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An Arab Land (1950): Natan Alterman
Natan Alterman pictured on a record cover
for his Magash Hakesef (”On a Silver Platter”)
(credit: Israeliscent.com)
Palestine is an Arab land. Strangers have no share in it.
–a public broadsheet
A clear night. Trees wave
Their boughs in an airy whisper.
From above, Arab night stars
Sparkle over an Arab land.
The night-stars sparkle and blink
Sowing their trembling light
Upon the quiet city, El Kuds,
Where King Daoud dwells.
From there, they gaze
To the far-off city, El-Chalil,
The city where Father Ibrahim is buried–
Ibrahim who bore Ischak.
From there, their sharp line of light
Hastens to paint with radiance
The waters of the river, El-Urdun
Which Yakub with his crook crossed over.
A clear night. With an airy wink
Night-stars sparkle as is their custom
Upon the Arab hills
Which Musa saw from afar.
When I first read this poem, while studying Hebrew Literature at the Hebrew University in 1979, I was attracted by its knowing and bitter use of irony in satirizing the Palestinian sense that they merited exclusive proprietary ownership of Israel. While within the poem, Alterman savagely satirizes Palestinian exclusivist nationalism; he indirectly causes us to examine the same ugly phenomenon among Zionist exclusivists. In the current Israeli political debate, the 40% of Israelis who support population transfer (read ‘ethnic cleansing’) should rightly be called exclusivist.
The beauty of the poem is that it makes us realize that claims of exclusive “ownership” of the land by either side are preposterous. Though it takes a sixty year old poem to remind us of this, we can never hear the message often enough.
Yonathan said:
Keep these beautiful poems coming, Richard! In the course of this week I will publish on my weblog the article that I sent you ( with most of the changes that you suggested ), about the way in which we have focused more and more on the Land, almost forgetting what brought us here and what kept us going for 2000 years in the first place.
Dan Inbari said:
The greatness of this poem is its topicality, even 60 years after it has been writen.
The greatness of Natan Alterman as a poet is that beside being a great sensitive and gifted poet he was above all one of our important national poets. There is no subject which has national importance and alterman didn’t wrote about.