#Their First Victim was a Policeman who writes Poetry

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Not Recommended Reading Eliot Weinberger The Whirling Eye (1920) by Thomas W. Benson and Charles S. Wolfe   A psychiatrist, visiting an insane asylum, discovers his old friend Professor Mehlman, who declares that he has been unjustly incarcerated merely because he is in love with a Venusian. Mehlman had constructed a giant telescope in the Andes to observe life on Venus. In the course of his studies, he had become smitten by the sight of a beautiful Venusian female, whom he kept watching. A Weird Appointment (1901) by Harry S. Tedrow   At the local diner, a waitress tells the narrator that a Martian has moved into town. Going by the name of Miss Dora Wolf, she is part of a team studying human institutions. Miss Wolf’s particular interest is the post office. The Thought Girl (1920) by Ray Cummings   Guy Bates, since childhood, has been in telepathic rapport with a girl who lives in the Realm of Unthought Things. That world contains all the inventions that have not yet been invented in this world. When they are invented here, they disappear there. Guy enlists the aid of Thomas Edison to travel to the other world and bring the girl back. The Storm of London (1904) by F. Dickberry   Young Lord Somerville wakes to find all his clothes missing. In fact, all clothing has vanished from England. After the initial shock, life resumes in the nude. People learn they must take better care of their bodies and become healthier. Class distinctions, once marked by outward trappings, vanish. As the police are no longer recognisable, everyone polices themselves and there is no longer crime. Somerville and his fiancée decide to live together without marriage; the arts flourish; and the people construct an enormous Palace of Happiness. Solarion (1889) by Edgar Fawcett   Kindly Dayton and egotistical Stafford are both in love with Celia Effingham. Stafford steals the work of the dying Professor Klotz of Strasbourg, who has been stimulating the brain with electricity. He experiments on a puppy, which becomes an extremely intelligent, psychologically astute talking dog, Solarion. Stafford, afraid that Celia will run off with Dayton, gives her Solarion to spy on her and report back, but Solarion falls in love with Celia and betrays him. Stafford kills Solarion, and Celia and Dayton marry. The Shingling of Jupiter (1924) by Ewan Agnew   Patricia Dickens, a bored flapper, meets a handsome but dull man, who turns out to be an officer of the Jupiter Air Force, come to gather intelligence about Earth. She returns with him to Jupiter, but finds it’s just as boring as Earth. The women of Jupiter, however, copy Patricia’s shingle hairstyle and it becomes the rage. The Secret of Japan (1906) by George W. Draper   Takasuma, a Japanese-American scientist, invents a machine that makes people invisible. His friend Fowler accidentally steps in front of the ray. Fowler is extremely unhappy being invisible, and Mrs Fowler is not pleased. Takasuma promises to restore him, but can’t be found. Fowler eventually tracks him down in Japan, where the scientist has been creating invisible soldiers to fight in the Russo-Japanese war. Takasuma apologises for abandoning his friend, but says that his nation came first. The Second Fall (1920) by S.B.H. Hurst   Occultists from India are taking over the world through mass hypnosis. Wherever the Indians go, people suddenly believe they are sheep. They lose their memories, take off their clothes and try to eat grass. Most of humanity starves to death. Safe and Sane (1918) by Tod Robbins   In the year 1950, young people are addicted to twirling: spinning around on electric slippers until they’re dizzy and pass out. Meanwhile, in an underground vault beneath the Central Park Zoo, the United Millionaires of America are secretly meeting. They are tired of being lampooned by writers and artists and are conspiring to kill all the so-called geniuses in New York City. Their first victim is a policeman who writes poetry. The Purple Death (1895) by William Livingston Alden   Professor Schmidt, a bacteriologist, believes that the way to bring about economic equality is not by assassinating the capitalists, who are easily replaced, but by eliminating millions of workers, thereby creating a labour shortage that would increase wages. To this end, he concocts a deadly plague, the Purple Death, but dies before it can be set loose in the world. A Psychical Experiment (1887) by B.F. Cresswell   Mark Darrell cannot decide which of two sisters to marry. One is beautiful but not bright, the other brilliant but plain. His scientist friend Ernest Marshall has invented a technique for transferring personalities and offers to experiment on the sisters. It is a success, but the super-sister he creates – beautiful and brilliant – rejects Mark, having decided to devote her life to entomology. He marries the now plain and not bright sister. The Promoters: A Novel without a Woman (1904) by William Hawley Smith   Tycoons have a plan to tilt the world’s axis, creating a real estate boom in Antarctica, by firing off a hundred thousand cannons in Nebraska. Other Eyes than Mine (1926) by Ronald Arbuthnott   Two Latin scholars, an Englishman and a German, bitter rivals, simultaneously publish biographies of the poet Persius that completely contradict each other. An Italian scholar publishes an article definitively proving that the Englishman was correct, but World War One has broken out and there is no way for the Englishman to find out if the German has admitted defeat. The German dies in the war. Years later, the Englishman still wonders if his triumph was ever acknowledged. With the help of a medium, he contacts the spirit of the German, but in the afterlife his rival says he doesn’t remember anyone named Persius. The Man who Met Himself (1919) by Donovan Bayley   Richard Panton falls down the stairs and is separated from his subliminal self, which takes the form of a midget. With this loss, Panton himself shrinks and becomes an identical midget. They argue. The midget Panton beats the subliminal midget to death and regains his usual size. Fortunately, Mrs Panton has been away the whole time. When she returns, everything is normal. The Light in the Sky (1929) by Herbert Clock and Eric Boetzel   Throughout his life, the unnamed narrator has glimpsed a beautiful woman, who vanishes when he approaches her. Finally, after the war, they meet in Paris; they dance; and she stabs him with a poisoned ring. He wakes in a vast underground city, populated by Aztecs who escaped the Conquest and have learned the secret of immortality. The woman is Montezuma’s daughter, and she explains that they have been watching the narrator since his birth, for he is the direct descendant of Cortés. Sacrificing him to the god Tezcatlipoca will launch the Aztec reconquest of Mexico. The Immortals (1924) by Harold E. Scarborough   Dr Brusilov, who worked with Pasteur, has discovered that ageing is caused by a bacillus, which he names Senectutis brusilovis. He plans to manufacture and distribute a vaccine for it. But at a lecture promoting his miracle drug, he is interrupted by the Wandering Jew, who has been roaming the world for two thousand years, and who tells the audience it is miserable to be immortal. A Hand from the Deep (1924) by Rombo Poole   Simon Glaze has lost his arm in an accident and is being treated by Dr Whitby. Now he is acting strangely, suddenly curling up or leaping back. Something is growing out of his stump and his head is changing shape. Dr Whitby, assuming the regenerative abilities of lower life forms, has injected Simon with lobster extract, and Simon is turning into a lobster. The Flying Death (1902) by Samuel Hopkins Adams   Dr Richard Colton, vacationing in Montauk, stumbles across a series of seemingly impossible murders. He deduces that some of them are the work of an insane knife-thrower from the circus. Other deaths, however, cannot be explained until he comes across curious footprints on the beach. An earthquake has released a pteradon, a prehistoric flying reptile, from an underground cavern. The Elixir of Hate (1911) by George Allan England   Granville Dennison, who is terminally ill, rushes to the French villa of Dr Pagani, ‘Il Vecchio’, who has invented an elixir of life. Dennison steals the elixir. His health is restored, but he finds himself growing increasingly younger. He falls in love with Il Vecchio’s niece, but is soon too young for her. Exploring the villa, he discovers that the scientist has murdered scores of people for his experiments. He vows revenge, but must kill Il Vecchio before he turns into a baby. The Dimension Terror (1928) by Edmond Hamilton   Harron is relaxing in Battery Park when suddenly the entire New York skyline collapses, killing millions. All of the iron and steel on earth has disappeared. The cause is a foolish young scientist, Harlan Graham, who has begun communicating with the inhabitants of a parallel universe. Following their instructions, he constructs a channel between their world and ours. Streams of giant cockroaches pour through the channel. A Corner in Sleep (1900) by E.E. Kellett   The scientist Adolphus J. Vallancy’s morphometer has revealed that sleep is a kind of energy, and its amount is limited. Thus, one person’s deep sleep causes insomnia in another. Vallancy worries about the impending overpopulation of the world: too many people sleeping will cause a plague of sleeplessness. Christ in Chicago (1926) by T.S. Stribling   A faith healer in future Chicago, who works among the poor, reveals that the desire to have children is not innate, but rather impelled by an outside force: the souls of the dead are eager to be reincarnated. The Autobiography of a Malaria Germ (1900) by Theodore Waters   A malaria germ tells its life story, thrillingly borne aloft by a mosquito, settling comfortably in a human body, then struggling against adversity in the form of quinine.

Eliot Weinberger in the LRB; Vol. 39 No. 17 · pages 20-21

And from Letters Vol. 39 No. 20

“The 22 science fiction stories Eliot Weinberger includes in ‘Not Recommended Reading’ (LRB, 7 September) are all usefully listed, complete with summaries that Weinberger has comically truncated, in Everett F. Bleiler’s annotated bibliography, Science-Fiction: The Early Years (1990).”

-John Clute, London NW1

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Political poetry as a crime: Inside the surreal trial of Dareen Tatour

Arresting a Palestinian for publishing a political poem is extraordinary. Having to prove at trial that police mistranslated her poem is nothing short of surreal.

By Yoav Haifawi

Dareen Tatour at the Nazareth Magistrates Court. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

It has been nearly a year and a half since Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour was arrested in her home in northern Israel for writing a poem. She spent three months in various prisons, including half a year under house arrest in the town of Kiryat Ono in central Israel. Although she was able to return to her home village of Reineh, she remains under house arrest as the trial comes to an end.

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Tatour, 34, was arrested by Israeli police on October 10th, 2015 for a poem she had published on Facebook, along with a number of other Facebook statuses she posted at the height of last wave of violence between Palestinians and Israelis between 2015-2016. She was charged with incitement to violence and identifying with a terrorist organization — all because of her poem.

The main clause of her indictment was based on a poem that she had allegedly posted on YouTube under the title: “Qawem ya sha’abi, qawemhum” (Resist my people, resist them). Another main clause in the indictment relates to a news item, cited in a post on Tatour’s Facebook page, according to which “The Islamic Jihad movement calls for continuing the Intifada all over the [West] Bank…” The same post calls for a “comprehensive intifada.”

The prosecution wrapped up its arguments in September of last year, most of which were designed to prove that Tatour’s Facebook account indeed belonged to her, and that it was she who published the poem and the two Facebook statuses.

In November, Tatour testified and admitted that she had written the statuses. She explained that she was protesting the occupation, denouncing the crimes committed against Palestinians by the Israeli army and the settlers, adding that the police translation distorted her texts. Over three long days of cross-examination, Tatour was grilled by Prosecuting Attorney Alina Hardak, who attempted to push Tatour to admit her “support for terrorism” — to no avail.

Should poets be arrested?

On Sunday, March 19th, Tatour’s attorneys, Gaby Lasky and Nery Ramati, brought two expert witnesses to testify before Judge Adi Bambiliya-Einstein in the Nazareth Magistrates Court.

The first witness was Prof. Nissim Calderon, an expert on Hebrew literature. In his written expert opinion, Calderon stated that there are special rules concerning the expression of poets, describing a long tradition of poets who used harsh words to oppose oppression or injustice — sometimes going so far as to clearly call for violent actions. The poets, Calderon said, were not prosecuted, even by oppressive regimes like the Tsar in Russia or the British Mandate in Palestine.

Dareen Tatour (left) and Professor Calderon (center) speak at the Nazareth Magistrates Court, March 19, 2017. (Yoav Haifawi)

To prove his point, Calderon chose three of the most prominent Hebrew poets, bringing specific examples from their subversive texts. He cited Hayim Nachman Bialik, one of the pioneers of modern Hebrew poetry, who once wrote the lines: “With furious cruelty / We will drink your blood mercilessly.” Calderon also cited poet Shaul Tchernichovsky, who wrote: “Give me my sword, I won’t return it to its scabbard / What did my lips elicit? I want battles.” Despite these clear calls for violence by leading Jewish poets, the Tsar’s anti-Semitic secret police refrained from arresting or prosecuting them.

The third example Calderon cited at length was right-wing Zionist poet, Uri Tsvi Greenberg. Greenberg openly incited to violence and was a member of “Brit HaBirionim” (The Thugs Alliance), a Zionist organization that violently resisted the British occupation. He was never punished for his poems.

When the prosecutor implied that Greenberg was not arrested for his poetry because the British Mandate did not prosecute inciters, Calderon responded that his uncle was exiled from Palestine for supporting illegal Jewish immigration. When the prosecutor suggested that poets should not necessarily be immune to legal action during times of tension, Calderon said that the British did not prosecute Greenberg even when he called for resistance to their rule.

What did the poet mean?

Both the prosecutor and the judge understood that they have a problem with the police translation of Tatour’s poem. The officer who translated it had no specific expertise in translation. When he was previously asked during his testimony why he was chosen to translate the poem, the officer responded that he studied Arabic literature in high school and has a love for the language.

During Tatour’s testimony, the prosecutor wanted her to provide her own Hebrew translation of the poem. She refused, adding that she does not know Hebrew well enough to translate poetry. The prosecutor then wanted her to read the poem in Arabic so that the court’s translator will translate it, and thus the words would be attributed to her included in the protocol. She refused.

Yoni Mendel at Dareen Tatour’s trial, Nazareth Magistrates Court, March 19, 2017. (Yoav Haifawi)

Perhaps the prosecution felt some relief when the defense brought its own Hebrew translation of the poem, done by Dr. Yoni Mendel, an experienced literary translator and Arabic expert. His translation was significantly different from the one that appeared in the indictment. Mendel, too, provided expert testimony, claiming that the police’s translation had deliberately and systematically distorted the text to make it appear extremist and violent.

The most blatant contradiction between the two translations was in the following lines: “Do not fear the tongues of the Merkava tank \ The truth in your heart is stronger \ As long as you are rebel in a land \ That has lived through raids but wasn’t exhausted.” The last two verses were translated by the policeman to “As long as you resist in a land \ Long live the Gazawat and will not tire.”

The police officer omitted the word “Gazawat” in Arabic, likely because he could not find the proper translation into Hebrew. In his testimony, Mendel explained that the word was used by Arab tribes at the time of the Jahiliyya (what Muslims call the period before the founding of Islam) to describe attacks on tribes for the purpose of robbery or enslaving women. Tatour’s text clearly uses these lines to refer to the raids that Palestinians are subject to; the police translation, somehow, managed to transform the victim into the aggressor.

Who are the martyrs?

On a more profound level, much of the emphasis on the translation — and a great deal of the cross-examination — focused on the sentence: “Follow the convoy of martyrs.” The Arabic word for martyrs, “shuhadaa,” was not translated into Hebrew by the police translator, but rather was grammatically adjusted into Hebrew and became “shahidim” — an Israeli transliteration that, for most Israelis, conjures an image of Palestinians who were killed while carrying out attacks on Israelis. Mendel showed how basic Arabic terms keep their original form in such a way that neutralizes their original meaning and the basic human empathy that underlies them. Divorced from their original context, Arabic words like shahid or intifada acquire a new, threatening meaning in Hebrew.

Mendel went on to explain that for the Palestinian Arab public, the word shuhadaa refers to all the victims of the occupation. In the specific context of Tatour’s poem, Mendel supported this interpretation with the fact that Tatour’s poem referred to three specific martyrs: 16-year-old Muhammad Abu Khdeir, who was kidnapped and burned alive by Israeli Jews; Ali Dawabsheh, a Palestinian baby who was burned alive with the rest of his family in their West Bank home; and Hadeel Al-Hashlamon, who was shot and killed by the army at a checkpoint in Hebron.

The prosecutor tried to prove that Tartour was not referring to murdered Palestinians, since no one wants to be murdered. Mendel explained that the call to “follow the martyrs” does not mean a desire to die, but rather refers to a more general concept of adhering to Palestinian heritage. This includes embracing bereaved families, never giving up the struggle, and refusing to accept solutions that deny Palestinian national and human rights.

Tatour has became a symbol for Israel’s persecution of Palestinians over political expression, mostly on social media. Many poets, writers, intellectuals, and activists, both in the country and abroad, have expressed their solidarity with her, calling for her immediate release and for the charges against her to be dropped.

The fact that leading intellectuals such as Calderon and Mendel volunteered to provide testimony during a grueling cross-examination (Mendel was grilled for five hours) is a prime example of just how much this particular trial resonated with much of the liberal public. Even defenders of freedom of expression and the arts have begun collecting money to help with Tatour’s legal expenses.

The last witnesses in Tatour’s case will be called to testify on March 28th, which will likely the last hearing before the verdict is read in a few months. Tatour faces up to eight years in prison, and an appeal from one or both sides is likely in such a high profile case. In the meantime, Tatour remains under house arrest and may stay in detention for a full two years before the court comes to a decision over the meaning of her poem.

Yoav Haifawi is covering Dareen Tatour’s trial in his blog, Free Haifa.