Today in Germany, Tamar Ben Ami, known as "Rita" in the poems of the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, passed away after a long battle with cancer at the age of 79. Ben Ami was born in 1947 and raised in Haifa, where she studied dance and in 1962 joined a troupe bringing together Jewish and Arab dancers. She was also a member of the Communist Youth League. Tamar met Mahmoud Darwish at the age of sixteen, and a friendship began that turned into a relationship that inspired the poet to write several famous poems, including "Between Rita and My Eyes a Rifle" and "Rita's Long Winter," which were performed by singer Marcel Khalife. Darwish gave her the name "Rita" in his writings, describing the relationship as an unequal love between a Palestinian and an Israeli Jewish woman, which ended after the 1967 war. In the poet's consciousness, "Rita" became a symbol of the Arab-Israeli conflict. During her artistic career, Tamar served in the Israeli Navy, then studied at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, and continued her education in New York at the Alvin Ailey American Dance School, where she studied Tai Chi and Yoga before working on designing dance theater productions in Germany. Her artistic activity between Tel Aviv and Berlin continued until 2011. It is worth noting that poet Mahmoud Darwish passed away on August 9, 2008, and was buried in Ramallah in a mausoleum designed to be worthy of his literary and national status, while Tamar left behind a complex artistic and cultural legacy intertwined with art, love, and Palestinian-Israeli history.
