Applied Science

Wafa Idris blew herself up

Along with an old Israeli man

In a street in Jerusalem

Perhaps because she was hit by a rubber bullet

When she was attending a wounded man in the refugee camp

Or perhaps because she was beaten by an Israeli soldier when

She stopped to watch a house being demolished.

Einstein wrote Roosevelt

With news of the explosive power

Of bombs that used a chain reaction.

Einstein--like me a Zionist--were he alive today might

Write the Prime Minister and explain:

If you don't want bombs to explode

You don't start chain reactions.

Martin Needler