To paraphrase Amos Oz: tragedy is what happens when right is in head on collision with right. Ben Goldacre again provides a great link (where does he find this stuff?) to Adam Curtis' blog where you can watch an excellent BBC documentary from 1973 on the Exodus incident. I think it does a good job of explaining the context and in allowing key participants to tell their stories. There is a marked lack of bitterness expressed on both sides and a lot of sympathetic insight. Perhaps this was possible at the time because in the end both sides got what they wanted - the refugees eventually got to Israel, albeit via Hamburg, and the British extricated themselves from a hopeless situation in which nothing could be done, or not done, without somebody somewhere painting them as the villains of the piece. I wonder though whether those who were interviewed would have been quite so phlegmatic if the final scene of this Act had ended as intended. The Haganah left a bomb on one British ship set to explode when it returned to sea after the debarkation of its refugee cargo. And of course just as it was broadcast in 1973 the curtain went up on the next Act of the tragedy.
The worst news you will hear today (where are they?)
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Tremendous progress in the field of prebiotic chemistry has shown how
simple compounds available on ancient Earth could have given rise to the
molecular ...
3 hours ago
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