March 31, 2003 Now for something completely different: Philip Hyams sends in a short prose poem called Three Great Men. It is surprising and ineffable. Check it out at Ariga's poetry section.

March 30, 2003 Added the 3rd draft of the Palestinian Constitution to the important treaties, speeches and documents section at Ariga.

March 28, 2003 The best web site for what's really going on in Baghdad is a blog being written by someone who calls himself Salam Pax, whose web site is called Where's Raed.

If it's difficult to get through, try Dear Raed, where Google and blogspot.com are mirroring it.

Salam's blog is a long letter to his friend Raed, missing in the world of being an Iraqi educated as a Westerner whether in Baghdad, Europe or America, telling him about life in their home town. I visited the site today, March 28, and the last item was from March 22. That leads to the question by now, has he been arrested? Killed? Managed to get out? Maybe he's getting some much needed sleep. He only has a 28.8 modem, but he does have images, including a satellite image of Baghdad, which Salam Pax has color coded for people who don't know the city and want to see exactly where the buildings where the Americans are bombing.

The site is a sometimes hourly, sometimes daily report going back to last September, by an enormously sympathetic Baghdadi who writes about daily life in the city in up-to-date American English, blogging his way to an extraordinary enormous fame. The CIA reads him, so probably, does Bashar Assad, at least he should if he learned anything those years in London.

What makes it so good is that he clearly would like to be liberated from the regime (or at least have access to ADSL) but he's not very happy about how the precision bombing, which he admits is indeed precisely targeting centers of regime power in Iraq, is resulting in collateral damage. The best thing about the site is it narrative reporting about what Salam Pax says he sees and feels in the city. it is not propagandistic, which makes it neither the journalism in bed (sorry, embedded) with the coalition, nor Al Jezeera's self-proclaimed 'indepedent' reporting. True, Al Jezeera is not being told what to report, but it seems to be focused on trying to prove the western reporters wrong, rather than reporting on what actually is happening.

Al Jezeera and much of the Arabic press seems to believe that it is a Western-Judeo-Christian cultural war against an Arab-Islamic culture, sort of the opposite of Fox, which is the most fun to watch because of the silliness and ignorance of its anchors (not its reporters, who are generally professional about their jobs). The mere fact that Fox's people are still calling Qatar 'Gutter,' makes their gung-ho jingoism for the war almost as satirical as John Stewart pretty excellent Daily Show -- with one difference: Stewart, at least, knows he's presenting satire. The homey 'folks' at Fox actually claim to be serious.

The media is the fifth column of the war, because the truth of war is that the first victim is the truth; deception is half the planning for a battle, and the offense always starts with an advantage, even if it is no surprise when it comes. Timing is also part of strategy. A well-planned military strategy is about layering in elements that are needed when they are needed. So far, the american campaign does appear to be going on time. It was always planned as a 'rolling' campaign and it did face a deadline to start -- before the season of sandstorms was over. It should be no surprise that after a week, the coalition needs 100,000 more men inside Iraq, their mission is to use as much force is neccessary, measuring out that force to remove the regime and at the same time keep the inevitable civilian casualties to a minimum.

It's the media that propogated the myth that this war would be the second Six Day War in Middle East history. Sure the Pentagon contributed to that view: Awe and Shock as Sun Tze taught, is a great way to intimidate the enemy in one great swoop. But the media, operating on the 24 hour news cycle ever since the teletype machine began to automate news distribution, insist on something new every minute, has no patience for anything complex because it only has a few minutes at most at a time to say what it knows.

The media loves the Galahad supply ship, the first sign of the humanitarian aid arriving at the end of the first week of fighting; it was the knight in pale blue armor, judging from the pictures appearing right now on CNN over my shoulder. Christian Amanpour sidled along with it for the camera as it was pulled into place at the Umm Qasar docks.

The aid is important because it's about feeding hungry people who are scared shitless of Saddam and don't trust the Americans. Remember, not only did the U.S. betray the Shiites a decade ago, but generations of Iraqis have been educated in schools that taught the main point of the American war in Vietnam was to 'destroy the village to save it.' And victims make good copy, especially civilian casualties of war.

Right now, the press is only able to second guess the coalition, and because the media wants clarity, its reporting of the war has been so poor, precisely because it got into bed, sorry, was embedded in the forces, so it provides at best a kind of surrealistically cubist view of the events. And more than that, the media wants events to prove it right -- and hates the fog of war, when it can't say anything more than it isn't really sure of what's happening on the battlefield and doesn't have the intelligence sources the military controls.

A freely reporting newsperson is nearly impossible to find in Iraq. There are a lot of differences between the Iraqi watchers and the American watchers, but the basic difference is the Americans won't shoot the reporter -- and it's more likely the American spokesman will tell the truth as he knows it rather than deliberately lie. Some do, of course. But remember, deception is part of war and as far as America is concerned, it has been at war since 9/11/2001

So visit Where's Raed.

If it's difficult to get through, try Dear Raed, where Google and blogspot.com are mirroring it. And now that the war has begun in earnest, it should not be made to cease until Saddam Hussein resigns.
The Ariga Update Message for March 28

March 21, 2003 On the Gulf War "There is nothing more noble in human endeavor than to free a person from fear. So, my second hope is that the English speaking armies arrest more people than they kill, finding whom they're looking for to find what they were looking for, and then start the peace side of the equation." By Robert Rosenberg

At times like this, on the verge of a war, poetry sometimes says more than any analysis or commentary.

March 20, 2003

Two Poems by Ricky Friesem

A Prayer

Dead
is dead.
But please
let me die in bed.
(Plain dead)
Not crimson- pool
and carmine-puddle
Dead.

Not concrete-spattered
window-shattered
red
globs of scarlet
Dead.
A dripping gore-fruit
harvest
from the trees just budding
in the April mist.

"April is the cruelest month," he wrote.
But in his Wasteland
only rocks were red.

On the Walls of Diyarbakir

Yesterday the name meant nothing.
Diyarbakir, a tangled string
of letters tying up my tongue
with unfamiliar sounds that
challenged me to mouth them
in a word that hung unclaimed
by memory until it slipped
unhindered
from my mind.

That was yesterday. Today
I stand on blood-black
basalt ramparts
thick and high and long enough
to vie with China’s wall for visibility
from space. My Turkish guide,
at ease in a gray patch of shade
cast by a crumbling watchtower,
dispatches ancient history with a
flat automaton monotony. His mind
is unengaged while mine awakes
to the familiar nightmare names.
Oh Hittites, and Assyrians, Macedonians
and Meds. Oh Persian, Roman,
Byzantine .Great Empires. All
vanquished, dead, he says. So why
then do I tremble as I scan the barren plain?

Oh Dyarbakir I know now
that your name is fear.

More poems by Ricky Friesem

March 18, 2003

Two Poems by Alicia Ostriker

The rabbi said to his son:
I will give you ten gold coins
If you can tell me where God is
The boy answered:
I will give you twenty
If you can tell me where he is not

And so it follows:
If blood stains the earth
It is God's blood,
Is it not?

******

Yet those who believe you chose them
break the bones of the unchosen
And those who trust in your righteousness
study death's secret handshake
And those who remember you promised them the land
sow it with corpses
And those who await messiah
dream of apocalypse
in which their enemies burn--
I speak of all your countries, my dear God.


March 17, 2003

A Speech Before the Splattered Blood By Janet I. Buck


The DOW spikes up, banking on
a dwarfish draft of Armageddon gloom.
Our president will speak at five.
No casualty is casual.
It's hard to match a suit and tie
to splatter of the coming blood.
Ahmed, a driver in Iraq, says:
"This is a miserable life.
We spent it shopping for war
or hiding from bombs."
He recites his summary
as if his time is finished as a boiled egg.
All eyes red from pressing
night's extended weight.

Justice spelled so many ways our alphabets
no longer know their proper forms.
Iraqis seal their windows shut as if a roll
of tape will come between the fragile glass
and force of missiles jetting
through the tainted sky.
Stirring the hostile soup.
It seems the only spoon we own,
yet who can watch the broth of freedom
dwindle to a water drop.
Have you ever sat on a fence,
answerless and trembling,
wishing posts were firm mirage?

I swing like heavy pendulums
between the prayer to end this horror
and nightmares of approaching graves.
The writer with no salving words,
no sonnets in a pocketbook.
No talons on the olive branch,
no wings of doves, no angels near
as embassies evacuate, as guns replace
the meetings of our shattered hearts
now beetles under heavy boots.
Philanthropy or wet revenge --
I can't decide and so I kneel
as quicksand travels to my chin.

More Janet I. Buck

More new poetry at Ariga

March 17 2003 This has been a long time coming, but thankfully it is now beginning to happen:

HaMifkad Haleumi - Identity Card

The People’s Voice is a new, broad-based civil initiative whose founders -- Al Quds University President Prof. Sari Nusseibeh and IDF Maj. Gen. (res.) former admiral of the Israeli Navy and former chief of the Shin Bet Ami Ayalon -- recognize that a way exists to avert the dead-end reached in the relationship between the two sides.

It is clear that the present situation is intolerable; even if it is difficult for many people to admit, a compromise based on the formula "two states for two people" is the only way to ensure the continued existence of Israel as a democratic state that is the home of the Jewish people. The Palestinian street has also gradually recognized that a compromise must be attained. There, too, people have begun to understand that a compromise and the abandonment of violence are the most efficient way forward and the only way, from their point of view, to obtain political independence and a stable economy.

The People’s Voice is intended to persuade leaders on both sides to end the conflict, by means of mass signatures of a joint statement of principles.

In Israel there will be a national campaign to obtain signatures; on the Palestinian side there will be a parallel public movement, adapted to the Palestinian politico-social reality. After this procedure, the signatures will be submitted to the leaders of both nations, as a tangible expression of the feelings of the majority of both peoples and with the intention of influencing their policy.

The People’s Voice will succeed, because both the Israeli and the Palestinian publics understand that there is only one solution!

History has continuously proved that the power to change reality also lies with the people, not only with the politicians. Leaders of Israel and Palestine are at present locked in situations and coalitions that do not allow them to abandon the vicious circle of hostility. This is the time and this is the way to begin a sweeping grassroots initiative in order to end the bloodshed and security and economic problems affecting each and every one of us.

The leaders of this initiative are two people with vision and vast practical experience in their fields, who believe they can affect the outcome on both sides. Heading the Israeli side is Ami Ayalon, former Commander of the Navy and former Head of the Israeli General Security Services (Shin Bet), a leader for whom national security has always been the top priority. Leading the initiative on the Palestinian side is Dr. Sari Nusseibeh, a Palestinian intellectual and president of Al Quds University, who has also held key positions in the Palestinian political system.

These two leaders have created this movement as a non-partisan civil initiative, outside the political system, and do not see themselves as replacements for the elected political leadership. Both have excellent connections with leaders of the international community, ties that will facilitate enlistment of world support.

The Israeli and Palestinian public councils include leading public figures who will work alongside their leaders. Professional staff and volunteers have been entrusted with realizing the initiative’s aims.

The process of the signing campaign itself will begin after a certain period of time has been dedicated to publicizing its ideas. This publicity will be undertaken by means of intensive marketing and communications activity, intended to inspire the whole population and, of course, ensure that a large segment of the public sign the joint Statement of Principles, in the knowledge that "there is someone to talk to" and “there is something to talk about”.

The Statement of Principles [Click here for the complete Statement of Principles]

The statement refers to the complex, fundamental issues at the core of the conflict, but leaves room for negotiation for the authorized decision-makers, the only people who will ultimately sign a binding political peace accord.

The fundamentals of the Statement of Principles to be signed by the People’s Voice

• Two states for two nations.
• Permanent borders based on the June 4, 1967 borders (with possible exchanges of territory for reasons of security, demography or territorial integrity).
• Jerusalem – an open city – to be the capital of both states. Arab neighborhoods shall be under sovereignty of the Palestinian state, while Jewish neighborhoods shall be under sovereignty of the State of Israel. There shall be no political sovereignty over the Temple Mount / Haram el Sherif.
• The right of return: the Palestinian refugees shall be allowed to return to the territories of the Palestinian State only. Jews shall return only to the territories of the State of Israel. An international fund shall be established for the compensation and rehabilitation of the Palestinian refugees.
• The Palestinian state shall be demilitarized.
• The end of the dispute: Upon the implementation of the Statement of Principles, by the signing of a political peace accord, the claims of both sides shall terminate.

We must act today in order for there to be a tomorrow.

March 17 2003 International Solidarity Movement volunteer Rachel Corrie killed trying to stop an IDF bulldozer A statement from her parents and a letter she wrote to them in February.

March 17, 2003 Three pieces from Picnic Grounds by Oz Shelah

New Frosties: Selected quotes from Simon and Garfunkel, Isadora Duncan, R.D. Laing, Elizabeth I of England, the Dalai Lama, and Joni Mitchell, as collected by the intrepid I. Frost.

March 16, 2003 Like a lot of people in the 20th century, as I became politically aware in my youth, I became a Communist. In my teens, in the 1960s, I was an angry activist student, pissed off about the Vietnam War, civil rights issues, and the overall capitalist structure that makes money more important than work, which I believe is the thing we do to make ourselves valuable to society, and unfortunately measures that value in money based on work as the human endeavor meant to make money, rather than the value of the work itself.

That's probably why I've had money problems most of my adult life, caring more about the work I do than how much money it earns, meaning more than I need. Why should individuals have more than they need? That, of course raises the issue of who decides how much a person needs, which leads directly to the reason I didn't last long as a communist, sticking to enough faith in people to be a democrat, rather than a party person (as opposed to a party animal, which I hope I'll always remain).

All this comes a way of an introduction to why I'm running two poems by Howard Fast, who passed away March 13 at the age of 88. He was a revolutionary American persecuted for his views, blacklisted by Hollywood, and a terrific writer, whose work I loved in the 1960s. Among other things, he wrote the book on which Stanley Kubrick based the film Spartacus, not only the greatest gladiator movie ever made, but also a great film about freedom.

One poem is A Song for Peace, the other -- and this is also relevant this week, is a poem Fast wrote dedicated to the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet. Turkey's important, because it is a country where Muslims are in the majority yet keeps religion out of its state institutions, a necessary prerequisite for full democracy.

Israel, unfortunately, is not yet a full demcoracy by that standard, though it's a lot more democratic than any other country in the neighborhood, which is something to grab hold of, and take hope from -- both that the neighbors will one day be democratic, and that democracy can yet improve here, as well. One Arab country that has more democracy than most is Lebanon, and the Fast poems come from a marvelous "Selected International Poems" site, apparently run by either the Lebanese Communist Party or a member of that party, which is a huge collection of Internationalist Poetry. Unfortunately, they don't carry poetry by Israelis -- and for the life of me I couldn't find a way to submit some to them.

Meanwhile, however, with a war being dubbed to bring democracy to the neighbors apparently a week or so away, it's emotions that rules: Chanan Kubitsky, who is not a writer but a high tech guy, writes about that in his short article, I Am Afraid, So Lets Get Us a War , which cries out that he's sick and tired of being told to be scared by the politicians who say they don't want war but do everything to make it happen, in effect being people who work at giving us reason to be scared.

Personaly, I'm more scared of Saddam Hussein's evil (and make no mistake, he is evil) than I am of George W. Bush's stupid hubris. Maybe that's because I'm not living in Iraq. But if I were, 'd be ready to take my chances with the American soldiers rather than live under Saddam.

Locally, which is the only way to work to change the world, here's something I recommend: Bustan, a Jewish-Arab group:

Join Bustan to build a sustainable medical clinic with Bedouin villagers of Wadi Na'am, to train and be trained by indigenous Bedouin and local Israelis in alternative building techniques with local, natural materials, and to respond proactively to environmental injustice.

Who: Bustan invites all activists, appropriate technology engineers, scientists, green builders, environmental lawyers, alternative medical practitioners, peace educators, musicians, artists and writers.

What: Bustan is preparing a 5-day work camp, to build a solar-powered, straw-bale medical clinic. Lectures and workshops about sustainable development, Bedouin culture, and human rights, will be offered to share information, ancient wisdom, and modern technology.

When: Dates are Friday April 18th - April 25th, 2003.

Why: The population of Wadi Na'am has long been denied medical services, water, and electricity infrastructure. As a result, the families of Wadi Na'am live without the most basic provisions. How: For $800 per person (outside of Israel/Palestine), mobilize to learn, build, plant, and paint with the villagers. Vist the Bustan web site for more information.

And as for the Internationalists, even if sometimes their rhetoric is over the top, a visit to the International Solidarity Movement's site devoted to the Palestinians, is always timely.

March 11, 2003 Three Poems from Rochelle Mass Excerpted from her recently published book, The Startled Land

Cycles Gershon Baskin of IPCRI writes about the protracted Israeli-Palestinian violence, with some thoughts on how to break out of the cucle...

March 9, 2003 Murder of a population under cover of righteousness By Shulamit Aloni We do not have gas chambers and crematoria, but there is no one fixed method for genocide March 9 2003

March 7, 2003 Ariga welcomes Zoe, who sent in three poems that are one hugely powerful antiwar poem. 'We're going out again,' 'talking to god,' and 'gone'

March 7, 2003 As constant readers might note, I previously wrote below that I can't make up my mind on the Iraq war. Not that I'm a fan of Bush and Sharon, of course, since they do appear cut from the same cloth, with the same simplistic illusions (or delusions) about war and peace. But in the choice between the bad and the very bad, I tend to believe that an unharrassed Saddam Hussein is the very bad. I agree with Roy Isacowitz's conclusions in his well-argued article against the war -- see below -- that if Bush really wanted to do something to take the impetus out of terrorism, he should direct his attention to solving the Israel-Palestine by equally simplistic unreconstructed Islam into a symbol of injustice applied by the West against the Arabs.

But at the same time, it is obvious -- or should be obvious -- that things have gone too far not to cut the Gordian knot of the Iraqi problem, which in many ways, is a symbol of the kind of political stagnation in the Arab world that has kept much of it in a state of near-Medieval conditions, which only perpetuate the hatred for the West, because they don't even have a press free enough to place the blame on the so-called 'rulers' of the Arab world.

In any case, a well-argued case against the war (both in Iraq and in the Palestinian territories) is: A Sharon clone in the White House By Roy Isacowitz: "It is Iraq’s great misfortune that it not only sits on an alluring sea of oil, but is also an integral part of a region that is identified, in Bush’s single-digit mind, with terror – Arab terror. And Arab terror is the oxygen that has kept Ariel Sharon alive and shooting for the past 50 years. Both Sharon and Bush regard Saddam as the first domino, whose fall will lead to the progressive collapse of Islamic terror, Palestinian national aspirations and everything else that is nasty and bothersome in the Middle East." To the full article

And I'm open to a similarly well-argued (and not too long) article in favor of an imposed regime change in Baghdad.... Use tis Contact Ariga link to submit one. I reserve the rght to pubish, not publish, or edit for brevity and grammar, anything submitted. And as it now seems obvious, arguments for an against will soon be moot, and will likely soon become something along the lines of 'Now what?' after Dubya presses the button and sends the army in...

March 5, 2003 Purim thoughts
By Karen Alkalay-Gut

What if even one of the sons of Haman was not evil –
didn’t even carry the evil gene, and might have been
so much of a reaction to the evil he had seen
his only thoughts were of love.
What if he had been the one
to father the peace maker of Persia
in our time

how can I celebrate until I do not know
the difference?

Karen's Tel Aviv web diary

March 4, 2003 March 4, 2003 New Poetry! Dreaming swimmer by Srinjay Chakravarti has a tranquility that can only be Indian, while Reverie by Rowena Silver is almost painfully hopeful.

Previously -- February 2003

Today's Situation || Yesterday's Situation