Egyptian POWs in June 1967 forced at gunpoint by Israeli soldiers to take off their shoes in the scorching (160° F) desert sand. Israeli propagande spread the story that the Egyptian soldiers ran away leaving their shoes behind.

Sch’mah Israel!

A poem by Erich Fried

When we were oppressed
I was one of you.
How can I remain with you
when you become oppressors?

Your longing was
to be like the other nations
that murdered you.
Now you have become like them.

You outlived those
whose cruelty you suffered.
Does not their cruelty
live on in you?

You told the defeated:
“Take off your shoes!”
then like the scapegoat
you drove them into the desert.

Into the vast mosque of Death
whose sandals are of sand.
But they did not bear the sin
you tried to lay upon them.

The imprint of naked feet
in the desert sand
will outlast all traces
of your bombs and your tanks.

Erich Fried, biographical notes.

Born – Vienna, 1921. Jewish. Father killed by Nazis in 1938. Took refuge in Britain in August, 1938. During the war – factory worker, librarian, chemist. Since 1946 – editor, writer, translator, poet. Awarded a Schiller prize, Stuttgart, 1965. Translator of Shakespeare (six plays) into German, also of Dylan Thomas (five works), T.S. Eliot, John Arden. Closely linked with the New Left in Germany, published many poems on the Vietnam war, apart from another 11 books of poetry.

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10.2.2022:
Listen to Fried reading his poem “Höre, Israel” in German:

https://www.deutschelyrik.de/hoere-israel.html