Signs For Sanitary Disposal

LETTER TO THE BROTHERS (of Herbert Pagani)

Questo è l'ultimo suo atto pubblico prima della morte, il suo "testamento politico" di un ebreo di sinistra.

E' stata letta allo Zénith in occasione della celebrazione dei quarant'anni Israel. Published in April 1988, the Corriere della Sera in Italy.

Herbert Shalom! Toda Herbert!

Pope Slaughter (1987) - Herbert Pagani

leather, goggles, rubber. - Cm. 29x10x12

Besieged by newspapers, with their lives suspended between a newscast and the other around in my laboratory, capable of work. The indignation, ostentata e clamorosa, dei media umilia la mia. Cerco nel concerto delle esecrazioni le poche voci oneste, desiderose di equanimità, quelle che ricordino il prima non per scusare ma per spiegare il dopo, e colleziono i ritagli di questi rari parenti del pensiero, magro album di famiglia. Parlano tutti. Io sono anni che ho rinunciato alla parola e alla musica per lavorare in silenzio ma questo è sempre più abitato da cose non dette. Le parole si affollano, premono, vogliono uscire, e le sento al tempo stesso vane e necessarie. Se non agli altri per lo meno a me. E nella certezza che nessuno mi darà ascolto, l'urgenza di scrivere a tutti.

Fratelli italiani, francesi, inglesi, europei . Nessuna occupazione è pulita. Quella israeliana è sporca come le altre. Da qui a dire che è fatta da sporchi ebrei non vi è che un passo che alcuni di voi hanno fatto agilmente. In nome dei vostri soprusi d'oltremare fateli tacere.

Fratelli yankee . Anche voi gridate allo scandalo, come se quella di David fosse una stella dissidente, e deludente, della bandiera americana. Errore.

Gli israeliani sanno bene di non essere che una briciola della grande focaccia mediorientale che un giorno dovrete spartirvi con i russi. Cosa aspettate a mettervi a tavola con loro? Più il tempo goes by, the crumb hardening. Some end up staying in my throat.

Brothers Russians. How come you have not joined the chorus? You've never been so discreet as to when you have the floor. The official word yesterday of lying programmatically. What is behind the silence of today? Perhaps the desire to appear neutral in the eyes of Israel and the world, for future negotiations? In that case you have a more effective strategy of silence start by leaving out the thousands of Jews from the USSR who ask . Israel will recognize the moral qualifications, and not just power, to bring peace to the Middle East, one that suits you.

Brothers of the Left, politicians, activists, journalists . Have you found, to stigmatize Israel, places, titles and accents that do not find even for the attacks and massacres perpetrated by the Palestinians in your home. Why? Affect the legitimacy of a state to its "good behavior" means to have serious doubts as to its necessity. Too many of you are still secretly believe that the vocation of the Jews to live only the history of others. Yeast, for centuries, many cultures, it seems unnatural, perhaps even perverse, willingness to be our bread. So I ask: from how many years of slavery, the slave loses the right to ask freedom and a refugee partria? Two thousand years of waiting is too much? We lapsed? And I ask again: why a nation is a legitimate inhabitant of a land that should have won with the sword, the plow, time, money or a vote internationally? You choose the same criterion: it will be ours.

Israel was in the coveted time [1] , repurchased with money ul [2] , tempered with the plow [3], defended with the sword [4] , and voted by the UN [5] . If today Samson give blows with a stick is blind because of your willingness towards the Philistines [6] .

Christian Brothers. Your Saviour is born from the womb of one of our women. L ' anti-Semitism is born in the bosom of your Church . The dead were Jews in Christian hands, forever, infinitely more numerous than those killed in the camps by the Nazis. There is no faith to justify such barbarity. Neither the visit of Pope in the synagogue that we can make people forget. Come, Holy Father, recognized the State of Israel . Only then, assessments of his flock will begin ad avere per noi valore.

Fratelli musulmani . Abbiamo lo stesso padre, Abramo, quindi entrambi diritti di successione. Israele è un paese imperfetto nato da un sogno necessario. Se non potete accettarlo, è perché rincorrete un sogno contrario: quello dell'unità araba. Nato dal ricordo dei vostri splendori passati, vi è servito da cemento durante i secoli dell'umiliazione coloniale. Ma non è un sogno, è un mito. Le vostre diversificate indipendenze ve l'hanno provato: il mondo arabo non esiste. Vi sono soltanto dei paesi arabi , spesso incompatibili, nemici fra di loro, più o meno uniti by the same faith, the same "bad faith" against Israel . Your problem has never been to find a homeland for the Palestinians, but to prevent the Jews to have one. Understandable. Since we were in your history, what were the women in your families - those second-rate, with no right to speak - our desire for emancipation appeared to you as perverse, unnatural. Unable to expel Israel from your body you have expelled the Jews from the geographical your social body, forcing them to flee.

this way: 1) have increased to hundreds of thousands of actual your own enemy, 2) have confirmed the call to the shelter of Israel, and 3) there are deprived of one of the most specious arguments, but also more drivers of Arab propaganda, Israel, Western splinter. Today two-thirds of Israelis are refugees from Arab countries. Or, as His Majesty Hassan II, King of Morocco, the Arabs of the Jewish religion.

After four lost wars in defense of a myth, the Palestinians were your last weapon. Instead of absorbing them, have them loaded as a time bomb, as a timer generation. Also become too difficult to handle, you preferred to leave it on the ground. Today explodes chain everywhere.

Palestinian brothers. The fields in which you were born not by Israel, but a clear desire of the Arabs. And the terrorist acts of those who stand in your paladins do nothing but delay your release. It 's more convenient to argue with a sincere enemy to believe that a well proven leader of blindness. Today you are alone with slingshots before Israel. Look at this army good opponent. Will not go away ever. And this for two reasons: Israel is the only country in the world where it means a dirty jew jew that does not wash. Israel is the only country whose "invaders" when they dig the soil of the occupied land, found le tombe dei loro antenati. E, inoltre, l'unico paese democratico di questa parte del globo. Il solo in cui si può votare. Il solo in cui  ci si possa esprimere liberamente. E, per assurdo che possa sembrare, è il solo paese dove abbiate ancora qualche amico. E' forse troppo tardi per chiamarli in aiuto? Spero di no. Prego di no. Dio al quale non credo, al quale credo, al quale faccio tanta fatica a credere, se è vero come dicono le Scritture che un giorno fermasti il sole, ferma per un istante la moviola dei secoli. Congela a mezz'aria pietre, pallottole e bastoni. gli uomini hanno forse ancora qualcosa da dirsi, e io due parole da dire ai miei.

Israele. I profeti ti chiamarono a day "Bride of the Lord." Every bride needs a mirror. This buys you a story: we, the Jews of the diaspora. Do not break it. Question it. Play.

Hear, O Israel. The Lord your God is one, and his sons are all children of the planet. I believe there is a misprint in the Bible, that you are the chosen people, but the people voters. You elected president of your story to God for eternity, and if you survived, in spite of your weakness, to this day, where many civilizations have fallen into dust, it is because you have been faithful to his commandments. He orders you to defend yourself, but also to love. Obey. What does it mean to love? It means to take responsibility for others. Your neighbor is there before you. He demolished your image in the eyes of the world, stealing your friends, killed your children and has served as his bait to make you fall into the trap of repression. looks clear, Israele1 happens to people like children. Some fall in crime due to lack of parental supervision to their needs. Before you, Israel, the Palestinians did not exist as a nation. They were born from having witnessed the birth, grew up in the shadow of your victories, and if today cry out that they want everything, including Tel Aviv and Haifa, it is more of desperation than conviction. They have nothing. I know, I could keep it that part of land assigned by the UN in 1947. But who miscalculated in history can not be penalized forever. I know, there's no one to talk. All Palestinians moderates are more or less slaves of the PLO and the PLO still provides in its terms of the settlement of the State of Israel. I know, does not exist in the whole history of diplomacy in the case of a sovereign state willing to negotiate with a group that seeks its destruction . I know, the world asks the impossible. Finding a solution that rests on the moral and thou hast taught it every day, everywhere, breached. The world that you did not have peta, asks mercy for those of you not had, and probably will not have tomorrow. So at the risk of your survival. Try the same . We are accustomed to miracles. And the modern miracles are unexpected gestures of men . For once, something you hijack: hijack the course of history. reaching out to Israel, even if nobody is there to hold her. And take the world to witness this outstretched hand. And finally, we will know who you are not a splinter Western planted in the heart of the Arab world, but the crown jewel of the Middle East in the world.

Shalom, Herbert Pagani - Paris, 1988

      

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[1] Per ben duemila anni  gli ebrei della diaspora hanno ripetuto questa invocazione nella preghiera di Pasqua "Oggi schiavi in Egitto, l'anno prossimo a Gerusalemme". Il Sionismo ha trasformato questa preghiera in programma. 

[2] La rinascita geografica di Israele è stata possibile grazie alla presenza in ogni casa della diaspora, dal 1902, di un bossolo del KKL (Fondo Nazionale Ebraico) per la raccolta di oboli destinati all'acquisto di terre in Palestina. Il progetto ebraico scatenò l'avidità dei latifondisti arabi che pretesero ed ottennero prezzi esorbitanti anche per appezzamenti di deserto o di palude.

[3] Kibbutz , plurale: kibbutzim : comunità di lavoro socialiste. Moshav , plurale moshavim : coperative agricole. 

[4] 1948, 1956, 1967,1973: quattro guerre in quarant'anni. 1982: spedizione in Libano. Primo evento bellico sulla cui necessità si divide l'opinione di civili e militari in Israele.

[5] 9 novembre 1947: le Nazioni Unite votano la spartizione della Palestina in due aree, preludio alla costituzione di due Stati indipendenti. Voti in favor: 33 (including the USSR), against: 13 (including that of Greece); Abstentions: 10 (including Britain).

[6] The name Palestine comes from Falastin , philistine.