Barbara's bad language
From Rosalind and Leonard Ingrams Sir: The final entry of Barbara Amiel's New York diary (28 September) contains a reference to the Palestinians so ugly that it recalls the language of the 1930s. The derivation of the word Palestine via Falestin (Arabic) via Philistia (Greek), home of the Philistines of the Old Testament, is well known. Barbara Amid l watches Saint
Saens's Samson et Dalila at the New York Met and describes how 'the Philistines .. scurried in like horrid little insect people, crouching all over the stage concealing weapons'. She goes on to hope that Kofi Annan (sitting beside her) was getting the message'. Kofi Annan may well get a message as hideous as hers and the opera director's, comparable to the term 'louse' used of the Jews in Germany between the wars.
Rosalind and Leonard Ingrams
Garsington, Oxford
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