Two Viewpoints, Oceans Apart to the Coup

OUTSPOKEN EXILE SHOE CLUES INTRODUCING HERSELVES BELARUSIAN TOOK SNEAKER COLORS DEBUT ALBUM ADDRESSES UP CAUSE AT 16 CARRY MESSAGES OUR ERA OF PERSONAS PAGE 4 | WORLD PAGE 11 | STYLE PAGE 14 | CULTURE .. INTERNATIONAL EDITION | THURSDAY, MAY 27, 2021 Coexistence Poets risk in Israel is their lives to just a myth save the soul Diana Buttu of Myanmar Dozens are imprisoned, OPINION or worse, as military tries Secretary of State Antony Blinken is to stifle the power of words visiting Israel and plans to visit the West Bank in an attempt to bolster BY HANNAH BEECH Friday’s cease-fire, which halted Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza and Ha- After the first and second poets were mas’s rocket attacks on Israel. On Tues- killed, the third poet wrote a poem. day, Mr. Blinken spoke in Jerusalem about his intention to “rally interna- They shoot at heads tional support” to aid Gaza and rebuild But they do not know what was destroyed. That revolution lives in the heart. Despite the cease-fire, protests by Palestinians in Jerusalem and else- After the third poet was killed, the where have continued, the Israeli police fourth poet wrote a poem. have arrested scores of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Don’t let your blood run cold Israeli settlers have persisted in their Pool your blood for this fight. provocations. The fault lines in Israeli society have After the fourth poet was killed, his never been clearer and Jerusalem body consumed by fire on May 14, there remains the tinder box that could ignite was no verse. At least for a moment. another catastrophic Poetry remains alive in Myanmar, Palestinians fire unless the under- where unconventional weapons are be- live under a lying causes — Is- ing used to fight a military that has rael’s occupation of killed more than 800 people since it racist system the Palestinian terri- staged a coup on Feb. 1 and ousted an whose laws tories and its highly elected government. For some democ- enshrine discriminatory poli- racy activists, their politics cannot be their second- cies — are dealt with. separated from their poetry. class status. Two weeks ago, I PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATTHEW ABBOTT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Sensing the power of carefully chosen was in my family’s Ian White, a commercial hunter, with a kangaroo he shot in Surat, Australia. He is part of a regulated industry that works with the government to ensure sustainable populations. words, the generals have imprisoned home in Haifa, a city more than 30 poets since the putsch, ac- in northern Israel cording to the National Poets’ Union. At where both Palestinians and Israelis least four have been killed, all from the live. I saw groups of young men carry- township of Monywa, which sits in the ing Israeli flags and tire irons march by, hot plains of central Myanmar and has shouting, “The people of Israeli live” emerged as a center of fierce resistance and “Death to Arabs!” Two viewpoints, oceans apart to the coup. My father and I watched on live tele- “Anti-authoritarian sentiments have always been in the flesh and blood of po- vision as a crowd of Jewish men in SURAT, AUSTRALIA into view. Mr. White pulled over and another mixed town, Lod, asked a man if carefully loaded the Sako .222 rifle rest- ets,” said U Yee Mon, a poet who also he was an Arab, then pulled him out of ing on his lap. serves as the defense minister for a his car and beat him. Some Palestinian He exhaled and fired at a young buck shadow democratic government that is citizens of Israel vented their frustra- U.S. activists want to stop standing still in the light. challenging Myanmar’s junta from jun- tion and anger against Jewish Israelis Around the same time that Mr. White gle redoubts. “The people with weapons and symbols of the Jewish state that the killing of kangaroos, started shooting kangaroos, activists in are afraid of pen-wielding hands.” oppresses them by burning down a a way of life in Australia the United States began fighting to pro- The resistance to Myanmar’s military, synagogue in Lod. tect them. which has dominated the country since its independence from Britain, has in- Haifa, whose population is 85 percent BY DAMIEN CAVE In 1971, California banned the import Jewish and 15 percent Palestinian, has of kangaroo parts. Three years later, the spired people from all walks of life. Stu- long been presented along with Lod and Ian White drove slowly over the red dirt U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did the dents and beauty queens have pro- other mixed cities in Israel as a model of track, past wheat stubble and into the same for three commercially hunted tested, as have doctors and engineers. coexistence. Which is why, in the past long grass, where he glimpsed a tuft of kangaroo species — all based on con- Poets have joined the protests, too, their few weeks, the question has repeatedly white fur moving near the woods to his cerns about declining kangaroo popula- rhyming couplets providing battle cries been asked: How could these cities left. tions, concerns that many Australians for the movement. suddenly be transformed into sites of It was a warm autumn night in the did not share. The first poets to be killed by security mob violence? Australian outback. He turned on the George Wilson, a professor at the Aus- forces in the aftermath of the coup were The truth is that the Palestinian spotlight sitting atop his truck, finding a tralian National University who has Ko Chan Thar Swe and Ma Myint Myint citizens of Israel and the Jewish major- kangaroo 150 yards away. spent 50 years in wildlife management, Zin. One was shot in the head and the ity of the country have never coexisted. “See, that’s a doe,” he said. “I don’t es- recalled telling a worried American biol- other in the chest during a mass protest We Palestinians living in Israel “sub- pecially want to shoot a doe.” ogist who visited in the mid-70s that in Monywa in early March. exist,” living under a system of discrimi- A doe usually has a joey in her pouch. Removing kangaroo skins at Warroo Game Meats in Surat. Periods of plenty lead to there was a reason so many trucks in Mr. Chan Thar Swe had left the Bud- nation and racism with laws that en- He and others who hunt kangaroos bear booms in kangaroo populations; when drought comes, they shrink dramatically. Australia had metal bars on the front. dhist monkhood to write poetry more shrine our second-class status and with this in mind, Mr. White said, despite “It’s in case they hit a kangaroo,” he than a dozen years ago, a move that policies that ensure we are never claims to the contrary by American ac- said. “That’s how abundant they are.” shocked his family, which had basked in equals. tivists who are trying to shut down their cial kangaroo industry isn’t like a John Most important, said Mr. White, 58, a Kangaroos were removed from the the prestige of having a cleric among This is not by accident but by design. livelihood, calling it inhumane. Wayne western with guns blazing. It’s a third-generation full-time shooter who U.S. list of endangered and threatened them, said his sister Ma Khin Sandar The violence against Palestinians in These critics, he said, just don’t un- regulated business that works with the goes by Whitey, kangaroos produce wildlife in 1995, and the California law Win. His poems, written under the pen BUTTU, PAGE 10 derstand how life actually works in out- government. Hunters must pass a healthy meat, strong leather and the lingered without much notice until the name K Za Win, were full of a vigor that back Australia. Kangaroos have been sharpshooting course to ensure a hu- jobs that keep small towns whole. mid-2000s, when a vegetarian activist belied his monastic background. The New York Times publishes opinion hunted on the continent for thousands of mane kill, and kangaroo numbers are “I don’t like killing things,” he said. “I group sued Adidas for selling soccer His political activism, on behalf of from a wide range of perspectives in years, “and there are still more of them closely monitored by state and federal only do it if I want to eat the animal or shoes that used imported kangaroo land, education and environmental hopes of promoting constructive debate than people,” Mr. White said. officials, who set quotas to ensure sus- make money.” skin. causes, landed him in prison in 2015. about consequential questions. He insisted that Australia’s commer- tainable populations. A dozen kangaroos suddenly bounced KANGAROOS, PAGE 8 MYANMAR, PAGE 2 Shaking up the art scene in Paris PARIS bines tradition and modernity. Once a grain exchange, the light-filled building has undergone a $170 million redevelopment conceived by the Pritz- French billionaire creates ker Prize-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando, who previously worked a contemporary space with with Pinault at the Palazzo Grassi in transience as a key theme Venice. Ando installed a 108-foot-diame- ter concrete cylinder inside the central BY ROGER COHEN rotunda, creating a core display area while retaining the framework of the François Pinault, the French billionaire, original. has never had much time for conven- “A palimpsest of French history,” as tion. “Avoid the paths already trodden,” Martin Bethenod, the museum’s direc- has been his motto.

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