The Lemon Tree

Product Information

The stories of Dalia and Bashir and what becomes of the house with the lemon tree are gripping, and Tolan fills in historical detail without bogging down readers or losing sight of the bigger picture. Tolan also manages to maintain an impartial tone throughout the book. By late on June 6, Dalia knew that the war was won. She experienced it not with elation -- not yet, since the fighting was still going on -- but rather with a sense that a miracle was taking place in Israel. How could this have happened? she thought again and again. Did God save us? How can this be? Excellent, well-written portrait of the multiple changes that have occured in the area of the Middle East known as Palestine, Israel, both to Arabs and Jews who both want to live on the same land in the same homes. History of the area from both perspectives is provided for the years leading to the declaration of Israeli independence in 1948 which changed the dynamics of the entire Middle East for all the years since. your book vivified and humanized the Palestinian – Israeli situation as none has. It informed and fascinated me. Many, many thanks. Please write another. The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.

The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle

Israeli pilots now patrolled the entire region virtually unchallenged... From this point, the outcome of the war was written. The Six Day War was essentially decided in six hours. The problem is this; it was no longer their land. Intransigence will prevent any peace. Both sides have to move to a middle ground, but Israel has no choice, if it wishes to maintain its Jewish identity, but to behave they way it did and will have to continue to do so. Those that do not understand this will wish to doom Israel to extinction. They may even hope for it, as their ultimate goal. Dalia's parents have died. Now, since her parents aren't there to keep the house from Bashir, she agrees with Bashir to turn the house into a school where Israeli children and Palestinian children can be educated, together. There is angry between them for their political opinions, but their commitment to peace in rooted in mutual love and respect. They meet in 2004 to talk things through. Update this section!After several weeks, I found my story. It was about two families who were connected by the same stone home in the Israeli town of Ramla. I learned that a Palestinian family, the Khairis, had built the house in 1936, and planted a lemon tree in the yard. They lived there until the war, when like almost all the families of that town, they were forced into exile by the arriving Israeli army. The eldest son of that family was Bashir, six years old, who vowed that some day, he would return home with the many other Arab families who were driven out of Palestine. The Lemon Tree is the history of modern day Palestine and Israel. It is written in a Palestinian voice by an individual who was displaced from his home as a child but who I think remains fairly balanced in his viewpoint and presentation. d. Chapters Four (pp 66-69) and Five (pp. 80-85) describe the experience of leaving home, from the Khairis’ and Eshkanazis’ perspective. How were these departures, in the things that they carried and the things that they left behind, similar? How were they different? Can you imagine what must have been going on in the minds of Ahmad and Moshe, the fathers of each family, as they looked forward into the unknown?

the Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh | Goodreads As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh | Goodreads

The Lemon Tree” is my favorite book, it has a profound effect upon me when I sit down and read a couple chapters. I like reading just a chapter or two and then reflecting upon the events that they covered. The lives of both Dalia Eshkenazi and Bashir Khairi, their families, the relationships between them along with the events of the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict are so compelling they can’t help but touch the readers’ very souls. Sandy Tolan is a teacher and radio documentary producer. He is the author of two books: Me and Hank: A Boy and His Hero, Twenty-Five Years Later (Free Press, 2000), about the intersection between race, sports, and American heroes; and The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East (Bloomsbury, 2006). The Washington Post called the book “extraordinary” and selected it among their top nonfiction titles for 2006; the Christian Science Monitor wrote, “no novel could be more compelling” and proclaimed, “It will be one of the best nonfiction books you will read this year.”Sandy has reported from more than 30 countries, especially in the Middle East, Latin America, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe.Full of history and detail, which I ADORE i

Lemon Tree (Tolan) - LitLovers Lemon Tree (Tolan) - LitLovers

Tolan skillfully weaves significant historical and political events, from the first intifada to Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, into the personal context of Dalia and Bashir’s families. This makes for compelling reading throughout. The affecting story of an unlikely truce, even a peace, between Palestinians and Israelis in contested territory.

Here is a more extensive list of questions suggested by the Author. 

I think this book has boring dialog. Do people really talk that way? Maybe Dalia and Bashir should just chill out and become a bit more fun. The history in this book was so dry and boring! But history presented in a textbook format has always bored me to tears. Here is an aspect of the book that may be considered not fair: In all the discussion of people's homes, right-of-return, etc., the book never mentions that not all the Arab population owned their land. Look at this Wikipedia entry on Absentee Landlords, specifically the third section, on absentee landowners in Palestine before 1948: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absentee.... In 1858 the Ottoman Empire made the people on the land register ownership in a new manner, as individuals. That caused problems because it interfered with traditional communal patterns of land ownership, and because the people on the land didn't want to register ownership; doing so would result in taxation and conscription. Several decades later there were secular land reforms that allowed the oppressed Jews of the Ottoman Empire to own land individually, which led to religious resentment by Muslims on the land. At any rate, land became increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, particularly in the hands of absentee landowners of the Ottoman Empire. The people on the land were reduced to tenant farmers. In that way, resentment--and Arab nationalism--began to arise prior to the Zionist movement and prior to increased Jewish immigration. While Bashir's family had been prominent in their village and may have owned their land, many others would not have, and if they felt they should and didn't, there would have been issues that already existed and that were not instigated by Jewish immigration or the establishment of the state of Israel. I saw no reference to any of that in the book.

Book A Room - The Lemon Tree Book A Room - The Lemon Tree

In early 1998, embarking on a new series of first-person documentaries for NPR, I went off in search of a story that would connect two great and tragic narratives of the Middle East -- that of the Israelis, and that of the Palestinians -- in a personal way, through a singular story. 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. To Israelis, it's the War of Independence; to Palestinians, it's the Nakba, or "Catastrophe." For nearly 20 years, Dalia and Bashir grew up not knowing each other, yet in a profound sense wondering about each other: Who lives in my house now? Bashir wondered. What happened to the people who lived her before? Dalia wanted to know. Bashir, as he grew into a young man, grew increasingly committed to returning to his homeland -- by political agreement, or by force; Dalia grew anxious that the Arabs would expel her from the only home she knew, and push her into the sea. In the spring of 1967, with Arabs and Israelis openly threatening each other, both families grew increasingly anxious. I think it would be called a "revisionist" book. That is, it doesn't tell the story of Israel in a mythic, heroic manner, but contains all the warts--i.e, not all the Arabs fled of their own accord in 1948 but some were driven out; bad treatment on the part of Israel happened. Torture has occurred. Some may see that as delegitimizing the state of Israel, but to me it means that, like other countries, Israel hasn't had an immaculate conception. (In my opinion, it is not criticism of Israel that is the problem, but the problem consists in removing it from time and history and holding it up as the paradigmatic evil.) The king's fears of an Israeli occupation of the West Bank, however, were secondary to his worries at home. American officials in Amman had already warned Washington that "the monarchy itself is in jeopardy." Lastly, in the Source Notes, Ch. 8, Michail Fanous, the author notes that the infamous "push them into the sea" comment has been researched and is believed by "numerous Arab sources" never to have been uttered. It was called "a remarkably successful piece of disinformation." I am disappointed that this was relegated to the Source Notes and not an integral part of the book. The amount of disinformation propagated by Israel needs to be called attention to; this book would have been an excellent place to accomplish that.

Need Help?

c. (RG3) The Arab-Israeli war of 1948 is known as the “War of Independence” to Israelis, and the “Nakba,” or “Catastrophe,” to Palestinians. Chapter Four describes how Bashir’s family, and Dalia’s cousin, Yitzhak Yitzkaki, experienced the war. Take the point of view of Bashir, during the first several months of 1948, and tell the group how you experienced those times. Now, do the same with Yitzhaki, beginning with his overland trip on the Orient Express, his arrival in Jerusalem on New Year’s Day, and his subsequent participation in the Haganah. This book is a marvellously thorough description of the formation of Israel, and the resulting Arab-Israeli conflict. Through their friendship, Dalia learns how her family acquired their home and how Bashir unfairly lost his when Israel commandeered it and forced the community he lived in to flee. She is sympathetic, but realizes that there is nothing she can do about it. She cannot return the home to him, she cannot even sell it to him. It is a brutal mark on Israel’s history, but the Arabs wanted to drive them out, and the newly formed Israel saw no other way to guarantee its survival other than to kill or be killed. Israelis chose survival as cruel as its implementation required. This reminds me of that joke to the effect that before the coming of the missionaries, the natives had the land and the colonialists had the bible. Afterward, the natives had the bible and the colonialists the land.