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“Playwright and actor Wallace Shawn has responded to this Anti-Defamation League (ADL) ad blaming Palestinians for Israel’s mass slaughter of children in Gaza.

Shawn’s brilliant “translation” of the ad into plain English is below.

Five hundred and sixteen children are among the 2,142 Palestinians killed by Israel’s current bombardment of the Gaza Strip, according to the latest tally from Al Mezan Center for Human Rights.

The ad, which appeared in The Hollywood Reporter, was signed by a number of show business executives. It quotes an infamous statement by Golda Meir, the American colonial settler in Palestine who became Israel’s prime minister, justifying Israel’s slaughter of Arab children during her time.

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Shawn’s response, which also appears in The Hollywood Reporter, is masterful. Here is Shawn’s “translation” of Meir’s words, as they were used in the ADL ad (reproduced in full with permission):

Over the decades, I’ve done quite a bit of work as a translator from various languages, and sometimes when I get home from work, I just can’t stop. Yesterday, for example, I saw an ad in The Hollywood Reporter. It was in English, but its meaning was not immediately obvious at all, so I felt an overwhelming impulse to translate it.

The ad featured a statement that former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir had made in the 1950s about “the Arabs,” but the ad (which leaves out the words “the Arabs”) suggests that “her haunting words” are “as current as today’s headlines. She could have been talking about Hamas.” The quotation, as it appears in the ad, is as follows: “We can forgive [them] for killing our children. We cannot forgive them from forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with [them] when they love their children more than they hate us.”

My quick personal translation of this would be: “When we kill the children of Arabs, the Arabs made us do it. They hate us so much, they are so angry, that they do things that enrage us and make us kill children. If they were decent people who loved their children, they would set aside their hatred and stop provoking us, and we would then stop killing the children.”

Sometimes a translator feels compelled to argue with the text he’s just translated, particularly when, as in the case of this ad, one is confronted by a photograph of the author that makes one vividly feel her presence. In this case, I can only say that despite her wise and thoughtful and grandmotherly face, Golda Meir can be interpreted as saying here that she plans to kill the children of Arabs up until the moment when, in her sole judgment, the Arabs stop feeling “hate” and become sufficiently unprovoking and pacified….(con’t..)

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/playwright-wallace-shawn-translates-adl-ad-justifying-israeli-child-murder-plain