History made Personal - The Lemon Tree, by Sandy Tolan

The killing machines have been working overtime in 2023.   In Ukraine, the Russians pursue their imperial expansionist policy – to restore USSR empire by unprovoked attacks?!   How many hundred thousand young Russian soldiers have paid for their dictator Putin’s psychotic fantasy with their lives?  How many Ukrainian children have lost their fathers and mothers defending their land against the Russian war machine murdering civilians, destroying hospitals, school, churches, homes, and so much more! 

In Yemen, the Democratic!! Republic of Congo, in Sudan, in the horn of Africa, in Myanmar, in Afghanistan and God knows where else, those with guns cut down “them” – the presumed or designated enemy others with impunity.  They don’t get as much press coverage interfering with their gruesome pursuits but the consequences are no less bloody and real.

And then there is the not very “Holy Land” – sacred now and for decades because of the blood that has gushed out of human veins into the earth.  As I write I am conscious of the latest episode in this endless fratricidal relationship of the children of Abraham and Hagar/Sarah. 

Over 1200 Israelis killed and 200+ hostages taken by Hamas on October 7^th, and I can’t even imagine the gruesome reality of now countable 20,000 children, women, and men – Palestinian human beings murdered by Israeli forces, plus uncountable others dead under the Gazan rubble which used to be their homes, and the wounded, and the hundreds killed in the West Bank Occupied Territories or hauled off into Israeli prison back doors, while a few hundred are released before cameras at the front door.

The question is impossible to avoid:  is the Israeli end goal actually to wipe out Hamas?  Hamas – weren’t they actively working with Netanyahu’s crew once so that Palestinian Authority would be undermined and divided?  Now any Palestinian has become first of all the devil incarnate, until proven innocent or dead. 

Do the Hamas loyalists wear badges indicating their membership? Just how are they distinguishable from “ordinary” Palestinians who writhe under the Israeli punitive control?  It surely must be true that there is some degree of Hamas sympathy in most who have been experiencing the Gazan outdoor prison, its blockaded borders, and others in the Occupied Territories  subjugated by Israeli forces?

Or is it the intended end game to annihilate all Palestinians like the biblical Amalekites Netanyahu is wont to talk about? (Ref.:  Judges 3:13, 6:3-5,33; 7:12, 10:12; 1Samuel15; 27:6; 1Sam  30:1-20; 1Chronicles 4:43)

Is the Israeli goal to remove this resistant, but rightful, presence totally to only God  knows where?   What could possibly be the destination? Going west won’t work – the Mediterranean Sea won’t open its watery path to liberation.  South won’t work – Egypt's current Pharaoh doesn’t want to be overrun by politically aware refugees. East is difficult - Gazans would have to cross Israeli territory; and those in the Occupied Territories would have to contend with Jordanian or Syrian bad memories of Palestinians fleeing land and homes, upsetting stability in neighbouring lands. And, to the north, Lebanon…the spectre of 1982, Sabra and Shatila's slaughtered Palestinians in Beirut refugee camps – victims of militant Christians colluding with Ariel Sharon and the Israeli armed forces. 

Is death really the only road to “liberation” for Palestinians? 

Increasingly Earth’s nations are saying “no way.” The recent vote by the UN General Assembly registered clearly the world’s frustration and impatience with the always asymmetrical  "wars" that kill wildly disproportionate numbers of Palestinian innocents and resisters as revenge by USA -armed  Israelis. Now the frightening proportions again are 20 to 2, i.e. 20,000 women, children, men overwhelmingly Palestinian Christians and Muslims, compared with 2000 women, children, men - most Israeli citizens. 

I was reading the story of King Solomon in the Tanakh (Old Testament) book of Kings – the slaughter was still underway in that time. It had started, according to Scripture, when the Hebrews were liberated from Egypt and trekked to the “promised land” and there fought their way into the “land of milk and honey” – by the command, according to the scriptural editors, of the Holy One – Adonai. That commanding and warring God is too often still the image of the Holy One, especially for fundamentalist Christians and, perhaps, for fanatic Jews and Muslims too. 

Happily, there are other witnesses in the Tanakh who testify to a more compassionate, loving, and righteous (just)  God who calls the faithful to not kill, but to care for foreigners, strangers, the “little ones” and the poor at the margins of life. The “minor” prophet Micah sums up what this loving God expects from the one  human family: to seek justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with God.” (6:8) 

That expectation has been a long time coming and so, as a wise Jew Abraham Heschell helps us remember, the Holy One everyday rises impatiently to wonder what’s next on the divine agenda with humans’ participation to “mend the earth” (tikkun olam). 

The reason I mention all this is because the book I’ve just finished reading points only in the direction of the divine. There is no simple solution. There is absolutely no military solution to the endless animosities and terror of power.  There is no imperial solution because the great powers are unwilling to give up their control of the stalemate. The politicians are incapable of doing it – they’ve either sold their souls for power, or have resigned themselves to their sorry state.

And yet there are voices that keep protesting above the din: there is a solution.  It must be possible. 

Murdered on the fateful October 6^th, Vivian Silver had previously told an Associated Press reporter:  “We went through three horrific wars in the space of six years”, she said, “at the end of the third one, I said: no more. We each have to do whatever we can to stop the next war. And it’s possible. We must reach a diplomatic agreement.”  (Thanks to Joel Harden, Ottawa Centre MPP for this testimony in his MPP Update #185 14 Dec. ’23).

We cannot force the “other” - the enemy - to think – or better, to  feel - differently. Their deeply rooted love of home, land, history and all that contributes to identity will not easily or violently be expunged.  No.  Forging just peace takes people of sound minds and big hearts, holding differing opinions strongly, but committed to the “other” - the "enemy" - as the only partner really available. (p. 262 in The Lemon Tree.)) 

War will only breed more hate and conflict as we have well learned over the last 75 years, and in the Biblical witness.  The prospect of one combatant nation slaying the other is too evil to countenance.  In the end there must be a resolution to live with the other and to make the terms of living side by side as tolerable, just, and peaceable as possible.   It means foregoing dreams of vanquishing the other and pursuing, instead, the Way of ceasefire, deepening understanding, and actively building bridges where walls now block the view of the "other".

This is really the narrative thread that makes The Lemon Tree such a gripping book. The lemon tree of the book is the backyard icon of the home which Bashir’s family built and, with the Nakba of 1948, was compelled to vacate rendering them homeless. It then became for Dalia and her Bulgarian Jewish refugee family their home but with mixed compromised feelings. 

In the context of the violent animosity of their two nations, two persons discover each other as amazing kindred spirits able to respect and appreciate each other. But they do so without compromising their personal convictions or deepest yearnings as an Israeli IDF officer, Dalia, and Bashir, as a Palestinian resister. 

There is little comfort in reading this non-fiction account. There is no fairy tale ending. But in the conflicted context of the gruesome saga of violence and bloodshed that is Palestine/Israel, The Lemon Tree helps us understand deep-seated commitments that inhabit the antagonists.  And it reinforces the inexorable conclusion that the damned warfare must end and the Sisyphean quest for just peace and neighbourliness must be found.

In this Holy Season, may the way to Bethlehem's peace be discovered and proclaimed by all of "goodwill".

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Tolan, Sandy:   "The Lemon Tree - an Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East."  New York, Bloomsbury USA, 2006.  ISBN 9 781596 9134431

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