The Lemon Tree
by: Sandy Tolan
Published by: Bloomsbury
Buy From Amazon.com
Reviewed by Michele Heather Pollock
Subtitled: An Arab, A Jew and the Heart of the Middle Eas
(Also in audio book by High Bridge Audio and read by author)
The struggle between Israel and Palestine has been going on so long, it's easy to forget that before 1947, there was no state called Israel, no Palestinian refugees. But there were Palestinian Arabs. And there were Jews. And the events that led up to the creation of Israel threw individuals from both of these backgrounds together, their lives forever entwined over a common heritage on a piece of land, once called Palestine.
Sandy Tolan gives us a chance to experience the human dimensions of this bitter conflict. Through interviews and extended research, he follows the lives of two individuals: Bashir Khairi, a Palestinian Arab whose family was forced at gunpoint to flee their home in al-Ramla, and Dalia Eshkenazi, a Jew whose family fled the Nazis and took up residence in the very home which Bashir's family left behind. The two eventually met in 1967, when Bashir made a brave pilgrimage from the refugee camps of the West Bank to see his childhood home. Dalia, unlike many of the Jews in the area, invited him inside, and the two struck up an unusual friendship that has survived decades, ideological differences, and even war.
Tolan details Palestine's history, including the creation of the state of Israel, the role of Britain and the UN in partitioning up the land, and the series of wars that followed, in which Israel slowly acquired nearly all of what was once called Palestine.
-- He explains Zionism, the desire of the Jews for their own homeland, free from persecution, and how that desire led the Jews and the Western world to claim lands in Palestine.
-- He examines the Palestinian refugees' equally strong desire for the right of return to their family homes, and how that desire led to the creation of organizations such as Hamas, considered "terrorist" organizations by the West, but considered by the Palestinians as their only hope to draw the world's attention to the injustices done to them.
The incredible thing about this fantastic book is its ability to show both sides with empathy and understanding, to highlight how complicated this conflict really is.
Armchair Interviews says: Author Tolan is a veteran print and radio journalist who teaches international reporting at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism and has appeared on NPR.
From our armchair to yours...
