Darwish: again, and again. Darwish's prose is as beautiful as his poetry, but in different ways. What I love about him is that this poet speaks Arabic in a very concise way when being interviewed. I watched an interview with him from 2002, and he was magnificent. He said that while Israel imposes a siege on the Palestinian people, the U.S. (after Sep. 11) imposes a siege on the world. He talked about his poem State of Siege. He made me re-read it: it is incredible. There is a passage there when he calls on the occupier to try to some Arabic coffee: and you read the passage and it is a poetic expression of that famous section about master and slave in Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind. He said that it is not possible to make peace with a state that have not been able in 60 years to make peace with "its" Arab citizens of the state. He said that Israel only extends its tanks and jets. He said that the debate in the Knesset about the use of his poetry in school curricula indicated that weakness of the identity of the state. He also made the important point about the culpability of Israeli society: that Israelis democratically elect those governments that practice war crimes as a matter of policy. I have always believed this to be true: Israel its supporters can't have it both ways. Can't insist on bragging about the democracy of Israel (for its Jewish citizens only of course) and yet expect us to absolve the voters of Israel from the moral, ethical, political, and even legal responsibility for the crimes that are committed by the successive governments of Israel.