Beirut and the multitude of comments brought me to see behind the clouds of war and all the Hizballa mighty presentations of innocent patriotism: there is an intention there, so I detect, to create an atmosphere of despair and, wait and see! soon we'll have demonstrations of calls to Syria to drop by and save Lebanon from its weak goverment.

Yet, since we are not just on the same moon but actually mirroring each other - I fear the day such a call will spread here, to bring about a strong leader.

Meanwhile our civilian Ministers, play hostages to our generals.

All in all, the boys games go on ad infinitum.

Or until we step in and stop them for awhile.

Raise the Black Flag, people. Let's have some rest of all these stupid games of war.

Critical Love

1.
Luckily, my books are appreciated by the reviewers.
Yet, as we all know, quite often reviewers write on books they dislike.
Hard to understand: why waste time on a book you consider unworthy?
2.
Reviews of the appreciated are most of the time serious, even profound.
Reviews of books abhorred are mostly ridiculing or cynical.
Amusing indeed they are, and especially satisfying the popular desire for Blood.
Which of the two attracts more readers?
Which of the two is more demanding, Time-wise?
3.
It is common wisdom nowadays that in order to write a book, all some need is just a computer and a noisy publisher.
A real flood.
Hence, it is said that reviews alerting us are essential. Otherwise, left alone, how could we discern?
4.
Years ago - by chance at the annual Hebrew Book Fair in Tel-Aviv - I noticed a man standing in a corner of the square, next to a basket in which lay three cocker-spaniel puppies.

I took one out, just to stroke it gently.
Do you think I ever put it back?
No.
I bought it.
I was not familiar with those species. Had never heard of them before.
That's how books buy my heart*.





* a Hebrew expression.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Read it in Russian; in Polish;in Hungarian; in Hebrew; in Farsi;

Thanking Laila

Thanks, Laila for your words.
Unlike some of the commentors, your dignified attitude is quite touching.

I'm back home from a few hours of holiday gift shopping. All along I was thinking, with a trembling heart, here we are and there they are, so close by and yet all this aimless suffering. There is no justification for all those power fights, bringing disaster on the innocents in an endless circle of mindless cruelty.

Thank you for being.

In Hebrew Laila means, Night. So persistent is the feeling that Night itself closes upon us. Yet your words, paradoxically, point to the opposite, give hope, crossing above walls of concrete and fire. I have close friends on the other side of the wall, in farms and kibutzim, mothers trembling for their own innocent babies.

It's time for us to get up and issue an order to those leaders playing ping-pong with our lives: Stop all power games. Enough is enough.