Sol 5.6

  1. The Great Sedition bares its horns—

    or has Deir Yassin’s madness been unleashed anew?

  2. O stain upon humanity, born of a savagery

    before which even the fiercest beasts’ eyes recoil!

  3. Destruction whistled for it with a sinner’s delight,

    and behold, blood is its drink and its addiction.

  4. That gang of vile men did not scruple

    at anything that stains warfare and disgraces it.

  5. In the name of justice and rights they blustered,

    as though the defender of rights were their betrayer.

  6. At every massacre they have a jubilant cry,

    and beside every slaughter they celebrate a feast.

  7. Before mankind they stage such farces—

    images of the offender that ulcerate the eyelids.

  8. They themselves are the scapegoat; but those they wronged

    and attacked are cast as the war and its furnace.

  9. They made honor itself the culprit—indeed, they portrayed

    the victims’ corpses in the fields as betraying it.

  10. They belonged to a people secure in their homes;

    they slept—where now are their homes and their peace?

  11. It swept them and their dreams away, scattering

    their severed limbs, their blood, and their longings.

  12. God judge the aggressor! In my sight alike are

    all factions, whatever their religion may sanction.

  13. Brutality is never lawful,

    however much its intimate companion sanctions mortal sins.

  14. Injustice, amid its assaults, finds

    anyone who does not repel them to be its accomplice.

  15. O sons of filth, what justice

    do you hope for, when your evil is its very substance?

  16. Your pretenses have multiplied as profusely as your malice,

    while the innocent are those you have stabbed and buried.

  17. Whom do you deceive, when Qibya stands witness

    and dynamite is both its adversary and companion?

  18. Is it the United Nations, already shrouded

    in its cradle—or captivity enfolding its groaning?

  19. Or do you suppose that the Arab nations, after what befell them,

    were stricken by you—and through you their right hand was paralyzed?

  20. Or truthful history, as it records

    your sins, should you yourselves fail to record them?

  21. I once hoped for justice after an accord,

    but now justice finds its strongholds violated.

  22. And behold, shells alone have now become

    the tongues of justice, if its devotee will heed them.

  23. Alas for all the states of the Arab world!

    They have failed; their lions and their lair are lost.

  24. Never shall they rise while foxes above them

    hold sway, and their voice amounts to no more than a buzz.

  25. Zion is not merely a single adversary:

    within every state lurks a Zion of its own.

  26. Whom, then, shall I blame, when the perpetrators are kin

    and strangers alike, and the thieves are its clientele?

  27. When precious blood is debased and no aspirations are stirred,

    while the armies’ bonds are their prisons?

  28. Heroes of Qibya—that is what you are; let it suffice you

    as glory that its civilization was destroyed at your hands.

  29. Whoever doubted a civilization

    afflicted by you—your handiwork is its elegy.

  30. Who, then, could imagine after that that you belong

    to a nation whose brow was singled out for laurels?

  31. After that, tolerance is a crime—

    alas for humanity when it adorns that crime!

Sol 5.6