Hooray! For Hol-y-wood.

[Beelzebub]

Wallace Shawn on Gaza: "The Anger of the Palestinians Cannot Be Ended by Killing Their Children"

Editor's Note: Playwright and actor Wallace Shawn is on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace, which condemns Israeli attacks in Gaza. Shawn recently translated Henrik Ibsen's

A Master Builder, a film by Jonathan Demme. Shawn submitted to The Hollywood Reporter this open letter to the Hollywood community. If you have a topic you would like to discuss, send potential submissions to [email protected].

Over the decades, I've done quite a bit of work as a translator from various languages, and sometimes when I get home from work, I just can't stop. Yesterday, for example, I saw an ad in The Hollywood Reporter. It was in English, but its meaning was not immediately obvious at all, so I felt an overwhelming impulse to translate it.

The ad featured a statement that former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir had made in the 1950s about "the Arabs," but the ad (which leaves out the words "the Arabs") suggests that "her haunting words" are "as current as today's headlines. She could have been talking about Hamas." The quotation, as it appears in the ad, is as follows: "We can forgive [them] for killing our children. We cannot forgive them from forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with [them] when they love their children more than they hate us."

My quick personal translation of this would be: "When we kill the children of Arabs, the Arabs made us do it. They hate us so much, they are so angry, that they do things that enrage us and make us kill children. If they were decent people who loved their children, they would set aside their hatred and stop provoking us, and we would then stop killing the children."

Sometimes a translator feels compelled to argue with the text he's just translated, particularly when, as in the case of this ad, one is confronted by a photograph of the author that makes one vividly feel her presence. In this case, I can only say that despite her wise and thoughtful and grandmotherly face, Golda Meir can be interpreted as saying here that she plans to kill the children of Arabs up until the moment when, in her sole judgment, the Arabs stop feeling "hate" and become sufficiently unprovoking and pacified.

Applying her remarks to the present day, as the signers of the ad suggest we should do, the ad seems fundamentally to be saying that it ought to be up to the current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to decide when the current killing ought to stop. I have to say, I feel that this ad, directed to members of the show business community, perhaps especially to Jewish members of the show business community such as myself, takes as its premise a false view both of history and of the present situation.

The broad outlines of the terrible history of the Jewish people over the centuries is relatively well-known to many of us. But unfortunately, many members of the show business community are not very aware of the tragic history of the Palestinian people. And yet the fact is that in my own lifetime (I was born in 1943) the Palestinian people have been expelled from their land and subjected to unceasing and unjustifiable torment, including a brutal occupation and, in Gaza, a regime in which an entire population has been placed on a starvation diet.

Anyone who learns more about what has happened can't help but realize that the anger of the Palestinians cannot be ended by killing their children. That is a fantasy. Human beings simply aren't made that way.

Wallace Shawn on Gaza The Anger of the Palestinians Cannot Be Ended by Killing Their Children

Well put.
Well said, Vizzini.

Poor lost souls.

The Palestinian anger was NEVER about their children.

It was abut them thinking no enough Jews died.

They give their children as tribute to death as soon as they detach from their mothers' wombs.

You are beginning to sound like a troll Lipush.
Is that your intention?

 

[Lipush]

I say the truth.

Palestinian mothers wish their kids to become martyrs and so they admit themselves.

The truth is uncomfortable? I understand.

 

[Phoenall]

So, you think killing peoples kids is an effective way to stop them from being angry Dan?

How many Israeli children were massacred by the Palestinians prior to 2000 when the separation barrier started to go up. Were those murders designed as an effective way of stopping the Israeli's from being angry ?

 

[Phoenall]

Wallace Shawn on Gaza: "The Anger of the Palestinians Cannot Be Ended by Killing Their Children"

Palistanians should change their occupation, of course.

The Israelis should end their occupation, actually. That would be a start towards peace.

Already been done and the only reply from the Palestinians were 2,000 rockets and many attempts at suicide bombs. Care to explain what has changed apart from the demands coming from hamas ?

 

[Phoenall]

Not unrealistic at all toast. Most occupations have been ended under fire, apart from many of the British ones, as Britain learned the hard way that you cannot control a native population when they refuse to be controlled.

It happens when societies realise that colonialism is the problem. Not anti-colonial resistance.

The only colonialism is that of the arab muslims, and now many of them are seeing that it is wrong.

 

[Phoenall]

No. Golda Meir was saying there would not be peace until Arabs have been so terrorised into submission that they are too scared to lose more, and are cowed and pliant.

A very fascist approach by a colonialist to native people.
And entirely unrealistic, when the avowed intention of Zionism was to deprive all non-Jews in Palestine of land, liberty and life.

She never wanted peace. Like other Israeli leaders, she just wanted total victory.

Just your opinion and that is worth about the same as any deal struck with hamas.

 

[Phoenall]

Then do it in a democracy, not as a racist state for approved types only.

Stop with the oppression. Or make it a hell hole with yourself decaying morally each day.

Israel is a representative democracy within its borders, show who does not have the right to vote in Israel's elections that is a full Israeli citizen. Don't say Palestinians as they are not living in Israel and they are not Israeli citizens. If they want equal rights then have them force their elected leaders to give them, starting with peace talks and mutually agreed borders.

 

[docmauser1]

Not unrealistic at all toast. Most occupations have been ended under fire, apart from many of the British ones, as Britain learned the hard way that you cannot control a native population when they refuse to be controlled.

How can arab settlers and squatters be considered native?

It happens when societies realise that colonialism is the problem. Not anti-colonial resistance.

Funny then resistance to the muslim colonization of Europe is branded as islamophobia. hehe

 

[docmauser1]

Golda Meir - Wikiquote

• I prefer to stay alive and be criticized than be sympathized.

Funny, "intellectuals", criticizing Israel, don't want to be sympathized either. hehe

 

[docmauser1]

Israel is is not a democracy. Its an ethnocracy. Palestinians also run democracy, but have effectively been forced by the US and Israel to move to emergency war-time government, due to the attacks on their democratic institutions. Iran was democratic until the UK & US staged a "coup" and put the Shah or Iran on the throne.
Egypt was democratic, until Sisi, supported again by the US and the usual suspects staged their coup.
Turkey is democratic. Though I am sure Israel would prefer a pliant, affordable tyrant in control there. As with Assad, Israel "can do business" with tyrants, which it fails to do with local democracies. The US and UK and Israel do not tolerate other local governments being democratic. But its interesting that you think that particular lie about Israel being "democratic" still has some mileage. It doesn't. The day Israel becomes a western style democracy, with universal suffrage and respect for human rights the whole foundation of Israel as a racist state collapse.

Funny drivel.

 

[docmauser1]

Palestinians are the same people that have lived continuously in Palestine for over 2000 years. The Jews are Europeans that invaded/settled Palestine over the past 100 years ago. Learn some history before showing your lack of education on the subject.

"So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population." Winnie Churchill.
Why are palistanians such settlers?

 

[I.P.Freely]

Palestinians are the same people that have lived continuously in Palestine for over 2000 years. The Jews are Europeans that invaded/settled Palestine over the past 100 years ago. Learn some history before showing your lack of education on the subject.

"So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population." Winnie Churchill.
Why are palistanians such settlers?

Codswallop

 

[docmauser1]

Codswallop

No, seriesly, why are palistanians such settlers?

 

[Lipush]

Then go to New York and be a stand up comedian. You have the material.

No matter what I'm not leaving Israel, we are here to stay whether you like it or not.

You aren't in Israel are you!

You are in "occupied territory"!

So, move BACK to Israel!

He lives near Tel Aviv, which land does he "occupy"?