Research on Dahlia Ravikovitch's "You Can't Kill a Baby Twice"

"By the sewage puddles of Sabra and Shatila" Sabra and Shatila was a massacre of Palestine and Lebanese civilians by a group of Israeli and Phalangist militants called the Lebanese Forces Militia Group in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon between the 16th and 18th of September, 1982. The Maronite militants entered the camps in the middle of the night, allowed to pass by Israeli forces surrounding the camps, who then fired illuminating flares over the campsite to allow the militants to see. The Israeli responsibility for the massacre was highly disputed until an independent commission, the chairman of which was Sean MacBride, determined the Israeli forces was either directly or indirectly responsible and to blame.
Several months previously, in early June of the same year, an attempted assassination of the Israeli Ambassador to Britain Shlomo Argov prompted an Israeli break in their ceasefire agreement with the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization), despite the fact the PLO reportedly had nothing to do with it and condemned the actions of the attempted assassins, leading to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and surrounding of their capital, Beirut. On August 21, a US-brokered agreement allowed for the safe and overseen evacuation of Palestinian civilians in the city, guaranteeing their safety in the refugee camps. Then, on the 11th of September, the leader of the Lebanese Christian militia, Bachir Gemayel was assassinated in a giant explosion that destroyed his headquarters. The culprit was a man named Habib Tanious Shartouni, a Lebanese Christian and a member of the Syrian Social Nationalists Party and a Syrian intelligence agent. After the attack, public talks began, announcing the Israeli desire to invade Beirut, but to stay out of the refugee camps, sending in the Phalangist militia instead.

"there you transported human beings in impressive quantities from the world of the living to the world of eternal light."Victims of the massacre; the total number of victims of the massacre is highly debated, but different sources say any of the following: 800+, 1,300, 1,700, 3,000+, 3,000-3,500.  It was voted an official act of genocide by the UN General Assembly on the 16th of December.

"Night after night. First they shot, they hanged, then they slaughtered with their knives." Refers to the methodology and time frame of the militants' attack: it ranged from the 16th to the 18th of September. The massacre began on the night of the 6th, which involved the initial unit of militia, around 150 men, arranging in groups and executing them en masse with machine guns. Then, following 2 hours of group executions a group of Israeli and Phalangist officers at a forward command post overlooking the camps received a call questioning what they should do with a group of 50 or so prisoners. The commander, Hobeika, responded "This is the last time you're going to ask me a question like that; you know exactly what to do" followed by laughter. The following morning, on the 18th, the militia had withdrawn and allowed a number of Phalangist officials were let into the camp: they witnessed corpses shot to hell, castrated, scalped, and most with crosses carved into their flesh with knives. Many were hanging from posts around the camp. One American journalist wrote of the wreckage: "I saw dead women in their houses with their skirts up to their waists and their legs spread apart; dozens of young men shot after being lined up against an alley wall; children with their throats slit, a pregnant woman with her stomach chopped open, her eyes still wide open, her blackened face silently screaming in horror; countless babies and toddlers who had been stabbed ot ripped apart and who had been thrown into garbage piles."

"Our soldiers lit up the place with searchlights till it was bright as day." The Phalangist militia infamously used giant searchlights posted everywhere: one person described it as "a sports stadium during a football game". She uses "our soldiers" because it was allies of Israeli forces that committed these acts

"He was following orders." Reportedly, many of the onlooking Israeli forces were highly upset by the events, but were forced to stay by adamant orders from the higher-ups

"You can't kill a baby twice." Could refer to the literal babies that got killed, or the people that died that were so young they may as well have been babies

 "And the moon will grow fuller and fuller till it became a round loaf of gold. " Could refer to the moon changing to the sun, as the massacre lasted for 38 hours straight and the moon would rise and set and rise and set again before the massacre ended, so the moon becomes a loaf of gold, or the sun.

"Our sweet soldiers wanted nothing for themselves. All they ever asked was to come home safe." continuation of the last quote: another likely meaning of the line is that since it talks about "our" or Israeli, soldiers, the babies are those of the Israeli forces: referring to the innocence of the soldiers. They are killed, and one cannot lose innocence twice. They just wanted to go home without having seen that much death and horribleness, but they did: they did not want wealth, or to kill themselves, they just wanted to go back home.

Dahlia Ravikovitch was born on November 18, 1936 in a suburb of Tel Aviv, Israel. When she was 6, her father, a Chinese immigrant to Israel, an engineer, was killed by a drunk driver. Following his death, Dahlia's family moved to a kibbutz (a small Jewish community, primarily agrarian and very primitive in both social customs and potential education within), which Dahlia left at the age of 13 to live with a series of foster families. The education she received after she left the kibbutz was top-notch, she studied literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Early in her life she worked as a theatrical and television critic. She was married and divorced thrice. She has published somewhere around 20 volumes of works, including two poetry books and three children's stories. She also made a living for a while translating various literary pieces into Hebrew, and worked as a journalist for some time for the daily newspaper, the  Ma'ariv. After her retirement from journalism, she began to very seriously get into writing poetry, and quickly became well known as the only female Israeli poet of the time. Her works formed a stark contrast to her male counterparts of the time. Plagued by depression, her body was found in her Tel Aviv home by her son on August 21, 2005.

Analysis on You Can't Kill a Baby Twice: Following the horrors of Sabra and Shatila, there was an uproar of anti-war political poetry in response to the acts. Ravikovitch's poem uses allusions and similarities to the holocaust to show the irony of Jewish soldiers killing Arabs. The references and reminders of the styling and scale of the holocaust is seen through the transportation and methodology of the Nazis in the death camps, the fact that most Nazi soldiers blamed their commanding officers and were brutal and hostile to the prisoners is echoed in the interaction with an Israeli soldier in the poem. Calling memory to the killing of millions of children during the holocaust is also seen in the poem, as well as the symbolism of the innocence and wish to just leave it all behind of all involved. This poem represents a level of political and materialistic awareness not shown by any other of Ravikovitch's poetry, besides maybe "Hovering at a Low Altitude", as much of her other works deal with the fantastical and idealistic and spiritual of the earth, and very rarely indicate any relation to real-world events or relevant themes, showing the pure emotional toll that necessitated the mass response from artists all over the world to the massacre. 

Works Cited: 

Cohen, Zafrira L. "Dalia Ravikovitch | Jewish Women's Archive." Jewish Women; A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Jewish Women's Archive, n.d. Web. 13 May 2014.

Neisser, Yvette. "Palestine-Israel Journal: The Dialogue of Poetry: Palestinian mid Israeli Poets Writing Through Conflict and Peace." The Dialogue of Poetry: Palestinian mid Israeli Poets Writing Through Conflict and Peace. Palestine-Israel Journal, 2012. Web. 13 May 2014.

"Sabra and Shatila Massacre." Princeton University. Princeton University, n.d. Web. 13 May 2014.

Shahid, Leila. "The Sabra and Shatila Massacres: Eye-Witness Reports." Journal of Palestine Studies 32.1 (2002): 36-58. University of California Press. Web. 10 May 2014.