They REFUSE to hate each other • Just Joan Online

They REFUSE to hate each other

Original publication date: 2-25-10

“It is such an important time to gain a better understanding of what is required to create peace in the Middle East,” says Lorin Peters, the Bay Area teacher previously featured in this column who travels to the Holy Land annually for peacemaking functions. He and I both welcome you to what he terms “an outstanding educational conference on Palestine and Israel with an incredible list of guest speakers.” Please don’t miss out. Go online now to fosna.org, or phone or e-mail me for a copy of the brochure for the conference, “A Time for Truth, A Time for Action.” I’m arranging carpools to San Anselmo for next Friday afternoon and/or all day Saturday, March 6, so contact me at 938.8257 or joan@justjoanonline.com.

As I stood a dozen years ago, looking upon the ancient lemon tree, listening to the story of blind and elderly Ahmad Khairi’s visit to this same tree 34 years after he had planted it, I suddenly understood the depth of passion behind Palestinians’ cry for the Right of Return.

Yehezkel Landau told me his wife Dalia Eshkenazi was brought to this home as an infant by loving parents immigrating from Bulgaria. It was the only home she had known when Khairi’s son Bashir knocked at her front door. Instinctively, Dalia understood that until 1948, this was the only home Bashir had known. Without fear, this Jewish woman welcomed the Arab and his two cousins into the home built by Ahmad Khairi 12 years before she was born.

I learned eventually Dalia developed a dream and, with encouragement from Bashir and collaboration from Michael Fanous, an Arab elected to the Ramla City Council, she converted the home into Open House, a center for dialogue among Israelis and Palestinians, with a kindergarten for Ramla’s Arab children.

The story of the Khairi and Eshkenazi families has been brilliantly documented in “The Lemon Tree.” Author Sandy Tolan, University of Califoria, Berkeley professor spent seven years researching the book, and I learned from it the lemon tree died a year after my visit.

Note: Residents of Sonoma who watched “Lemon Tree” at last year’s film festival will recognize that fiction story has no connection to “The Lemon Tree"

In another film, “Holy Land: Common Ground,” Dalia and Bashir tell their story interwoven with two additional tales of deep friendships among Jews and Arabs. The three are examples of a truth familiar to Holy Land visitors who look beyond the tourist sites into the lives of people who share the common ground.

The group of us Monica Styron led to the Holy Land just over a year ago met with innumerable Israelis and Palestinians working very hard through amazingly diverse strategies to bring peace. In “Holy Land: Common Ground,” Bishop Desmond Tutu, who frequently travels to the Holy Land to urge peaceful resolution, provides a provocative commentary regarding people passionate about peace: “When God sees that, then it is like someone wiping the tears from the face of God. And God begins to smile – like sunshine breaking through rain and then you see the glorious rainbow.”

In the film Yitzhak Frankenthal tells us he feels he failed his son because, before that son was murdered by Hamas in 1994, Yitzhak had done nothing to help bring peace. “I lost my son because there is no peace between us and the Palestinians. Now I’ve decided I’m not going to continue my life as it was before.”

Acknowledging the intense pain of every parent who has lost a child in the interminable conflict, Frankenthal helped found “The Parent Circle” where grieving parents from both sides meet and connect at a very deep level around their pain. We had the privilege of meeting some of these parents and hearing the many ways the group is extending their loving understandings beyond the confines of the “Circle” into schools and other communities.

When Jeff Halper brought his young bride from Minnesota to their new home nearly 40 years ago, it was so unusual there was a big newspaper story about Ashkenazi Jews moving into a rocky slum neighborhood of Jerusalem.

The film introduces Halper and extended family in his now lovely home and garden. The Professor of Anthropology at Ben Gurion University suggests his neighborhood is today about “as normal and quiet as anyplace else.”

“Home,” Halper opines, “is a part of you, like Dorothy in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ who said there’s no place like home. Home is an extension of you; it’s your most intimate space.”
Next we tag along as Halper shares a family’s makluba, a signature Palestinian celebration meal. Demolition orders have been served so every day this family fears caterpillar bulldozers will destroy their home and their lives.

Halper thinks this is unfair. He asks why he should enjoy security in his home while his friend Salim lives with perpetual fear and near certainty that one day his family will be suddenly displaced, his home destroyed.

In fact, by film’s end, that home has been bulldozed by the Israeli army and rebuilt by the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions five times.

Halper founded Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and will speak at the San Anselmo conference.

Whether or not you can attend the conference, please contact me and I’ll happily bring “Holy Land: Common Ground” for viewing and discussion with you and your friends.

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