"Gilad Shalit... Is he a Hamas hostage?" is an article by Noam Shalit (the father of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who... of course you know who it is!:), in the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds on Tuesday August 5th, was widely quoted inside and outside of Israel, by pro- and anti-Israelis, especially in its concluding line,
"While Hamas is holding Gilad Shalit hostage, in practice Shalit is holding thousands of Palestinian prisoners in israeli jails and hundreds of uninvolved thousands of Palestinian citizens as hostage, until he is released from Hamas' captivity".
Wanting to know more about the article and the context of this sound bite (especially that Noam Shalit was very recently petitioning the Israeli Supreme court to reject any truce with Hamas and screaming against the liberation of any Palestinians), I looked up the article in Al-Quds and, lo and behold, the online version said that the author was...
.....Gershon Baskin, director of the respectable Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI). There's not a single mention of Noam Shalit in the article, he's not quoted or interviewed.
So I went and found a hardcopy of the newspaper and indeed, it said Noam Shalit wrote the article! Madness!
"While Hamas is holding Gilad Shalit hostage, in practice Shalit is holding thousands of Palestinian prisoners in israeli jails and hundreds of uninvolved thousands of Palestinian citizens as hostage, until he is released from Hamas' captivity".
Wanting to know more about the article and the context of this sound bite (especially that Noam Shalit was very recently petitioning the Israeli Supreme court to reject any truce with Hamas and screaming against the liberation of any Palestinians), I looked up the article in Al-Quds and, lo and behold, the online version said that the author was........Gershon Baskin, director of the respectable Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI). There's not a single mention of Noam Shalit in the article, he's not quoted or interviewed.
So I went and found a hardcopy of the newspaper and indeed, it said Noam Shalit wrote the article! Madness!
So I messaged Gershon Baskin and he replied by saying the following:
“The article was written by Noam Schalit and sent to al quds by me - al quds says that they corrected the entry and it is entirely credited to Noam, as it should be.”
So, mystery solved. Apologies for having misled anyone out there...
3 comments:
Following is an email I just received from Khalid Amayreh...
Dear Steve, the Arabic article which appeared on the front page of al Quds on 5 August has Noam Shalit's picture right on top, and it said that he, not Baskin, wrote the article.
Besides, Mr. Baskin sent me a message saying that he convincd the al Quds editor Marwan Abu al Zuluf to publish the article.
I don't know who translated the article into Arabic. It is possible that Noam Shalit wrote the article in Hebrew and Baskin translated it into Arabic.
Here is Baskin's message that I received:
"The following are the links to an article by Noam Schalit that I helped to get published in today’s Al-Quds. Thanks to Marwan Abu Zuluf!
Gershon
Someone sent me the wrong link - the correct link is:
http://www.alquds.com/docs/pdf-docs/2008/8/5/page18.pdf" (end of quote)
Totally ancillary comment:
I find the Arabic spelling of my name (Noam) curious. If I were reading the name as spelled (with an 'alif) aloud, I would pronounce it [no '3aam] (accent on the 2nd syllable).
Since the accent should be on the 1st syllable, I've always written my name sans 'alif, as follows:
نوعم
Curious as to your native Egyptian thoughts on the topic :P
Good point, No3aaam! :)
Personally i would drop the Alif as well.
This said, I guess that for foreign names such as yours, some 'tashkil' (a fat7a on the 3ain) would be needed. And since newspapers don't have tashkil, I'm guessing they might have thought they needed an Alif to clarify the pronunciation.
Plus i guess, thanks to our friend Chomsky being translated in Arabic, your first name has now taken a quasi-conventional Alif...
Personally - i would actually drop the 3ain for an alif and write نوام. I fail to see the reason why we need to respect the linguistic equivalence and put a ع where there's a ע originally, given that it's no longer read like that in the first place.
I can think of a number of foreign names where extra Alif or Ya' distort the pronunciation a bit but avoid a worse one! Take one from recent news: جلعاد גילק. A french friend of mine, Coralie, would have to write her name كورالي... you see the drill. :)
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