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PARTISAN REVIEW
Christians may, in fact, only exacerbate the figure's memory of tra-
ditional anti-Jewish persecution. But this is real blood, not a blood
libel as it had been traditionally and as Begin had described the ac-
cusations against Israel, and these were real Arab babies now
slaughtered.
Of
the many references to children, the most haunting and ex·
\
plicit come in the poems of Dalia Ravikovitch. Although Raviko-
vitch does not explicitly refer to the Holocaust, it remains difficult to
read three of her poems, in particular, without the associations
created for us by the Holocaust.
In
"Exit from Beirut," the speaker
commands the refugees to:
Take the rucksacks
And the household bric-a-brac
And the books of the Koran
And the children scurrying like chickens in the village .
At which point, she interjects:
How many children do you have?
How many children did you have?
It's hard to watch over kids in a situation like this.
Put into sacks whatever isn't fragile,
Clothes and blankets and bedding
And something as a souvenir
Perhaps a shiny artillery shell
Or any utensil that comes in handy
And the rheumy-eyed babies
And the R.P.G. kids.
And then in a language that is both forever corrupted by its applica–
tion to the Jews in Nazi Germany and laden with Jewish memory of
expulsion with no known destination, the poet simultaneously re–
calls and creates a new "voyage of the damned," leaving little doubt
as to the source of her figures:
We want to see you sail in the water, sail aimlessly
Not to any harbor or shore
They will not receive you anywhere
You are banished human beings
You are people who don't count
