The Lemon Tree

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It was coming up on the 50th anniversary of the first Arab-Israeli war, and I wanted to find a human story that would evoke both narratives, as experienced by each side.

THE LEMON TREE | Kirkus Reviews

The attacks sharply raised anxieties in the Jewish state, and, as designed, sparked tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Bashir watches his mother sell off her gold, and experiences the shame of watching his proud father become increasingly destitute. While reading Dahlia’s letter, I felt as if I had written parts of it myself; her words expressed my own thoughts. The president assured the king that "my disapproval of this action has been made known to the government of Israel in the strongest terms. N. and its resolutions on paper, Bashir believed, Nasser could end the long exile of the Palestinians by force of arms.

As I put together the "Lemon Tree" radio documentary, I was struck by how each family had lived with phantom images -- that of their counterparts, whom they had never met. Two days later, on June 2, Nasser told British MP Christopher Mayhew, that Egypt had "no intention of attacking Israel.

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That we would get our freedom back, that we would be liberated, that we would get back to the homeland. Karen White, a member of Temple Emanu-El in San Jose, CA, is a professional and mother of two in the San Francisco Bay Area. Israel's surprise attack of 500 sorties had destroyed virtually all of Egypt's Soviet-built fighter jets, and now the Jewish state had the sky over Sinai all to itself. It weaves history and politics into a narrative that makes the reader care about the people involved…. Their attack on the pipeline was a failure, thwarted by Lebanese security before it began, but Fatah issued a "military communique" proclaiming success by "detachments of our strike forces" and warning Israel of future actions.In the spring of 1967, with Arabs and Israelis openly threatening each other, both families grew increasingly anxious. The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East is a biography and memoir written by Sandy Tolan and published in 2006. Dalia Eshkenazi unfurled the last square of black construction paper and taped it onto the window next to the other black squares. My 15 year old daughter and I have been talking about this…that it must be a conscious choice, and that it must require extraordinary personal resources like courage, honesty, determined compassion, thoughtfulness … It is important to know about individuals who have made this choice. The radio picked up broadcasts of a serene Egyptian voice, saying, "Why don't you go back to where you came from?

The Lemon Tree Summary and Study Guide | SuperSummary

we get to know quite personally two people (Bashir and Dahlia) who are both caught up in the conflict, but who are also active agents in trying to further their respective causes…We aren’t talking about abstract principles or faceless groups, we are talking about two individuals who claim the same piece of land as their home… I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in learning more about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. For many Palestinians, though, by the mid-1960s the urgency had deepened; the Negev was filling up with new Jewish immigrants, and rumors were everywhere that Israel was developing a nuclear weapons program.In Sinai, the report noted, the Egyptians had set up only "the rudiments of an air defense system"; nevertheless, "the Arabs are sniffing blood. The author then goes back in time to the 1930s, when Bashir’s father, Ahmad, carefully built his family’s house out of stone and planted a lemon tree in the back yard. As long as there's an Israeli flag behind the judge in the courthouse," Bashir told an Israeli colonel, "I won't be representing my people.